Chapters Snow And Sand: A World In Two Shrouds
All along the river Palomino , crooked and deformed trees made their root. Bent and hideous, they marked the decline of the cold, clinging to life off dead leaves and the cannibalistic consumption of their rotten kin. Further south, in the sheltered mountain caves, a village was settled after the southward travels of a lost caravan two centuries ago. There they made a home, blessed under Her watch, and they thanked Her for the gift of the warmth beneath the Earth and fertile soil.
Steorra watched as his breaths froze in the frigid air, too afraid of the faces in the trees to sleep. The small vessel’s sail had been taken down and used for covering when the tide had begun to pick up, carrying them quicker down the river. Father lay at the back, wrapped in furs, pelts, and leathers alike a chrysalis; the colt’s ego was a tad stroked at his father’s intolerance of the temperature, not needlessly covered in the heavy animal skins like his father. Steorra always thought his father weird-looking for a Southerner. His coat was a color he had only seen once, when a trader from far east near the hissing sea, shared with them a tasty liquid alike the sap from trees, only it was sweet and called honey . The mane of his father was shaggy and black, and he liked it because it reminded him of sky on a starless night. Steorra was born of Her light, but father had Her sky in his hair. When Southerners want foals, they pray to She Born of Starlight, and then she molds them out of snow; this was the cause of Southern foals' white coats and blanket snow manes.
Neck bent over the side of the boat, Steorra’s curious eyes darted around random spots in the water. Father told him, a day fresh into the journey, that the warmer the water got the brighter the scales of the fish. Down South, silver scaled pearl fish were aplenty in the streams in the forest, and the imagination of the young colt at the sight of a orange or emerald scaled swimmer was exciting. For a moment, his eyes flicked upward to the river bank, an overeager twitch; then he was given pause. Why is the ice crying? He pondered, leaning a little over the edge to get a closer look at the marvel. He seen the old Crone drop bucket fulls of snow into the pot, and watched as the fire beneath turned it to water, but there were no fires here, and none beneath the snow as far as he could tell. He leant further out, the rushing water of the river splashing onto the underside of his chest. Does ice get sad?
He stretched out one of his hooves, leaning precariously out far, straining to reach for the river’s edge and to touch this weeping snow. The hoof he stood on began to shake, straining under his prolonged weight on it, quivering. He was so close, he just need to get closer, the snow bank was within a hair’s length away. The boat rocked as it hit a stone in the rapids, then he slipped, a moment of vertigo, and a sickening lurch as the water seems to be shooting toward him; he was falling forward into the icy waters of the river - no - something grabbed his tail, yanking him back; the colt feeling pain and relief when his flank smacked against the wooden floor of the boat.
“What are you doing, colt!?” his father, Sunder, scolded through a tightened jaw. Steorra could feel spittle, not droplets from the rushing rapids, land on his cheek. Sideways he could see his father’s uncovered legs standing next to him, and from the way he was standing, he was pressing them down. Hard.
Steorra couldn’t look up, head down in shame. He could hear father breathe, his icy cold breath brushing against his cheek. He got scary at times. Almost as frightening as the old Crone, but the difference between her and him was that father never hit him. Steorra’s breaths shook as he slowly craned his neck to the right, to look at his father proper, but could only look at him from the corner of his eye. “Sorry,” he said, it was all he knew to say.
He heard his father exhale through his nostrils, and audibly heard the older stallion’s breathing get slower. He still couldn’t bring himself to look. He heard hooves on wood, four individual clops, the sound of a pat, flesh on wood. “You could have been lost, you know,” his father said, sitting so close as to brush against his side, “taken from me.”
“You would have found me again,” Steorra said, meek.
“Sometimes those that are lost are lost forever, Steor,” Sunder retorted, voice soft, “and then you’d never see me again. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” the colt nodded, fidgeting.
Steorra felt his father’s hoof press beneath his chin, and directed it upward, his azure eyes looking into his father’s copper irises. “Do you understand?” Sunder said again, his tone underlined with a firmness the colt heard many a time before, each individual use chiseled into his head.
“Yes,” he replied, resolute. “I promise I won’t do it again. Promise.” Promise .
Father gave a grunt, his hoof moving from beneath Steorra’s chin to his mane, and ruffled the platinum locks approvingly; Steorra pouted against the ruffling touch, but did not fight it. Father always smirked whilst doing it. He must have liked it.
Later, a few hours down the river, the clouds obscuring the sky had floated Southward; allowing the pale light from the heavens to shine down over the duo. Father had fallen to slumber again, and Steorra had, to avoid risking his ire again, chose to lay with him. But still, sleep avoided him like spark to kindling in a blizzard. He looked to the sky, remembering the old Crone’s teachings of the world’s ceiling. Na , hung in the sky amongst the stars, and shone its soft white light onto the entirety of the South. It’s been this way for hundreds and hundreds of years, said the old Crone. In the South, they praise Her for blessing them with light that does not burn, as it does in the North. They praise Her for a cold that makes them born strong, and does not leave them without water as it does in the North. In the North, you can’t even look on their Na , Tia they called it. It hurts the eyes. How do they look up, he asked himself, and wondered how they can even have foals if there was no snow to mold them from. As he continued to look upward, he noticed a change in the sky. It was a subtle one, but amongst the void and the stars, interwoven and overlain with the black, was blue.
Steorra propped himself up with a start, and looked ahead, his lips parting. The sky was cracked, like cerulean fabric had been sewed together with jet black string. The sky is broken, he thought, feeling his heartbeat against his ribs. Beyond that, even further, he saw wisps of orange light. He noticed he no longer saw his exhales become clouds in the air before him as he did before, and there was no longer a chill carried ever-present with him, and felt as though he could feel the faint heat of a distant fire upon his body. He was afraid.
He turned to his father; raising his two forehooves, he began to push and rock back and forth the older stallion in his sleep, panting and whimpering, glancing to the orange speckled horizon. “Father, father!”
The old stallion writhed, and tried to blink and stretch, but Steorra continued to punch against his side. Wake up! Wake up! Sunder grumbled at the back of his throat, and looked at the colt with pursed lips and a scowl. “What, Steor! What!” Sunder blurted, stirring awake with a thrash of limbs, trying to push the colt away. Steorra was persistent.
“The sky,” he cried, his words shaking. “It’s broken.”
“What?” Sunder’s voice was quieter, rubbing his eyes with one hoof and propping up against the back of the boat.
“Broken,” he exclaimed, and leant on the word. “The sky is broken and on fire.”
“What?” Sunder scoffed, and furrowed his brows. “What are you talking about?”
Why is he not scared? Why is he smiling, Steorra thought, wide eyes and shaking. “Look! Look!” Steorra threw his hoof to the North. More of the light began to peek over the curve of the world, and he tried to back up more in the small craft, his flank pressing against the stern.
“You’re young, lad,” Sunder began, propping himself up straight. “Too young to have seen the snow weep, to see the blue sky or feel Tia’s heat on your coat. That’s not doom, lad. That’s the North.” He began to chuckle heartily, watching his son’s expression change.
Steorra found that his fear had suddenly been replaced. He followed his father’s eye ahead to blue sky, the yellow light. He looked ahead in full marvel of the sight. He was fully taken by the sight, and even as his eyes began to sting, he couldn’t take them off the light. “Don’t keep looking at it, boy,” Sunder instructed, tapping him on withers. “You’ll melt the eyes outta ya sockets.” Steorra took the warning to heart, yanking his eyes from the distant light to the floor of the boat, looking at his father sideways when he heard a chuckle.
“What’s the North like?” he asked. Father seemed to know everything about everything. He knew how to get the hounds beneath the earth to dig out the earth for them, and fend off the sky demons who mimicked their shape.
Sunder, whilst looking between the horizon and Steorra, took one of the pelt braces on his hoof between his teeth, and yanked at it. “Well, for one, you’ll wanna leave behind your furs and leathers on the boat. No longer will you be feeling the kiss of Na on your coat, lad. Tia’s light is harsh, and will bring the water from your stomach out through your skin. But still, drink plenty of it,” he said, peeling a cotton sock of his hoof. “Northerners don’t take kindly to furs, that you should know.”
“Why’s that?” Steorra asked, removing his hood and cloak, looking at the material in his hooves. The brown material was soft and thick. Father gave him this cloak when they set off on this trek. The material was sometimes delivered by feathered things with beaks, other times it came out of a cabin the foals weren’t allowed in.
Sunder was quiet for a few minutes, and Steorra began to think he had ignored him, then he seemed to shift in his spot; sniffing and pursing his lips. “They don’t appreciate the difficulty of attaining such a skill. The effort required to make it.”
The colt knitted his eyebrows together, and tilted his head. He removed the final piece of pelt attire on his forehoof, and then looked sideways, curiously at his father. “Attaining?”
“Ay, lots of hard work that it. Learning,” Sunder said, sighing.
“Will I learn it too?” Steorra asked, looking at Sunder with a raised eyebrow.
“I s’pose, yes. When you get to my age you’ll learn a lot of things, Steor,” Sunder said, “some things are harder than others though.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, lots of things,” Sunder responded simply with a smirk, but then looked at Steorra, but not in the eye. “Even that bump on your head.”
“My horn?” Steorra clarified, and his father nodded. In the village, there was only one of him, with a horn atop his head. It wasn’t very big, but he saw no other pony like him in the entirety of his short life. Father said he was rare, and claimed that he never saw another in his entire life, a unicorn he was called. The Crone called him one of Her blessed. “How?”
Sunder began to chuckle, and slightly shook his head. “I don’t know!”
“But you said you’re old, and that you knew everything,” he whined, looking at Sunder with a frown.
“No I did not,” Sunder snapped back with chuckle, “‘sides, I’m not that old.”
Steorra grumbled, sulking. “Why are we going North anyway?” Steorra asked, laying beside his father.
Sunder remained quiet, his jaw jutting out and he looked off somewhere. “Get some sleep. We’ll be at the Freeland Banke soon, and you don’t want to walk in the heat whilst tired.”
“But—”
“Sleep, boy,” Sunder interrupted with a commanding tone, scowling at the colt. “You’ll miss the cold soon enough, so sleep in it whilst you still can.”
Steorra grimaced, and turned onto his other side, away from his father, eyes clenching shut. It wasn’t defiance, but Steorra sniffed, upset. Before sleep caught him, he watched as the snow gradually began to fade, and what stood in its place were little green stalks in the dirt. Before long he felt his father press a soft hoof into his back, a soft press, before it retreated away from him. Before the colt fell to sleep, he heard his father sigh. Father didn’t like to be asked certain questions. Unfortunately for Steorra, he didn’t know which ones he didn’t liked to be asked.
Steorra awoke, not remembering having any dreams. He felt a harsh light on his eyes, and the heat on his coat felt as though he awoke in front of a fire. Stirring and climbing to his hooves, he fell when the boat was yanked forward. “Father?” He yelped, climbing back onto his hooves, rubbing his head; and looked around himself with bug eyes.
“We’re ‘ere,” Sunder replied from off the boat, off the bow. Steorra made his way to the front, seeing his father hefting the craft onto the shore with a rope tied around his stomach. “Welcome to the Freeland, Steor.”
Steorra was taken with a keen interest, rose himself up on the aft, eyes jittering around the landscape. He had never seen waters as blue as sapphires before, nor the wide spanning beachhead, the bright sand glittered like gold to the eyes of Steorra. As his father brought the boat further onto the sands, the colt got impatient, and jumped from the boat into the warm waters of the Freebank with a splash. He saw Sunder cast him a disinterested look before he resumed his pulling, and Steorra took that as free reign. He waded through the hoof deep water until he got to the sands, taking a moment to feel the odd texture of the beach beneath his hooves. He tried to advance up the beach to be alongside his father, but as soon as his hooves left the moist sands and stepped onto the dry, he retreated back into the water. The sand was rough, course, irritating, and hot . But even submerged he couldn’t avoid the light above, which continued to beat upon his body. He tried to look up at it, the orange carved circle in the sky, but it hurt him to do so. Why does anypony live here? he griped internally, already longing for home.
“It’s hot,” he complained. Even the reflection of Tia in the water got into his eye, and he struggled to even look up.
“Ay, and it’ll get hotter,” Sunder replied casually, dropping the rope in the sand turning behind himself, climbing back into the boat. “Not much I can do about that, I’m afraid.”
Steorra looked at his father crooked, squinting one eye and keeping the other closed, and saw his father rooting around in the boat. “How am I supposed to see?” He asked, his tone growing irritated.
Sunder landed back in the sand, his black shaggy mane hanging free down his face. He wore on him now two large saddlebags, and held a wide brimmed hat between his teeth. “Wear this,” he said, chucking the hat into the sand, just out of the tide. “Keep a hold of it for me.”
The colt smiled, running onto shore, kicking up sand; some landing and sticking to his coat. The colt leant down, picking it up with his hooves and sitting on his rear, and upon closer scrutiny, he recognised the material. Leather . “I thought you said Northerners didn’t like leather,” He said, and flipped the hat, placing it on his head.
“Ay, they don’t,” he confirmed, walking over the colt, “but they’ll just pretend. Northerners like playing pretend.”
“Why?” asked the colt.
“It’s easier than accepting truth,” he replied, walking over the stationary colt. “Let me look at that. Make sure you wear the brim low, alright?”
“Why?” Steorra asked.
Sunder pursed his lips and grumbled. “There are some things you don’t need to know, alright? If anypony asks what that bump is on your head, tell them it’s a deformity, that you were born wrong, alright?”
“Why?” Steorra asked again, this time tilting his head. Why would Northerners care about my horn?
“What’d I say?” Sunder snapped, frowning.
“Oh,” Steorra flinched, his lips tightly pressed together and quivering.
The father signed, and pressed a hoof on the underside of the colt’s chin, directing it his eyes up. “Learn to be like a Northerner, right? Pretend , okay… okay?”
“O-okay,” the colt swallowed, forcing himself to keep staring into his father’s eyes.
“So when someone asks if you got a horn, what do you say?”
“N-no?” The colt was wary with his language. He had never been a Northerner, and was struggling to get into the role of one.
“Good,” Sunder congratulated, ruffling Steorra’s hair before brushing past him, patting him on the haunches.
“Isn’t that lying?” The colt turned to follow his father, who dawdled at a slow pace.
“Ay.”
“Isn’t lying bad?”
“Ay, it is,” the father nodded, looking up the beach to the incline of land, where an entire line of brown shrivelled stumps marked the Freeland Bank. “Pretend that it isn’t. Practice being like Northerners. Think of it like a game.”
“How can lying be a game?” Steorra looked at Sunder, expression incredulous.
“That’s easy. You do it all the time when playing games. You chase another colt, but you’re not a monster. You see shapes in the clouds, but they ain’t dragons or animals. Games are pretend and lies, lad. And the Northerners play plenty of them,” Sunder explained, glancing every few words down to the hat-clad colt. The two continued up the beach, the land sloping upward, where there was a sudden flattening of the Earth.
“Do all Northerners play it?” Steorra asked, climbing up the small ridge.
“No, no. But enough of them do, and since you need to pretend to be one whilst you’re here, you best get into the habit of playing it,” Sunder instructed, mirroring his son.
Steorra was confused by this. If Northerners always lie, then it’s okay for me to lie too, since I’m pretending to be a Northerner; I’m not really lying since I’m only pretending to lie, he thought, logic doing circles as he tried to understand. This left his expression screwed up tight, squinting, and he kicked up a clump of sand in minor frustration. When he looked back up, he was stunted by captivation of what lay before him. Thousands, a number he had never seen of anything prior, and found himself overwhelmed; lost in his enthrallment of the barrenness.
Thousands of broken columns, gnarled, snapped and splintered; all of them aiming Westward. It was a graveyard. Corpses of trees, husks of roots came up through the sand, dried up and shrivelled, jagged splinters coming off the stumps; looking horrific to the colt’s eyes. There was an air of pain, fear, and dense misery; even the colt could perceive it. I don’t like it here... Steorra resolved to not think about it. With a sharp exhale he sped up to his father, tailing him closely, ignoring the heat on his back as his eyes flitting about; his mind going wild imagining the horrors residing in those hollow stumps.
Sunder glanced down at the colt beside him with a pursed frown, exhaling through his nostrils before looking ahead. “This place used to be a forest. Long ago, the trees here reached the clouds, and took on many different colours. They could never be uprooted, or destroyed. No axe, no magic, no fire. Magic was strong here, and it protected them, as did it the many creatures and beasts that lived within it,” Sunder talked, and sighed. He’s always sighing... thought Steorra, who listened intently to his father’s words. “Hundreds and hundreds of years before my time, this place. It was special, you can feel that. And now it’s gone. Forever.”
The trees remained unsightly, but knowing they were gone forever left him strangely melancholic. He had lost things before, whilst playing in the woods around Arim and never saw them again. He remembered how upset he had been, but he had never lost anything as big as a forest. “That’s sad,” Steorra said, who looked around himself with a softer expression on his face.
“Ay, ‘tis,” Sunder confirmed.
They continued their walk without another word. Steorra followed closely, stopping with his father whenever he stopped, who would squint and look off in certain directions, before changing the direction they walked with a satisfied grumble and nod. He’s been here before, Steorra surmised, it was obvious his father stopped to recall the path. Steorra kept his father in his peripheral vision, but looked at the dead trees with an inquisitive gaze, trying hard to imagine what they looked like, as well as trying to imagine something that reached the sky. He would jump when he heard a crunch underhoof, sighing when he realised it was only a root, and pouting whenever his father would smirk, which was every time. Soon the colt began to feel clammy, and his coat go damp in places with sweat. Magic. Father said magic kept protected these trees, the thought occurred to him, and his curiosity was rekindled.
“Have you ever seen magic?” Steorra asked, taking his father out of a stupor.
“Me? Goodness no,” Sunder scoffed, sucking his teeth, “but I think your mother did.”
Mother… he thought, looking up at Sunder with slightly parted lips, and tilted head; a tinge of mourning in his expression. He lost mother when he was young, too young to remember anything of her. “Mother?”
“Ay,” Sunder slowed his pace, looking to his son as he spoke, “she told me stories. Her mother was born with a horn, just like you. It glew a pale white, and she could pick things up from faraway.”
“Really?” Steorra said. It was disbelief in his tone, but he desperately wanted to believe.
“Ay, yes. Your mother was vivid. She’d have her hair brushed by her mother, all by a floating brush held in her mother’s magic. She could also make the trees grow cumbersome with fruit, start fires without wood, and make month long sicknesses end in minutes,” Sunder talked on, his brows slightly raised, a curve to the end of his lip.
“How?” Steorra asked softly, lost in his own fascination and imagination.
“Because she had a horn on her head, just like you,” he pursed his lips, jutting out the lower one, “‘cept it was longer.”
“And how did she use her horn?”
“The same as I said on the boat, lad,” Sunder replied, chuckling, his expression softened when Steorra frowned. “One day, I’m certain of it, you’ll be capable of doing anything with that horn of yours.”
Steorra didn’t reply, but his father’s encouraging words prevented him from moping, instead he went into his own mind and began to imagine. He pictured small things, such as making his chores a breeze, lifting harvest baskets without his hooves; then he imagined lifting everypony else’s baskets. He pictured being able to conjure toys out of the air, and give one to every filly and colt in the village, feeling a pleasant warmness inside his chest compared to the one on his coat. He then imagined making everypony’s plates and bowls full and hot and tasty, and making the campfire as large as one of the trees father described, and then nopony would have any reason to be sad anymore. I could do a lot, if I could do anything, he mused with a large grin on his lips, and continued forward with father.
It took long, but soon they were out of the tree’s graveyard, and set their hooves upon the beginnings of an expansive dune. More sand... Steorra moaned internally, already feeling irritation as grains brushed against his coronets as he walked. When ever he pressed a firm step down, he sank a few inches, as if being submerged in a shallow puddle. But I don’t want to drink this, he thought, and dragged a tongue against his dry lips. The longer they walked, the more the skin beneath his coat felt like fire, and he grew discontent; becoming thirstier than he had ever been. His mouth grew so dry, he couldn’t swallow his own spittle for relief. I hate the North he suddenly became resolute of, and looked to his father’s saddlebags.
“Do we have anything to drink?” Steorra asked. “Is there water in those saddlebags?”
“Nay,” Sunder replied simply, “they’re both empty.”
“But I’m thirsty,” Steorra moaned, his throat somehow becoming dryer. “Why do you have saddlebags if they’re empty?”
“We left in a hurry, remember? No time to pack water. That’s why we drank from the river,” Sunder explained, “but I have them for a reason. We’ll get everything we need, and soon.”
“How soon?” Steorra asked, persistent.
“Soon,” he replied curtly and firm, but looked down to Steorra, a slight curve to his lip. “Where we’re heading, they have apple juice, and grapes. You ever have grapes?”
“No?” Steorra replied, but interest was piqued within him.
“They’re sweet, and juicy, and will quench both hunger and thirst. We don’t have lots of fruit down South, but up here, on the border, they have it in abundance,” Sunder explained, “you remember that trader from the far east, the hissing sea?”
“Yes, the one with the honey!” Steorra nodded.
“You remember the taste?”
“I’ll never forget,” replied Steorra. Pastries were made with wheat. The harvest was good that year. For warmer’s eve, the honey was mixed into the dough, and baked until brown. Steorra still remembered it vividly, how the Crone hoofed one to each foal, and when after the prayer he sunk his teeth into the dough; how one bite made his mouth water, and caused drool to fall down his chin. It was one of the best days of life.
“The sweetness, imagine it, and being able to drink it like water,” Sunder said. Whilst he managed to sell the destination, he did not sell Steorra patience, and Steorra grew terribly short of it.
“How long?” Steorra asked, yawping. Every step he took now he became acutely aware of, and hated taking them.
Sunder looked straight ahead, seeing that the dune’s elevation began to rise into a ridge, an aeolian breeze brushing against the sand; carrying it with it. “You’ll see our heading just over that rid— Boy!”
He couldn’t wait anymore. His hooves carried him forward in a gallop. He didn’t look over his shoulder, he didn’t want to see if father was pursuing him, but he couldn’t help it; he just had to go. He climbed up the ridge, kicking clumps of sand behind him as he did, pushing big indentations into the soft orange grains as he did so. The incline grew so steep, that he had to climb up onto the ridge, the sand falling down beneath his weight, his back hooves kicking to keep him going, a lone swimmer in the sandy sea. When he finally climbed over the top, he was out of breath, and took a moment to rekindle himself. When his breathing more more steady, he looked straight on ahead, to what lay before him. When he looked upon the graveyard of trees, he was overwhelmed by its size, and his eyes lay upon a colossus.
A sprawling metropolis, an island in an ocean of desert. From the distance, it appeared so far away, yet seemed to press against him at the same time. Thousands, there must have been , the sprawling gathering of houses and buildings a sight to behold in a world that appeared so empty of them. He knew not what their purposes were, but he imagined the number of ponies outnumbered his village by thousands of thousands. The city spanned from a nearby desolate mountain, all the way to a gently flowing river a half mile from the ridge, but obviously spanned outward from a certain point. His eyes followed the most interesting things by whatever was closest, his young mind trying to take everything in. There were dozens of multicoloured workers on an irrigated farmland nearby the river, a building off the distance made of what appeared to be a purple stone, and even further beyond that he saw the earth was brown and covered in hundreds of lines and zig-zags. Across the city, from building to adjacent building, he saw lots of colour. Purple, blue, yellow, pink, and orange. He noticed that the roads into the city went beneath those tarps, and how it looked at though ponies would end up walking under colourful shadows. Are they pretending they not under the light of Tia? He mused as a foal would, but tore himself from thought when he heard heavy exhales behind him.
“Don’t do that again,” Sunder scolded, breathing too heavily to be able to shout, “don’t go anywhere without me, alright? Not unless told.”
“I swear,” the colt promised, only taking his eyes off the city for a second for courtesy, and continued to watch it in wonderment and awe.
Sunder smirked, and Steorra felt his presence near him, and heard the crunching of the sand as his father stood beside him. The two looked at the city together, and when he heard his father inhale and exhale, he looked up at him to see his eyes were already cast down toward him. “Steorra,” he began, using his full name, “welcome to the city of Ponyville.”
Author's Note
Chapter 1 is more of an extended prologue than a true chapter. Also, certain pieces of information, and how the narrative is handled, is restricted to certain POVs of the chapters. I was heavily inspired by the writing style of George R.R. Martin whilst writing this.
How it fits into the theme:
I hope you enjoy.
I don't know if this will actually get finished before the deadline of August 15, but regardless, I will still enjoy writing this.
Snow And Sand: A World In Two Shrouds
The path felt good beneath his hooves, feeling the flattened dirt beneath him over sand or snow was a welcomed change. He was sure Steorra welcomed it too, even if he wasn’t thinking it. It would be wrong to call Ponyville a speck of life amongst a vast desert… it was so much bigger. Ponyville had the ever present hum of life. Arim had it, but only during the day when there was work to be done. No, Ponyville was different. There was always something that had to be done. It was more alive in Ponyville than anywhere else, and Sunder appreciated that. There was a resilience in the North, Ponyville especially, that rivalled even the most Southern villages. They weren’t built hardy in Ponyville, but they were diligent, and hard working; ascribing to themselves the desire to attain the five most important virtues they believed necessary to survive. While true not all attempted to reach these goals, they knew of them, and knew that they were good and to be valued. He’s always wondering, Sunder thought, looking at his son with a reserved smile. Steorra looked as though he had a twitch, his eyes staring overlong at anypony who passed them on the narrow road, before flicking to a random vendor or house. Probably thinks Northerners hate space, he thought, himself too, curious about something; in particular the mind of his son. Probably likes the colours… he mused whilst glancing up at the somewhat transparent coloured tarp joining between the buildings. Sunder knew it was for the shade, otherwise walking or even living in this city would be arduous.
“Why are they naked?” Steorra asked out of the blue.
Sunder kept his eyes straight ahead. He knew it wouldn’t be long before he started to ask questions, but fortunately for him, most of them could be answered with a simple two-word answer. “Too hot.”
“But what if when it snows?”
“Too hot to snow.”
“Rain?”
“No rain,” he replied, his ear twitching at the familiar sound of rushing beneath his hooves, “they have the rivers for water. Irrigation ditches run along most of the roads, sometimes under them.”
“But what about when the river freezes during the third quarter?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Why?”
“Too hot.”
The questions continued to pour forth from the colt’s mouth, and he answered them to the best of his ability, however menial. The colt had taken a keen interest in the Northerners and the city, and he found a pleasant elation in pleasing his son. He knew Steor grew impatient when he would tell him that he didn’t need to know everything at once. He’d make a great teacher, Sunder thought, and found his son’s constant inquisition of the world to be admirable. When the path split into two, rejoining into an oval shape, with many more paths coming off of it; the colt’s questions finally came to an end. Sunder walked forward of the path’s junction, hooves stepping onto cobblestone, allowing a pause in the journey to satiate the colt’s curiosity.
In the middle of the roundabout, they both landed their eyes to a stallion standing upon a podium in the full fury of Tia’s light. The stallion was old, visibly so, a large white wispy beard hanging down from a face that was partially hidden in a satin hood. The white smock he wore covered his entire body, only his muzzle was visible, and sewn in from hood to flank were five coloured stripes. “And The Rainbow, whose loyalty to the citizens of this world was so great, that she granted every pony a colour from her mane. And when they bred, colour spread, spreading to all corners of this world. And in those ponies, the ones in who she granted her gift, she too instilled loyalty, for no stronger bond exists between ponies than that of parent and child; for this, we have The Rainbow to thank!”
“That’s a priest of The Five ,” Steorra said, preemptively answering before his son asked, “follower of the five Goddesses.”
“Five Goddesses?” Steorra asked, and Sunder heard the confusion in his voice. “I thought there was only one.”
“Ay, there are five to the Northerners. The Rainbow, The Orchard, The Diamond, The Butterfly, and The Merry,” he listed them off, glancing to the priest before looking down at the colt. “Yes, there may be only one Goddess. She who lead us to life at the ending of the world. She who was born from the light of stars, coming to us when we needed it most. Bringing us under the night sky so Her stars may watch over us, protect us.”
The colt remained silent, looking up at Sunder, head tilted. “May be ?”
Sunder scoffed. That crone has got him scared, even half a world away, he smirked, shaking his head. “The crone and her purple pointy hat aren’t around these parts, boy. I’m safe from her cane,” he said with slight arrogance, sighing at the colt’s instinctive flinch. Scared she’ll appear out of thin air to smack him. The Gods were a pensive topic, a topic he didn’t spend a lot of time devoted to, especially not as much as he should. “Come on. Let’s go before he starts to sing. They’re all singers up here, and seldom any of them sing good, especially old stallions who sing of the gods.”
As Sunder walked off the cobble and back onto the road, Steorra lagging behind. Probably wanted to see a Northerner sing… he rolled his eyes, but carried on, continuing down the Westernmost path. The entire narrow road was beneath an orange tarp. Sunder knew where this path leads and knew it was long. Not a problem for him, but he didn’t need to look to know Steorra was desperately trying to pass the time by looking at the environment. Sunder guessed that his son found Northerners weird.
It wasn’t too long until they passed from out of the shade back under the light of Tia, and felt the sand beneath their hooves. Surprised he’s kept quiet this long, thought Sunder, looking ahead to the tilled hills. As they got closer to the gate, the only one for several miles of fencing, they were passed by a cart being pulled by a pair of stocky red hued stallions; the bright red stamp on the side of the cart indicating where they were heading.
“This here is Sweet Apple Acres,” Sunder said, looking at the colt sideways, “when we get to the front gate, keep your mouth shut, okay?”
“Okay,” Steorra replied, acquiescing, and Sunder saw the colt purse his lips.
Sitting next to a white-painted five bar gate was the largest stallion Sunder had ever laid eyes upon. The stallion sat on a stool, his back leaning against the fence, his head down; he was the objective epitome of the word gargantuan. The stallion’s coat was brown, the same as wet mud, and his contrastingly blonde mane fell down his neck; his face obscured by a hat not dissimilar to the one Steorra wore. They’re certainly not prudes around these parts, Sunder thought, his face scrunching up as the sight of the stallion’s parted legs. He appeared to be napping, but as they neared him, the stallion moved, his jaw beginning to gnaw on nothing as he looked to Sunder, his eyes a distinctive green.
“Howdy,” the stallion greeted, his voice was lacking in anything Sunder would call warmth , and full of husk.
“Howdy,” Sunder mirrored, the word leaving a strange taste in his mouth. Damn, Apples and their greetings.
“And you are?” The stallion queried, arching a brow that was then lost under the brim of his hat.
Sunder raised both of his brows and gave him a tight lipped smile. “Friend of the family.”
“That doesn’t answer my question, friend,” the stallion replied, stressing ‘friend’ with a frown. I don’t think he likes me. Sunder felt his own face going neutral. “I much care for what you think your relationship with my family is. Your name. Give it.”
I don’t much care for his tone. Sunder smacked his lips, and smiled. “Think you could extend the same courtesy, friend ,” Sunder retorted.
The stallion flared his nostrils and jutted out his jaw, huffing. “Big Macintosh,” he began, his monotone drawl was momentarily dropped in favour of a prideful tone, his chest momentarily puffing out, “the twenty-fourth.”
“I’m Sunder, and this is my boy, Blessed-Of-Her-Light,” Sunder informed, his lips curved into a coy smile, before he looked from the colt to the stallion with a shrug, “or Steorra, if you’re inclined.”
Big Macintosh jutted his jaw out as he frowned, ceasing his chewing and casting a lazy eye to the colt, lingering, before looking back at Sunder. “I’m not an educated stallion, but doesn’t take one to see that colt's a Southerner,” Big Mac squinted an eye at the colt, and Sunder felt his expression go lower, “Mane’s too light, coat too. Name aside.”
“Ay, he is,” Sunder confirmed. He didn’t appreciate his tone.
“So mind explaining to me, why by the Five’s holy tits would anypony of my ilk would be associatin’ themselves with Southerners?” Big Macintosh said with a clear tone of ridicule, his face contorted into a smarmy smile.
“You grew up into a right twat, you know that?” Sunder fired back, the grin returning to his lips, “I remember when you were only four, suckling from your mother’s tit. You were a big colt back then too. How is she?”
Big Macintosh creased together his brows, and Sunder saw his face go neutral, stoic. “Dead. Seven years back.”
“I’m sorry,” Sunder replied, soft. Gonna miss her, he thought, the idea of her gone forever leaving a sour taste in his mouth. “She was a great mare. The world is a worser place with her gone.”
“And what’d you know ‘bout her? You could be feeding me a croc’a’shit for all I know,” Big Mac spat, and Sunder cringed for his colt. I hope he doesn’t get curious about that, too young for cursing.
Looking to his colt, more specifically his hat, and gripped the rim of the hat between his teeth; yanking it from the colt’s head and tossing it to the ground before Big Mac’s seat. “Here’s your proof.”
“What’s this?” Big Macintosh asked, kicking off his stool and landing to the ground with a heavy thud, looking to the ground with an arched brow.
Big Macintosh knelt down and picked up the piece of apparel between his teeth, sat on his haunches, and then held the hat in his hooves. “A parting gift,” Sunder answered, taking a step toward the farm pony.
Big Macintosh looked at Sunder, and despite his stoic expression, Sunder felt the eyes of the stallion drill into him; his brow rising as he flipped the hat and looked inside. “Well, I’ll be…” Big Macintosh said, and Sunder heard the earnesty in his voice. Big Macintosh looked up, his expression softer, kinder. “You must have been some kinds of special.”
“No, not special. Just a couple of strangers down on their luck,” Sunder corrected, “she was a good mare. Applebloom, what was it, the nineteenth?”
“Twentieth,” Big Mac corrected, a smile coming to his features, but Sunder still read regret on his face. “Any friend of the family is a friend to me. Sorry for not believin’ you.”
“No need,” Sunder insisted, closing the gap between them, the large stallion standing an entire neck length higher than himself. “You’re related to The Orchard. You’d be putting her memory to shame if you believed every claim to be a truth. Being honest means nothing without there being liars in the world.”
“You some kind ‘o priest?” Big Mac asked, “I swear, we get the same folks coming to our gate every now and then spouting off the same nonsense.”
“Nonsense? You don’t believe in the Gods?” Sunder looked at Big Mac with a quizzical expression. “The Orchard is your great-something-grandmother, isn’t she?”
“That’s the thing, ain’t it? Can you imagine a God on her knees, getting mounted from behind?” Big Mac sniffed, sucking on his teeth. “They out there think we’re related to a Goddess. But when I see the caricatures, the blonde mane I see in my relatives, where others see holiness, I see only a mare.”
“I can see that. Don’t imagine those folks over at the Amethyst Temple would,” Sunder said, following the stallion as he readied to open the gate. As Big Mac turned, Sunder took a quick look at his cutie mark. A plough. His mother was an apple.
“Well, if they gathered a mob, they can suck my cock and starve for all I care,” Big Macintosh said, joking, but Sunder knew it was entirely within his capacity to do so; regardless, Sunder chortled. “Come now, I’ll take you to the farm house.”
“Ay, let's,” Sunder agreed, following the stallion.
“That young colt of yours must be thirsty, being a Southerner and all,” Big Mac said, crossing the threshold of the gate whilst looking over himself, Steorra going bug eyed at being in the sight of such a giant. “Ain’t you little guy?”
“Yeah,” Steorra stuttered, shy. Sunder felt him brush close to him, and he chuckled.
“Kid’s shy around strangers,” Sunder informed, passing by the stallion who kept the gate open.
“Is that right?” Big Mac chuckled, closing the gate as Sunder and the colt passed by him.
As Sunder and Steorra passed by him, Big Mac planted the hat back on the colt’s head, who shrunk under his touch. “Here's the hat. It’s yours now anyway. I know how you guys are under Tia’s light.”
“Thank you,” Steorra replied, still meek, although Sunder saw he didn’t shy away behind him when he answered back. He curled his lip, sighing. It’s progress.
As they walked the earthen path, a rarity in the desert, that any inch of the ground remain sandless at all, Sunder felt the physical weight of the silence on his shoulders. “So,” he started, attracting the larger stallion’s attention, “how are things?”
Big Mac let his eyes lay on Sunder for a moment, before he sniffed, looking around him to the fields. “They say that back in Her day, we had apple trees planted as far as the eye could see. The orchard covered the entire west side of the world from North to South,” he monologued, looking to the workers in the fields, “of course it’s probably a load of horse apples, but still. At one time the apple orchard was beyond anything we could have now.”
Sunder couldn’t help but glance to the farmland as he said that. There must have been a hundred or so trees, each under a translucent white paper to help fend off Tia’s unrelenting harassment. However, the trees were only a tiny portion of the farmed land, with an uncountable amount of plots dedicated to something else he imagined, irrigation ditches spanning the length of the field. “So how are things now? ”
“We get by,” Big Mac replied with a shrug. “One hundred and forty trees. Many of the fields that once held apple trees have been replaced with wheat, lemons, and the like.”
“Doesn’t sound bad,” Sunder stated.
“Because it ain’t,” Big Mac replied frankly, a small smile on his lips. “Grandma told us, as foals, how much our family, the world even, struggled at one point. Struggled for food, struggled for water, struggled to survive. At first, a great fire consumed our fields, the smoke blackened the sky. Then a great storm wracked the whole world, uprooting our trees and burying our crops.”
“You always take this long to answer questions?” Sunder quipped.
Big Macintosh chuckled, shaking his head. “What’s on my flank, Sunder?”
“A plough.”
“Eeyup. A big one. Times have changed a lot since we struggled. We carry the name still, we even carry their names, me included. But we’re apple farmers no longer. So to be candid… not so hopeless.” He replied, and he looked at Sunder, curling his lip. “We’re feedin’ half the city, the other half feeds itself. All because she so long ago chose not to give up. I guess, in a sort of way, them kooks at the purple temple are right…”
Sunder grumbled in reply, nodding. He looked out to the fields. He saw dozens of ponies in wide brimmed hats, slaving away in their toil under the ever harsh gaze of Tia, and Sunder felt justified in his respect for this family.
It wasn’t too long until the farm house came into view, but to Sunder, it was more a humble generalisation of what it really was: a castle. The center was the beginning, and like branches of a tree, it expanded over the centuries to house the growing family at the center of it all. Like the family itself, the attachments were an amalgamation of characters and personality. Angles clashed with the neighboring constructs, and as a whole, it looked a shambles. Yet like the family again, despite the hectic nature of it all, it still managed to serve its purpose. There was a charm present, no doubt about it. Attempts to renovate were visible, even from a distance, with myriad paints on splintered wood and fresh wood contrasting next to the old. No coordination, he smirked. One pony would work on something, get busy, and not come back to it. What was admirable is that they constantly did work, and if he knew anything of that family, it was that they liked it.
They passed under a wooden archway, nailed from end to end were various insignias of fruits, vegetables, and work tools; atop, bright red and distinct, an apple. Sunder recalled each belonging to what essentially amounted to a cadet branch of the Apple family, hundreds of years of marriages, colts and fillies finding that their interests extended out of the usual familial skills. It would seem the fields aren't the only thing getting ploughed…
Around the homestead dozens of foals ran amok, laughing and playing their games. He looked to his colt, and saw his eyes slightly widen. First time he’s seen ponies his own age in weeks. “You can play in a bit, Steor.”
“What if they make fun of me, for bein’ a Southerner?” Steorra asked, sounding concerned.
“Boy, at your age being an outsider will make you the most interesting thing they’ve seen in their entire lives,” Sunder said. “They’ll probably want you to like them, just to hear your stories of the dark and mysterious South. ”
Steorra laughed at Sunder’s funny voice. “Okay, father.”
“We need to get something in your belly first,” said Sunder.
“Yeah!” Steorra concurred, licking his lips.
“I’ll get Crescent Sickle to fix you up a glass of apple juice. Even got some ice to put in that drink. Got to admit, being a descendant of a Goddess has its perks,” there was a slight smugness in his voice, and Sunder smirked.
The trio made their way over the tall wide doors of the farm house. They’re never closed. They’re always running about up here. A rowdy group of stallions passed by them as they entered through the doors, momentarily pausing to acknowledge Big Macintosh as he passed by them. The farm house’s ceiling was so tall that rafters appeared to disappear into a void, the columns taller than trees. The windows were slits high in the walls, leaving the interior pleasantly dim, but not so as to leave the eyes straining to see. Despite having the bearings of a great drinking hall of sorts, the inside just looked like a great expansive living room. Areas were cordoned off for couches, tables and chairs, even the odd foal’s cot was placed haphazardly around the room. There was definitely the ambience of family and care in the room, added to only by the fact foals and their mothers were together in groups in random corners of the room. In the center, there was a large water basin, filled to the brim with coals; the fire strangely absent.
“Sickle!” Big Mac called out, his voice orotund and loud, being carried far in the room.
From the other side of the hall, peeking from behind a column, a lime green mare with a peach coloured mane looked at Big Macintosh with elation. “Love!” Exclaimed Crescent, her voice carried pleasantly in the air, and reeked of kindness. The mare cantered from her position to meet the three, her expression mellow, and Sunder read her as saccharine. “Who’re these strangers?”
Before he could answer her question, the mare went onto the tips of her hooves to plant a peck on the stallion’s lips, who then grinned down at her with a tinge of pink on his cheeks. “Friends, and our guests. Colt here is parched. Mind fetching him somethin’ to drink? Maybe a bite ta eat too.”
“Well ain’t you just the cutest little thing!” Crescent cooed, leaning down eye level and pressing a hoof to the colt’s cheek. “And just what is your name lil’ one?”
The colt seized up, and Sunder smirked. “Steorra,” he answered, glancing to the mare, “he’s shy.”
“Well I know what’ll loosen you right up,” Crescent emphasised with pokes to the colt’s chest, and she smiled wide. “In the pantry, we have a jar of sugared plums for special occasions. I’d say good friends visiting counts, wouldn’t you?”
“Y-yeah,” the colt replied, voice weak, but a smile graced his lips.
“Well, come with me, little guy, and I’ll take you to the pantry,” she turned around, taking a few steps away, before looking over shoulder. “Well, are you comin’?”
Steorra remained by Sunder’s side, looking up at his father with knitted brows. “Go on, lad,” Sunder nodded toward the green mare, smirking at the colt’s hesitance. “You don’t need to worry about anything. You’ll be safe with her. Go on.”
“Just come with me, sugarcube,” Sickle cajoled. Steorra’s steps were stunted, reluctantly following her as she walked away.
After the pair of them walked out of view, Big Macintosh turned to Sunder, wearing the eyes of a stallion expecting something of him. “Good kid.”
“Ay,” Sunder agreed, watching as his colt left through doors at the far side of the hall.
“So what brought ya here in the first place? Ponies just don’t make the journey North jus’ for a friendly visit,” Big Macintosh stated bluntly, the space between his brows creased. “Can’t imagine what you’d want though.”
“We can have this conversation sitting,” Sunder said matter-of-factly. “We needn’t be standing when talking of these affairs.”
“Alright,” Big Mac agreed, lightly nodding. “Why? How long do ya’ expect to have my attention?”
“For as long as I need it,” Sunder was honest, frankness in his tone. “What I aim to do is impossible without your help.”
“Ah see…” Big Macintosh shifted where he stood, nodding in understanding. “Alright, we can talk over there.”
Big Mac had started to walk off mid-conversation, and Sunder followed. It was a nondescript sitting area, the couch was simply shoved against the room’s corner, with a simple brown carpet on the floor in front, a faded green stain standing out in the center.
“I want to just thank you beforehoof for hearing me out,” Sunder said, sitting on the seat like he would the ground.
“You’re jus’ lucky Ah am. Another stallion walks into a stallion’s home and asks for more than a guest and friend is entitled… that’s just bad manners,” Big Mac chastised, looking at Sunder sideways. “Although I suppose I’m curious more than anything.”
“‘Bout what?”
“What’s a Northern stallion doing with a Southerner’s colt?” Big Mac craned his neck to look straight at the stallion.
“He’s my son,” Sunder retorted, his teeth grit.
“So you mind telling me that story?” asked Big Mac.
“It’s not relevant,” Sunder stated directly, shaking his head.
“You want something from me, and you’re not willin’ to tell me something I want to know? Now tell me why the heck I’d just give you what you want,” said the farmer, his look that of condescension. “Your name wasn’t the only one written into that hat. It was joined with another. A Southerner.”
“Ay, you’re right about that. But that remains with me, and me alone,” he fired back sternly, his expression matching.
“You’re the shittest story teller I ever heard,” Big Mac commented, sitting back smirking.
“Same to you and your respect for my private affairs.
Big Mac tutted, his jaw tight. “So you just expect me to give you what you want?”
“Ay, because it isn’t much.”
“And what would that be?” Big Mac looked at him sideways, looking exasperated.
“A way North.”
“You could just walk,” Big Mac quipped, a half smile on his lips.
“Ay, but you know that those who try to cross the great desert die more often than not. No. You know what I seek,” Sunder leered at the hulking stallion with furrowed brows.
Big Macintosh sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, throwing down his hooves. “Could you at least tell me one thing?”
“What?”
“Why you doin’ this? Ponies don’t just travel North ‘cause they feel like it. There’s a reason, an’ Ah want to know.”
Sunder grumbled, his expression sour. “You saw what was on Steor’s head. That bump.”
“I didn’t want to say anythin’...” Big Mac shifted awkwardly in his seat, eyes averted.
“You know it. I know it. He’s a unicorn.”
Big Mac scoffed, “A unicorn hasn’t been in Ponyville for hundreds of years. There’ve been plenty of frauds and liars though.”
Sunder sighed. “Steorra’s a unicorn, Mac. And I’m taking him up far North. Up there, to a city.”
“Vanhoover?”
“Further, to the top of the world. Where they say snow remains still, where magic makes it cling to ground, unmelting.”
“That’s a myth,” Big Mac scoffed, shaking his head. “A story they tell to foals to get them to sleep. What? You’re going to see the dragon and his princess too?”
“Ay, because she told me it was real. Swore it. On her deathbed, right to me, choking on her own tongue. She swore to me, and made the last thing she heard from me a promise.”
“You’re chasing a story, Sunder,” Mac warned. “Unicorns, princesses, magic, dragons. All legends and fairytales,” Big Mac listed off the machinations with a sneer, condescension clear in his voice.
“Then why do you care!?” spat Sunder.
“Because you’re going to kill yourself and that colt by going that far North. Just because of a pipedream and the words of a dying mare,” he was direct, jutting out his jaw.
“And hope, dammit!” Sunder exploded, huffing. “Hope. If we can save our crops from the frost, heal our sick, and stop barely surviving every passing year… it’s worth it just to try.”
Big Macintosh released a sparse chuckle, looking away with a shake of his head. “You’re risking not just your life, Sunder. That colt o’ yours… How did the ponies back where you came from react to this?”
“They were none too pleased,” Sunder answered honestly, “but I had to do this. For both his sake, and because I don’t break my oaths.”
“Then swear to me, right here, right now, that no harm will come to that colt,” Big Macintosh urged. “I will give you a way North, but I won’t have the blood of a child on mah hooves, Sunder.”
Sunder bore in Big Macintosh with fixed eyes. A steadfast and certainty in his visage, as well as the natural love a father had for his offspring. He lingered in his stare and exhaled, nodding his head. “I promise.” I promise you Esther.
Snow And Sand: A World In Two Shrouds
Chapter II - Crescent Sickle
Rumor of a Southerner on the farm had very quickly turned into fact. When the colt had played with the other foals, too young to even know prejudice, Crescent wasn’t the only mare to keep a close eye on him. The coat was too white to be Northern, and he didn’t wear his ego on his sleeve like a Vanhooven. Crescent, of course, read the colt’s character the instant she saw him cower behind his father. She found his shyness endearing, and after she showered him with sweets and juice, the colt warmed up to her. The young colt reminded her of Decid Zest, the way he was always asking questions, only getting a respite when he went off to play with the other colts. Cunts she thought when the other mothers began to sneer at the colt. ‘That hole-dweller’, ‘the dog-fucker’, and other slurs. She hated the Pears, who she regarded as nothing more than second-rate at best , clinging to their self-prescribed prestige through a suspected shared lineage with The Orchard. Although it was Crescent that Big Mac fell in love with, not any of them; much to her glee, and to their conniptions. While she didn’t have many, the few enemies she did have she almost treasured. It was an odd habit she couldn’t just willingly abandon, the passive aggressive exchanges she had brought a little more spruce to her day to day.
A few hours of playing and then the colt’s movements became sluggish; yawns frequently coming from his mouth. “C’mon little one,” she said, “I’ll find ya someplace to lay your head down some.” She found that her voice went softer around the colt. Not a conscious decision, but something she found she was doing regardless. “They say this place has been ‘round for a thousand years you know. The world was a different place back then when supposedly North and South took turns being hot and cold every day. My granny told me that her granny’s granny once said that the marble ruins at the mountain’s base were apparently a castle once. When I was a little filly, I always fantasised about bein’ a princess in that castle that once was.“ Talking kept the colt quiet and smiling. She liked his smile. “I was told a lot of stories like this when I was your age too. Any stories from your part of the world, sugarcube?”
Steorra scrunched his face to one side, clear the cogs in his head spun. “Only those the old Crone told me and the others,” he said, “but I think they were supposed to scare us.”
“Were you scared?” she asked playfully, brow arched and smiling.
“No!” Steorre said, pouting. She recognised that expression. Almost defiant to himself, like a foal who insists they’re ‘not tired’ with bags beneath their eyes. “I don’t get scared by stories.”
“Alright, alright, I believe ya,” she replied, smiling. “Ah’m still curious though. Just what did she tell ya?”
“Umm,” he seemed to ponder, glancing to the floor with pursed lips. “Once she said that if you wander too far East, that you’d get taken by the Shapeshifter Queen.”
“Shapeshifter Queen?”
“Yeah! Her eyes are green and she doesn’t have a coat; she’s made of black clay and can mold herself into looking like anypony!” he gushed, stuttering over himself in his excitement. Can’t say he doesn’t have enthusiasm.
“Sounds magical. What’s so scary about that?” she smirked, turning a corridor.
“She has the teeth of hounds, long and sharp; then suck the life out of little foals!” his voice went low, but Crescent still heard the excitement in his voice. Colt’s a natural born storyteller . “Oh, and father told me about birds that walk on fours; like us!”
Crescent stopped before a door; no light came from it. “Many creatures in the South arn’t there? Up here we’re all jus’ ponies. No wings or magic,” she said, hoof pressing on the door.
“Maybe you could come visit one day to see them? We have plenty of room,” the colt looked up at her beside the door with a large smile and equally as large eyes. Adorable.
“Maybe I might. Maybe I might,” she nodded slowly, hopefully, her half-hearted agreement would keep the colt jovial. “But we need to lay your head down and get you some shut eye.”
The door popped open with a firm push, and looking in was like looking into a room of silhouettes. The room was sparsely decorated, with only the necessities of a bedroom. Crescent's gaze went to the bed, and she saw the greenish hue of limes sewn into a lighter green quilt. She looked down and saw Steorra’s eyes wandering, piercing the dark with seemingly no effort.Figures , she thought, colt’s probably used to the dark.
“Am I sleeping here?” Steorra asked.
“Sure are,” she confirmed with a small grin, leading him inside. “If you’re wonderin’ why it’s dark, there ain’t many places where somepony can just lay there head down without Tia shinin’ in your eye. So while we have our windows, we prefer ‘em closed.”
The colt didn’t seem to be listening to her, his eyes looking curiously around the sparse room. She smiled, even when in the room equivalent of a small box, his curiosity was still blistering. “You’ll probably wanna sleep on the sheets, rather than under them, right?”
Steorra looked at her with pursed lips, joining her by the bed. “Is it always this hot?”
“Afraid so, lil’ guy,” she gave him a comforting half smile. “But you’re a big colt. I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”
Crescent Sickle watched the colt climb onto the bed, immediately falling onto his side and grinding his head into the pillow. She smirked. “Alright, sugarcube. You get some rest now, you got a big da-”
“Wait,” Steorra interrupted, halting Crescent in her steps. “Can you stay. U-until I fall asleep?”
Crescent turned to face the colt, who propped himself up on the bed. Crescent’s shadow covered him.“You’re not scared, are you?” she asked with furrowed brows and a smile.
“N-no, I’m just, uh…” Steorra stuttered, flustered.
“It’s okay, I was jus’ playin’ lil guy,” she giggled, re-entering the room. “I understand. Far away from home, being in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by strangers. Sometimes that can be scarier than any of your Southern monsters.”
Crescent joined the colt, sitting by the side of his bed, her most comforting smile on her face. The colt pressed his head into the pillow and looked at the mare before he clamped his eyes shut. Crescent sat unmoving beside the best, watching him quaintly as he lay there. In After a few minutes, however, the colt cracked open his eyes, huffing.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked, looking at the colt with concern.
“No,” he replied, his voice quiet. He shifted in his spot slightly, snuggling closer to the edge of the bed.“C-could… could you tell me a story? Father sometimes tells me stories.”
She giggled, instinctively bringing one of her hooves up to the bed, a comforting gesture. “Sure thing, sugarcube,” she cooed, shuffling closer so that her chest pressed into the side rail of the bed. “I do hafta be truthful. Ah’ve never been much good at tellin’ stories.”
“Y-you don’t have to tell stories,” he started, looking up at her with those large eyes of his. “Just talk.”
She smiled. “Alright. About what?”
“I don’t know,” he started, his lips pursing and eyes wandering. “I wanna hear more about the North. Like those ruins.”
“Really? You wanna hear me talk about some old ruins?”
“I like knowing stuff,” he murmured.
“Ain’t that right?” she smirked, and she found herself admiring the colt’s curious mind. “I s’pose I know a few things that grannie told me as a filly.”
“I’d like that,” he replied grinning, her words seem to bring the colt back to life, his ear flickered at her eager to listen.
Crescent liked his smile. “Ya know those ruins were once a castle. But granny told me that the castle belonged to a princess, but not just any princess, the princess.”
“The Princess?” Steorra asked, brows furrowed, confused.
“The one they talk about in the stories. But granny told me she wasn’t just in stories, that she was real, and she lived right on that mountainside once upon a time,” she explained, trying to imbue her voice with gusto.
“I’ve never heard of a princess before,” Steorra said.
“You’ve never heard of The Princess? Not even about her dragon?”
“No,” he replied, although he inched closer to her, his smile subtle but there.
“Well, The Princess was said to be very powerful. She ruled the whole world, and with her, she had a gigantic dragon. His wings were so big, they covered entire cities in their shadow. She had wings too, and flew in the sky with him,” Crescent jawed, emphasising certain words to make the colt more impressed.
“Was she a bird?”
“No,” she giggled, “she was a pony, like you or me, but she had wings.”
“I’ve never seen a pony with wings before,” he commented.
“Nopony has,” she said.
“She sounds amazing,” he said, awe visible in his features.
“She was,” she concurred, her features softening. “She was said to be kind, generous, and displayed the virtues of The Five strongly. She was beautiful, strong, and all who served her loved her.”
“Where is she now?”
“Nopony knows,” she stated simply. “They say that after her castle fell from the mountain, she simply vanished, never to be seen again. Depending on who's tellin’ the story, they say she headed North with her dragon, others tell it that she went West to where the world ends.”
“Why did she leave?” he asked, and Crescent saw his brows knit.
“To save the world,” she replied, giving him a half smile. “The world was ruined with storms they say. Sand scattered everywhere by mighty winds, snow falling where there was no cold. Soon there were no more dragons, unicorns and pegasi disappeared, and all that was special and magical faded from the world.”
“How long has she been gone?” he asked, and to Crescent, it looked as though the entirety of his hope hinged on her answer.
“Not long,” she lied, her hoof stroking his cheek. “The stories of good ponies can only have happy endings, sugarcube.”
“That’s good,” Steorra said, the smile returning to his face. “I hope I can see her some day.”
“I’m sure you will, sugarcube,” she said softly, her hoof brushing behind his mane. “I’m sure you will.”
Steorra didn’t say anything else, his hooves pulling into himself as he closed his eyes. Crescent watched him sleep, a little bundle of innocence. She kept a hoof on him, feeling the warm heat of the cold-born colt. She knew she should’ve pulled back, but she couldn’t pull away. It was a lamentable longing she felt in her chest, the hollowness was unfillable, she knew that. After several moments, when the colt’s chest rose and fell calmly; obviously in the throes of sleep, she reluctantly tore her hoof away from him.
She walked to the door with heavy hooves, her lips pursed in a frown and sniffling. “Goodnight,” she whispered, glancing to the colt and then the lime embroidered quilt. She would miss them both.
Author's Note
A smaller aside chapter, mainly for lore purposes. Originally going to just be the next day. I originally planned for Crescent Sickle to be Big Macintosh's daughter. It has no relevancy overall to the story, but I just wanted so share a few miscellaneous details like this. If you have any questions about anything ask below. I apologize for lack of editing this chapter. It was short, and not too essential to the story. Next chapter coming soon.
Snow And Sand: A World In Two Shrouds
They were within a horde, hundreds of voices gave a loud hum to the crowds, and Steorra couldn’t pick out what a single one was saying. Big Macintosh parted the waves of ponies with his mere presence, whether it was due to acclaim or just sheer size, Steorra couldn’t tell. He felt important by proxy, and this left him grinning with egoism. He liked feeling important, he realised. Even if he was only loosely associated with somepony more so than him.
“Only way ponies are allowed on the locomote are to be rich, important, or by promising favours to ponies who’ll definitely cash in,” Big Macintosh explained, his expression in a grimace.
Steorra looked to his father, who glanced down at him with a half-smile before he turned to look at the brown stallion he walked beside. “Thanks again for this, Big Mac. You’re doin’ me and my colt a gre-”
“Yeah, yeah,” Big Mac interrupted, rolling his eyes. “You’re jus’ lucky those Vanhoovan are as empty on food as they are full o’ themselves. Far as the driver’s concerned, he’s carrying cargo first, and you second. As soon as it goes, you do too. He won’t take ya’ll any more North than Vanhoover.”
“Ay. We’ll make do,” Sunder replied, a nod accompanying his words.
“What’s Vanhoover?” Steorra asked his father, brow arched. He recalled it being mentioned once by one of the older ponies in passing whilst still at the farm.
“It’s a city far North, next to a massive stretch of desert called the salt plains,” his father answered, looking down sideways at the colt. “One of the only places left where it’s ruler called itself ‘king’ or ‘queen’.”
“Calls herself ‘the last unicorn’, too.” Big Mac chimed in, “completely cuckoo if you ask me. ‘Unicorn queen of the Salt Plains and Oreous Mountains.’”
“Is she really a unicorn?” Steorra asked, excited.
“I’d doubt that, but from what I hear, I don’t think she can even be considered a pony anymore. I hear she’s more an abomination,” Big Mac spoke, frowning. “If it were up ta me, we’d never send shipments up there anymore. But they gotta eat and drink, and we gotta get our coal and metal.”
Steorra found his further questions had dissipated in his thoughts, his attention suddenly snatched to something else entirely. He saw only saw the flicker of it between the necks of two passing stallions, but already it was unlike anything he had ever seen before. There was a trickle of white smoke from somewhere ahead, and he heard a sound, not unlike his father huffing out his nose. Steorra was anxious, pacing on his hooves as father and Big Mac sauntered ahead at their regular pace. They finally walked from the parted herd and out into the open, a considerable gap between them and what way ahead; leaving Steorra’s mouth agape as he stared ahead with abject fascination. To the front there was a large black metal beast of a machine, white smoke being exhaled from the top from a large black maw of a hole. He snapped to what was attached to it, connected behind by thick pieces of interconnected iron. Boxes, at least twenty. The ones closer to the front were pretty, with ponies inside clad in equally as pretty apparel, exuding wealth and exclusivity. However, as Big Mac began to lead them down the length of the locomotive, toward the rear end there was a jarring change in quality. The boxes toward the end were less sightly to the colt’s eyes. Splintered red hued wood, with ponies looking noticeably grumbled helping heft large cargo crates into the carts, heaving as they did so. Boxes into boxes, Steorra thought, smiling at his humorous musing.
Big Macintosh stopped at the very end car, raising his chin at one of the stallions who plodded down from the box, who then mimicked the gesture before walking off. “This here is where you’ll be stayin’ for the trip,” Big Mac informed, nodding toward the open door. “Best I could getcha.”
“Ride’s gonna be rough,” Sunder remarked, looking into the open door.
“Eeyup. Should only be half a day’s ride, so won’t be too sore on your flanks,” Big Mac grinned as Sunder climbed in, Steorra struggled to reach; Big Mac aided him up.
Steorra, often as he did, wandered around his new surrounding with his eyes. It wasn’t pleasant to the eye, and despite being exposed to the open air, the air somehow managed to be thick with dust. The box was stacked with at least a dozen crates twice his size, and the scent of their contents was carried on the air.
“Thanks again for this, Big Mac,” Sunder again showed his gratitude, and Steorra wondered why he kept doing so.
Big Mac gave a slight smile, before looking to the colt, nodding. “Stay safe.”
“He will be,” Sunder replied, and Steorra saw his legs stiffen.
Big Mac’s eyes lingered on Sunder for a while, not another utterance coming from out his mouth until he suddenly just took off; leaving Steorra confused on the unsubtle hostility he read. He wasn’t very perceptive on such social nuances, but Big Mac looked like he was trying to hold back a scowl.
It wasn’t too long after Big Macintosh’s departure that a shrill whistle sounded from the other side of the locomotive, prompting the colt to jump in surprise at the sudden noise. The chugging of the train’s engine was next to follow, and the colt nearly fell over as the cart jolted, being dragged behind the engine as it began to gain its momentum. The two settled beside the door to the adjoining car, Sunder himself acting as a pillow to the colt, whose eyes remained glued to the scenery as it passed by.
A couple of hours into the ride and the colt’s eyes began to droop, watching the passing dunes with half-hearted care as he readied to sleep. However, a sound emerged from the adjacent side of the box, a yawn and the popping of bones into their sockets. The smacking of lips was loud, and definitely on purpose. Steorra looked to Sunder, and him slumbering, the old stallion was always quick to be caught by sleep. Steorra chewed his lower lip, glancing to the dozing expression of his father, and ahead to the source of the noise.
Steeling himself, he rose to his hooves and began to take tentative steps forward. His ears flickered, trying to pick up any more noises from the other side, hearing only the rattling of the car as it sped along the track. He made his steps light, trying not to make a noise of his own as he neared the source. There was a spot at the very back that was empty of a crate, and coming out from it Steorra saw the hem of a dull yellow blanket.
He pressed his side to the apple stamped crate, and edged forward, prepping an eye to peek behind the corner.
“Hello!” exclaimed a voice from behind him, prompting to the colt to yelp himself into the air and turn to the face the stranger, hooves shaking.
“H-how did- but you- that doesn’t make any sense!” Steorra gushed, backing away from the brown coated stallion.
The stallion didn’t take another step, instead of seating himself in the spot he suddenly appeared. With his back to the light, the colt couldn’t make out much of the features of his face, only the sickly yellow jaundice of his eyes; his irises so stricken with cataphracts they appeared a solid red. The stallion chuckled, grinning a crooked smile at the colt. “And where is the fun in that?”
“W-what?” Steorra stuttered, pressing his back against the wall of the car.
“Making sense...”
Author's Note
Sorry for the delay and quality of this chapter. I had several things come up that prevented me from writing. As a result, I believe the quality of this chapter is a tad lower than the last few, and might also be a tad exposition-y. For that, I apologise. However, I promise the next chapter will not suffer the same fate. I also needed to kind of show I wasn't dead and that I was still writing. Also, apologies for the short chapter. The silver lining to this is that I finally figured out my number one cure for writer's block: Write something else and then come back to it later.
Snow And Sand: A World In Two Shrouds
Sunder stirred awake, roused by a familiar and often unheard sound: Steorra laughing. He felt groggy, blinking and wiping away the gunk in his eyes, then propped himself up; his old joints cracking. He saw his son absent from his side, and jerked his head forward, again the notes of Steorra’s giggle entered into his ear. There wasn’t an immediate and outright alarm, but he rose to his hooves with a caution, plodding towards his son. He saw near the back the tell tale flickering of candlelight in the dim half of the car, two shadows cast onto the back wall; one large and one small.
“It’s true! I knew The Five, but back then they were six, some ponies would argue seven but she fled down South if I recall…” Sunder heard a mirthful voice speak, and there was something… off , about the cadence of the stallion’s voice that he couldn’t place.
“But somepony told me The Five were alive over a thousand years ago,” he heard Steorra’s voice squeak, almost out of breath from laughing so much. “Nopony could be thousand years old.”
“Of course they can! With a choice and healthy diet, as well as plenty of exercises, anything is possible,” he heard the stallion retort, Steorra laughing at his lively candour.
Sunder looked around the last crate and raised a brow. Steorra sat across from an elderly looking stallion, his beige coat and frayed grey mane making him look disconcerting; the stallion lacked a full ear, the other ear gnarled and a sickly purplish blue, empty of blood. He looked rather flamboyant, with a moustache and long pronged goatee bleached white. He’s a character, thought Sunder, bemused.
“Hello,” the stallion greeted, snapping his eyes to Sunder. If he was a young colt, he might have been startled by the quickness of the motion. “You’re the father, I presume?”
“Ay,” his voice lacked tone, glancing to the colt before looking at the stallion with an arched brow. “You are?”
“I’m Nopony,” he answered, lowering his head to the floor in an exaggerated bow, head pressing into the yellow cloth he was sat on. “And you are…?”
“Sunder,” he replied, curt. He looked to his son, the colt’s smile helped put him slightly at ease concerning the choice of company .
“Nice to you meet you, Sunder. I was just having the most excellent of conversations with your colt,” he grinned, showing all of his unblemished teeth. “He makes for interesting talking.”
“He was telling me all about The Five,” Steorra added. “He knows a lot.”
“You a story teller?” Sunder asked, sitting on his flank.
“Something like that…” his smile seemed etched. “In truth, I just like speaking. It brings me to life you could say. Not much left for me to do these days except talk, and talk, and talk…”
“Is that right?” Sunder found his flippancy off putting, but not too vexing. “But who are you?”
“I’ve already told you. Nopony.” His blink was deliberate, pseudo innocence, expression full of snark.
“Fine, don’t tell me your name. But what are you, why are you here, on this train?” He was suspicious of the stallion. Southerners were too uptight to be this whimsical, and Northerners were too sluggish all the time to display his energy. He wasn’t right.
“I’m just a very old stallion. As for why I’m here…” His laugh was music. “I was waiting for something interesting to happen. Not every day you get to talk with both a Southerner and a unicorn!”
His stare bore into the gleefully grinning stallion, his jaw clenched. “What.”
“Oh, now, now. You didn’t honestly expect that trinket to keep it hidden from someone as perceptive as I did you?”
“I don’t even know who you are,” Sunder snapped, scowling.
“Precisely. I’m just Nopon-”
“Stop,” he interrupted, exasperated.
“Will do!” Nopony complied with a smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone. Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”
Sunder furrowed his brows, seeing his son smile at the stallion’s actions. “Is that supposed to be your word?”
“Why yes,” he chortled, a hoof on his eye. “I’ll have you know that every friend I ever had confided all their secrets with yours truly.”
“I’m not your friend,” Sunder shot.
“You sound just like them too! Uncanny really… “ Nopony laughed, sighing. There was a pause in the back and forth, the older stallion looking down at the yellow hued blanket, his hoof brushing against a pink shaped embroidered into the quilt. “Just like them… but seeing as I answered your question, you could offer me the same courtesy. Why are you here?”
“I don’t have to you tell anything,” Sunder stated calmly, shaking his head. He glanced to his son, seeing a crease between his brows. He sighed. “I’m heading North with my boy. That’s all I’m telling you.”
“Ooh, vague. Mysterious. I like it. Has all the makings of a good story. Southerners journeying North, into a land scorched by Celes.” He hung on his sentence, smiling coyly at the stallion.
“Celes?” Steorra leaned forward slightly, tilting his head.
“Celes? Oh, right! Silly me, it’s ‘Tia’, isn’t it? I always forget which half you lot picked. And I thought I was arbitrary,” Nopony shook his head, smiling with what Sunder read as condescension. “What’s it your Goddess is called? Oh, that’s right, she doesn’t have a name, does she? Just use an omnipresent She for everything. That’s just laziness in my opinion.”
“Her name was lost,” Steorra said, frowning. “She-Born-Of-Starlight is what the old crone calls her. They say she was made of pure starlight.”
“Then why not just call her ‘Starlight’?” Nopony mused, smiling crooked. “The glimmering stars is pretty, don’t you think? Ooh, ooh, I know! Starlight Glimmer! Doesn’t that sound delightful?”
Sunder rolled his eyes, tutting. “Be quiet. You sound like a foal.”
“Well aren’t you the epitome of grizzled and grumpy. Any other tropes you want to display as well? Go on, regale me with your tragic back story that has made rough on the outside, but bittersweet enough to leave you with a heart of gold.” His following laugh was a symphony. “Although I’m sure you’re just anxious to get back home, return to the cold. I suspect you’ll be back in the cold sooner than you think. Both of you, although one more than the other I’m afraid.”
Sunder sensed within the stallion a somberness, despite the smile he wore. “What do yo-”
“Shush!” Nopony interrupted, his chin raising up, his one good twitched. “Ah. My part in this tale has come to an end. If it is any consolation, you were extremely interesting.”
“What are you talking about?” Sunder snapped, rising to his hooves, ready for confrontation. The silence between them hung, the smile for the first time faded from the antique of a stallion, and then Sunder heard it. Sunder ran to the open door of the car, his colt’s words were muted, his focus placed elsewhere. They were in the shadow of a mountain, the last resonance of a horn dying in the air, and his eyes were sent skyward; death fell from the sky like vertical rain. “Steorra! With me. Now!”
“Wh-” Steorra was interrupted by a loud heavy thud atop the roof of the car, and he saw the colt’s face fill with fear.
“Go on, my little pony. Join your dad,” Nopony encouraged, rising shakily to his hooves. “You don’t want to end your story prematurely.”
The colt nodded and jogged over to Sunder who headed toward the door, a series of thumps coming from overhead. “Come with me, colt. Stay clo-”
Suddenly a figure swung down through the open door, a glittering dagger between his teeth, a steel pointed pommel. He looked toward Sunder and Steorra, one eye looking like a pail of milk, the other large and amber. The bandit pony took a step toward the father and son, grinning around the weapon, releasing a deep growl of a chuckle as he flared his wings. Sunder braced, spreading out his forehooves, shielding his son and baring his teeth.
“You picked a bad day to ride-” The stallion heaved as Nopony rammed shoulder first into him, prompting him to drop the blade and sending him vaulting from the car, colliding against the sun soaked stone; the train moving so fast as to rapidly cause him disappear from view in a splatter of red.
Nopony looked out the car, smiling presumably toward his victim. “And you my friend picked a bad day to- bah, screw it. The moment has passed.” Sunder looked at the elderly stallion with raised brows, Nopony’s roguish smile was oddly apt. “Well, what are you waiting for? Go, go! Your stop isn’t here.”
“Right,” Sunder agreed, Steorra following as he closed the gap between him and the door. He glanced over his shoulder, throwing a nod to the elderly stallion as more bangs thundered overhead. “Good luck.”
“You keep your luck. You’re going to need as much of it as you can carry,” he retorted, returning Sunder’s nod with his own. The thunderous thumping continued overhead, and he knew he could no longer wait.
“Steorra, with me,” he blurted, turning to open the door to the adjoining car, hastily slamming it open to jump to the adjoining car; pivoting to aid his son across, slamming closed the door as a stallion jumped overhead, unawares of their presence.
He didn’t look behind him as he ran, making sure only to keep his pace fast and his son by his side. As he ran through the freight cars, crowbars were leveraged into the doors, and he and Steorra vaulted out to the adjoining car before they were intercepted. Car after car they came too close to being caught, and at a point he stopped slamming the doors behind, keeping his eyes straight ahead; steadfast in escaping.
“Come on!” he yelled at the colt, beckoning him to keep up with his hoof.
“What are they?” Steorra asked as he panted, Sunder continued running once there was a half a foot between them.
“Dangerous,” Sunder replied. Fifth car , he counted. The next would be the passenger car. He needed to get to the front. “Keep close, boy!”
They erupted into a copse of wide eyed, panicked stares.
“What’s going on?”
“Is something wrong?”
“Should we stop the train?”
He ignored the chattering of the passengers, knowing of the danger that wasn’t long behind him. He kept his eyes straight ahead, nudging the colt to keep him going at a fast pace. A part of his conscious alerted him to what he was doing, but he didn’t care. All that mattered was getting Steorra to safety. He heard a lone scream come from the back of the car, followed quickly by more, and then less; he didn’t want to look back.
“Don’t look,” he commanded of his son, the other passengers by the front began to flee, and then he followed with a gallop; hoisting Steorra as he ran.
“My hat,” Steorra cried.
“Forget it!” he growled, pushing through the crowd that had already accumulated at the door of the connecting cars. He didn’t want to look back. “Get out of the way!”
He heard dying behind him. Rich mares and stallions killed for the jewels embroidered to their clothing, and the tiaras worn on their heads. Their vanity was the scent that attracted to them their murderer, and they paid for their untimely death with their bracelets and gold. Undoubtedly the shipments of food were an attractive treasure to the sky dwellers, but the valuables scavenged off the passengers made a decent tribute to traders of the East, and they would pry every emerald and sapphire for a taste of luxury. Sunder had run ins with them, far to the East, in the ruins of the tall city; viciousness and hatred of their kin who walked only upon earth were a prominent trait.
Car after car the tide of the wealthy washed up the train, trying to escape the assailants. Either due to the tripping, or being last to exit the car, the stream began to dwindle until the gathered were only a trickle. They left behind them a trail of corpses, Sunder knew that, but he forced his eyes forward. Only Steorra mattered.
At the penultimate car, there was left only a few of them left, Sunder ran at the front. He couldn’t afford to be caught. As he reached the door, he paused, taking a moment to clench his teeth and sigh. He leant down and nudged the colt of his shoulder. “Go.”
“W-what about you?” Steorra asked, and Sunder heard the worry.
“Just go. Go and don’t look back. I’ll be right behind you,” he reassured, unknown even to himself if he was lying. He saw tears well up in the young colt’s eyes, and he steeled. “Go. Now!”
Steorra whimpered, but complied, turning on his hooves and running ahead; his steps slightly sluggish, glancing over his shoulder before Sunder slammed shut the door. He pressed his forehead against the wood, clenching his eyes closed before parting them with a huff, turning to face the doom that he alone stood against.
The pegasi stampeded into the car, blood thick on most of their coats, some displayed their avarice already; wearing upon their bodies their freshly plundered loot. Leading them was a lithe mare, her coat a solid shade of mint, her mane a garish mess of streaks; six different colours. Sunder recognised the significance. Rainbow . A mighty warrior from their kine, each streak was indicative of a trial, and she had succeeded at all of them. In fact, he actually recognised the mare. She was a filly back then, no older than eight, but she had grown into something truly horrific.
“Sunder,” she hissed, grinning a smile that made Sunder tense. “I remember you.”
“Ay,” he nodded, breathing through his nostrils. “I remember you as well, Rain. Your father and mother were good to me and my wife.”
She smirked, glancing to the stallions at her left and right flanks. “Why don’t we catch up? Let my stallions pa-”
“No,” he barked, taking a step forward. “I won’t let you pass. None of you.”
The two stallions by her side, brutes, growled and took each a step forward, before Rain’s wings unfurled, blocking their path. “Why?” she chuckled, and it was colder than the South. “What can you do?”
He clenched his jaw. “You’ve killed enough today. Unhook the freight, take it and just go. Only a few of us left, what good is a few more bodies.”
“Look at him,” she laughed, her goons smiling from ear to ear. “Already bargaining. Not even going to put up a fight? Father told me how good you were - for an Earther anyway - and already you’re giving up?”
“You’re not going to make me angry, little filly,” he spat, a tinge of satisfaction in his gut at her scowl. “If you’re going to kill me, you can, but I’m not going to sob and take it. Have your thugs actually fought a day in their lives, or is their only combatants so far been cowering little foals and mares?”
She jutted out her jaw, and Sunder could see a small scar on her lip. She cut it whilst playing. He remembered, and a crease appeared between his brows. “You’re going to die,” she told him directly, her wings returning to her sides.
“We all are,” he replied. “Some sooner than others.”
Rain remained rooted to her spot, her band galloped past her. Eight of the pegasi bandits charged him, each wearing varying smiles and some brandishing various weapons between their teeth. Sunder rammed into the closest first, a brawny pegasus mare, his skull colliding with her jaw and sending her reeling to the floor. The next got a hit in, his hoof struck Sunder in the cheek, and another rammed into his chest; trying to push him to the ground. Sunder was thankful for the narrowness of the car, allowing only two ponies wide a berth. He was steadfast in keeping his hooves to the floor, the pegasus with his arms around his neck could barely budge him.
Sunder coiled a hoof around the furled wing of the pegasi, and yanked it, snapping the hollow bones and prompting the stallion to scream out in murderous fury. Sunder pushed back, continuously pounding his hoof into the stallion’s eye, before reaching forward and wrapping his hooves around the pegasis’ stomach; hoisting him off his hooves and tossing him to the side, his back cracking as it collided with the table booth.
Three came at him at once. One snaked along the ground, the other ran directly at him, the third vaulted toward him using his wings; knife in the mouth. He jabbed the knife wielder in the face, smashed his elbow into the second stallion and punched the last, but it failed to stop their attack. The knife wielder took point, slashing and cutting at Sunder. Sunder’s reflexes were dulled with age, and the dagger cut shallowly into his neck, leaving him seething as he leapt backwards. The pegasus grunted with triumph, but he got greedy and charged with his partners toward the amber coated stallion.
Sunder growled as he pummeled the stallion in an uppercut, cracking his teeth on the hilt of his blade, prompting him to drop it as blood poured from his mouth, broken teeth gathered in the quickly growing pool. That pegasus staggered back, but the other two went to avenge their comrade, one throwing an unfortunate punch at Sunder; which was quickly countered by the old stallion with a smashing collision with the muzzle, leaving the pegasus disfigured as he broke it. However his friend got lucky, the underside of his hoof punching so hard into his cheek that be immediately tasted copper in his mouth, and he spat the blood into the pegasi’s eye; jabbing him in the throat.
“Come on! Come on!” he taunted, stamping his hooves as a few of the pegasi cowered away, snarling. He felt feral looking at the aggressive expressions on the enemy. A few would attempt to get close but then Sunder would snap his teeth at them, causing them to recoil.
“What are doing? Kill the bastard!” Rain commanded, pacing over to the huddle of thugs.
The pegasi attempted to obey, inching forward, trying to back Sunder into the door. Sunder threw punches in an attempt to stunt their advance, but their intimidation of him gradually began to fell. Sunder knew that truth that he was already aware of began to trickle into their heads gradually. No matter the stories they heard, now, he was just a tired old stallion. They lurched forward, but not of their own volition. Sunder fell backwards, a sharp screech sounding throughout the air, the train braking to a sudden and abrupt halt.
Sunder looked down from his position on the floor to see a pile of bodies, Rain still on her hooves, all that could be heard was the sound of breathing… and then thunder.
“Fuck. Fly! Fly!” Rain commanded, pivoting on her hind hooves and galloping down the car, her wings unfurling from her sides. Sunder leant up as the rest followed suit, a few casting him a scowl before fleeing, leaving behind the corpse of their compatriot.
Sunder stewed in the silence, fatigue wracked him despite the briefness of the conflict, and he spat onto the floor; ridding his mouth of blood. He climbed to his hooves, coughing. He heard the door being opened before he even got to it, and immediately armour clad stallions flooded into the car, brushing past him to survey the damage. The guard. Adorned with silver plate, their helmets moulded with faux horns, mimicry of the unicorns of yore.
“Check the cargo,” he heard a stout voice order from the further front of the train. Sunder squeezed past the guard, Steorra his objective. “Clean this mess up. The Queen won’t tolerate it.”
The platoon became sparser the closer he got to the front, his eyes immediately drawn to the purple plumage atop the captain’s helmet. He was a large pony, not as large as Big Macintosh, but still a brawny and large stallion. Regality was clear in the stallion. His posture, the authoritative eye he kept on his soldiers, and the clear pomposity in his face. The stallion ignored him as he passed by, and Sunder was grateful for the small respite.
When he reached the locomotive, Steorra was immediately around his neck, jumping to hug his father with a sob. He embraced the colt but felt him pull away, the young pony’s eyes drawn to the long red streak on his arm. “You’re hurt.”
“No, no, I’m okay, I’m okay,” he reassured softly, smiling. “Everything’s fine now.”
He brought Steorra back close to him, patting him on the back, placing a chin on his head. He exhaled, enjoying the moment.
“A unicorn…” he heard a stallion blurt behind him, prompting him to go wide eyed, his expression grimacing. He released the colt, turning his back to his son to look at the speaker, jaw clenching. “Queen Rarity is going to want to see this.”
Author's Note
Nothing to add here, except that originally the fight scene was going to be a tad longer, and that the dialogue with Nopony was originally meant to be in the chapter before
Snow And Sand: A World In Two Shrouds
Vanhoover was the home of the great citadel that overlooked the unending salt plains, as well as the last vestiges of the old royalty. The sky around the sprawling city was thick with massive spiralling plumes of dense black smoke, flakes of shiny metal fluttered in the air down from the sky, the dense chaff a consequence of Vanhoover’s industry. As Sunder and Steorra were escorted through the city, he saw scarcely few ponies who didn’t have black soot on their coats. In the streets, malnourished colts and fillies wandered unaccompanied, and from a glance, Sunder saw their misery in their eyes. He couldn’t bring himself to look overlong at anything here. It reeked of decay, sadness, and of a society broken. The small relief any worker got was, in the end, their source of decaying lungs and early deaths. Tia was obscured by thick black smog, but whilst it served to alleviate the heat slightly, it was a constant reminder to those that lived here they would never be out of the shadow of death and labour. The guard served multiple purposes, and each one of them was essentially a petty king or queen of the post they were assigned, having free rule to dictate over every citizen in the city should they choose. Whilst they wandered the streets, Sunder noticed that the common folk would avert their eyes whenever the guard passed them, too afraid to even look their way. A system of raising morale amongst the guard, as well as making sure the working class were obedient to the whims of those in power. Sunder had been to Vanhoover once before as a young stallion, and even after nearly twenty years, it was still a stagnant cycle of sorrow he had come to lay his eyes upon so very long ago.
Adorning nearly every building was the banner of the royal family, a platinum circlet on a field of blue. It was simple and betrayed an elegance nowhere to be found in the city. The Royals have said to been around since before the doom that sundered the world when supposedly Tia and Na would swap places in the sky. Sunder believed it hokum of course, but he couldn’t deny there was a time when the present was good enough for elegance to flourish in the last city of the Royals. Now, it was nothing more than an elaborate hovel, with gutters pungent with the smell of shit, and orphaned foals left on the streets to die.
He kept Steorra close to him, silencing him with a stern stare whenever he opened his mouth to speak, glancing at one of the guards just in time to just see him look away. He knew he couldn’t have fought them off, so he acquiesced to being escorted to the palace as 'guests’. He didn’t know why they didn’t just skip all pretences graciousness and just state clearly what they were. You didn’t need shackles to be a prisoner.
From not too far off the dual marble towers of the palace came into view, tops obscured in smoke, large gaping cracks in the once smooth stone spanning the entire length of obelisk like constructs. In the middle of the two large spires, there was a fortress, an abominable construction of marble, stone, and metal. A haphazard joining of materials to keep it standing over the millennia, a large gaping maw of a gate at its front, and Sunder could see the twinkling of eyes in almost every crenel - of which there were many. Fear and paranoia were a seed in the mind of the Vanhoovans. It was how they ruled their pitiful ‘kingdom’. Sunder knew of the Western hordes that crossed the salt sea. They hadn’t been seen in centuries, but the memory of their pillaging and plundering of the land was unearthed constantly, reminding the common folk both in the North and South of the only thing standing between them and the horned beasts .
The captain, adorned in his purple plumed helmet, lead them through the portcullis-like entrance of the castle, nodding up to a couple of guard ponies atop the bastions as he walked sauntered through. Sunder read pomposity in the stallion, it seemed to encapsulate his entire being. His chin was kept at a constant tilt, and he never once glanced toward anypony that he deemed beneath him and he carried himself as if his steps were not on flattened dirt, but as if the entire world was his carpet. Sunder dealt with his type before. They tended not to live very long…
The interior erred on the side of ‘nice’, Sunder wasn’t a fantastic judge of aesthetics. The lack of windows left the entire interior dim with only the flickering flames of torches and high hanging chandeliers to light their way, dried candle wax on the stone floor. The contingent hoofsteps echoed in the wide hallways, occasionally muffled when they came to walk over a frayed carpet, which was messily strewn around covering the floor like patchwork on clothing. Sunder found that there was something to admire the dedication they kept at keeping up the illusion of a time long passed, even if he thought it was complete lunacy. “Guard your tongue,” the captain warned, keeping his eyes forward as he leads. “Do not part your lips nor teeth unless commanded to by the Queen.”
Sunder glanced at the captain a wry expression. “She expectin’ us?”
The captain, again, refused to look anywhere but forward. “Always,” he replied curtly. “And do not refer to the Queen as anything but. To do so is to disrespect the Queen, and an affront to us.”
“Duly noted.” I’m surprised his head isn’t plastered in her shit, it’s so far up her ass. Sunder looked down to Steorra and the back up. “How long the Queen have us in her company.”
“That is for the Queen to decide. It is simply my task to bring you to her,” he replied.
“You said the Queen wasn’t expecting us. How could you have been tasked with it?”
“Duty,” he replied simply, and left it at that.
Duty. Is that what he calls it? He would’ve scoffed aloud if he didn’t want to risk bringing ire upon his son, the young colt didn’t appear afraid, but Sunder knew better.
The deeper they went into the palace the more the wide halls seem to narrow on him, the further in he went the more and more he felt them tighten around his neck, choking him. He contemplated an attempt to flee with Steorra, but he knew that the attempt would leave him maimed and imprisoned or killed. Either would only delay what they had in store for his son. A small piece of him was optimistic, despite his overwhelming cynicism. Perhaps their intentions were not as malevolent as first impressions would imply, but Sunder thought this extremely unlikely.
The captain stopped before two golden doors that spanned the entire length of the wall, two less extravagantly armoured stallions flanking either side of them. He turned to face Sunder for the first time, staring at him with thinly veiled contempt, his magenta eyes looked like blood in the dim light. “Keep your posture straight, your eyes aligned with the Queen’s, and no speaking unless ordered,” he instructed with a snap. “The guard will not tolerate any disrespect toward her majesty.”
“I understood the first time,” Sunder replied drily. “Just get this over with. We have a journey to make.”
The captain smirked. “You will not want to be out of the Queen’s presence once you’ve lingered in it.”
“That so? Sounds to me we’re not going to have the choice whether to leave it or not,” he speculated, arching a brow.
“True,” he replied simply, and his curtness began to annoy Sunder.
The doors began to open, being pulled from the other side by unseen figures Sunder assumed were there. He squinted his eyes at the light as it streamed through the crack, the dichotomy of brightness between the hall and what came through the door caught him off guard. Walking in, the sheer scale of the room looked as though it would collapse in on itself at any given moment; the distance from the entrance to the adjacent side would leave a more unfit pony winded. Monolithic pillars were erected to hold its foundation, with a gigantic crystalline ball dangling from the middle of the ceiling; light sparkling from the gargantuan orb, filling the entirety of the room in a light just shy of being too bright and possessing an uncanny warmth. The room was also eerily quiet despite its size, aside from the sound of footsteps echoing off the smooth tiled stone. Seeing Steorra’s eyes wander in wonderment alleviated some of the tension on his shoulders, but did nothing to curb his guard, of which he was steadfast.
Near the end of the room, they reached a raised pomp, coming to stop at the bottom of a small set of stairs; the throne at its peak. Elaborate and wide, silver or platinum, and beneath a canopy - one made of purple silk - a grand throne lay. It was an elaborate throne for its sitter, a decadent piece of furniture covered with throw pillows for the monarch to drape across. Stopping before it, the captain prostrated himself at the bottom of the stairs, his head pressing against the stone. Sunder looked awkwardly to the colt, and mimicked the gesture, casting an eye to Steorra to do the same.
“Guests,” Sunder heard a feminine voice speak, delicate on the ears, soft as feathers. “It had been so long since we’ve been graced with such a privilege, Anvil. But these aren’t dignitaries, traders, or the false nobility. All I see are a colt and a stallion, a bit rough for wear to be anypony of significance, wouldn’t you say?”
“My Queen, if I may speak, I bring not just guests. But a mighty prize, your highness. A true rarity in the world, more valuable than any diamond or ore,” Anvil spoke in a near pantomime, rising to his hooves. Sunder wondered if he should do the same, but the guards flanking remained in the gesture of submission.
“And what is this prize you speak of, Anvil?” Sunder head the Queen reply sceptically, the shift in tone was subtle. Hard to tell her voice was so low.
“A unicorn…” he hung on the reveal, like an amateur show-pony.
The silence lingered in the air for several moments, as if time had come to a stand still.
“Rise,” the Queen commanded, and Sunder complied; looking up at the monarch on her throne. She owned a pair of almond shaped sapphires for eyes, a long elegant bounty of blonde flowing locks that fell like a cascade down her neck, a stark white coat and a pretty face; her attractive body draped over several cushions. She possessed a beauty that was unlike any other mare he had seen, and with that, he knew she commanded the loyalty of many, he knew she was dangerous. Her crown was nothing more than a glorified circlet, with a hole for in the centre of her forehead, for the horn that wasn’t there. “A unicorn, in my midst? I am truly fortuned. Actually, there hasn’t been a true unicorn present in this throne room for quite some time, and thus I am living in history unfolding. Whilst their blood is in my veins, I lack certain… attributes . Thank you, Anvil, for this gift.”
“I am honoured to be in your gratitude, my Queen,” he expressed his graciousness, bowing low to the floor, almost appearing on instinct. Sunder rolled his eyes.
“Now you,” she directed toward Sunder, her head at a slight tilt. “The unicorn colt was born of your seed?”
Sunder blinked, arching a brow. “Yes… your majesty. I am the colt’s father.”
“A Northern father, but Southern colt? My, my, a surprising sight. Does blood of the unicorn flow through you?” she asked, hoof going to her chin. “Father, grandfather, great grandfather?”
“No, your majesty,” he answered. “It was his mother’s grandmother.”
“And what of the mother? Where is she?”
“Gone,” he answered simply.
“A shame,” she replied passively, head leaning on her hoof. “There are so few left in the world. My great grandfather made the mistake of siring foals with a pony of impure blood, unfortunately. Of course the foal was a bastard, but unfortunately the only child he ever had. My grandfather, I’ll have you know. The first pony in almost a millennia to be born lacking the gift. He tried to reintegrate purity back into the line by consorting with his aunt… he partially succeeded actually.”
“And what happened with this… success?” Sunder asked, trying to hide his disgust, earning a scowl from Anvil.
“Rotting,” she smirked, leaning back in her throne. “Your colt. How much? I’ll even be willing to pay despite diluting my dynasty with Southern blood.”
Sunder felt the flames of anger within him being stoked at her casual barter. He checked around him, his eyes flicking to the five or so guards surrounding him, each with an eye firmly on him alone. “I will not sell you my son.”
“Oh?” she looked bemused, arching a brow. “I thought you’d be jumping joy at having your burden potentially taken from you, and for whatever you desire as well. Does material goods not satisfy you? I could offer you mares, stallions, even little colts and fillies if that be your desire, you’ll find I don’t judge.”
“You will not have him,” he snapped, resolute, glaring at her with fire. “One, or a thousand, I will kill all of you if you lay a hoof on my son.
She wore a hollow expression… before her maw parted, spewing forth horrendous laughter. “You mistake thinking you have any choice in the matter, but you amuse me, and for that, I’ll allow you live for the time being. Guards, escort the colt to my chambers. Take the father alive. I’ve always wanted a pet. See about removing his tongue, I’d prefer if I didn’t have to hear his grumblings.”
Author's Note
I apologise for the delay in this chapter, as well as its length. I have only 10 days left until the deadline, so this may spur the release of more chapters. I have five more chapters planned, so I need to be pumping out one every two days at least, thus why I haven't gotten anyone to pre-read after the first two/three chapters. This fic is the sole reason other stories I had planned were put temporarily on hold. However, as soon as the burden of a deadline is lifted from my back, I assure you that my other fictions/requests will be worked on.
Notes: Originally the Queen was going to be an abomination in the literal sense as described by Big Macintosh, but I opted to make her an abomination a la product of incest alone. Originally she was both going to be horrendous, but I opted against it. Also, I was originally way back not even going to feature this setting. However whilst this story was in its early stages I saw the train tracks on the map of Equestria went directly to this location, and I thought I'd make use of it. Also, in the story's canon, the North Luna Ocean is actually a lake, hence the description of Vanhoover looking over the salt plains. Also, all the locations within this story took into account the map.
Snow And Sand: A World In Two Shrouds
The palace appeared a lot bigger without his father there with him. Scarily big. He kept his head down, eyes clamped shut, pretending he was some place better. Pretending. Father told him Northerners were good at it. But he didn’t think the Queen was pretending to be bad. She seemed too good at it. Anvil, the captain, walked in front of him like before; his destination, he knew not. His hooves went up and down, being dragged along by fear rather than walking of his own accord.
Father! He remembered his futile cry, as his bloodied and bludgeoned elder was dragged away. The menacing grins upon the faces of the stallions who did so filled him with a terror that rendered him frigid, his limbs locking as he watched the brutal scene of a stallion outnumbered, beaten. He was too afraid to even try and run or to fight, he did not trust himself to help. This filled the colt with a shameful sentiment, allowing himself to be escorted by the armour clad guard as the Queen looked upon him with a ravenous appetite.
They ushered him to a small box of a room somewhere far from the throne room, and he entered without cajolement; he lacked the courage to be defiant, or he possessed the intelligence to know it was futile. The guards closed the door shut, leaving in a room devoid of light, save for a small flickering candle of a stand next to a bed that looked destitute of comfort. Regardless, the entire day suddenly fell upon him like a hammer, weighing him down like chains. He first sat on the bed, and then laid his head upon the dirty pillow, and fell to sleep and temporarily escaped his sadness.
He often slept dreamlessly, and when he did dream, he rarely remembered them. This time he dreamed of home, sitting on a snow drift under a cloudless sky, Na’s light washed over him in its shimmering embrace. In his dream, he heard the crunching of snow behind him, and he turned his neck with a drowsy slowness, the small smile on his lips almost drunken. Behind him, hidden in a mist, was the outline of an alien figure. Striking cyan eyes overpowered the dull grey of the mist, and they were what he was attracted to the most, they reminded him of the blue hue of the night sky. The longer he looked at it, the more he began to notice. There was a distinctly long horn atop its head, almost appearing as a needle, and at the sides, he recalled the appearance of furled wings on the train. It had both horn and wings. Sunder, alike a toddler, reached out for the figure with a weak limb; the entity recoiling and backing away with a particularly solemn slowness. Steorra’s interest was quick to fade and looked back up to the sky with a frown. He could feel the eyes on him. Not boring into him, but simply watching him. For a brief moment, near the end, he didn’t feel afraid or alone.
His eyes fluttered awake to a delicate hoof stroking his mane. For a moment, he believed the past day to be a nightmare, and he was only now just waking on the farm; the hoof belonging to Crescent. However, he tensed up, his lip quivering and eyes threatening to well upon seeing her . She was uncomfortably close to him, and he was too young to see the perverse look in her eye, but he knew something lingered there. Something unpleasant.
“Hush, don’t cry,” the Queen consoled softly, but it almost came out as a demand, her demeanour did nothing to soothe him. Northerners like playing pretend, his father’s words echoed in his mind. “I won’t hurt you, little one.”
Steorra sniffled. Not because he believed her, but because he didn’t want to shame his father. “W-where's my father?” he asked, and he frowned at her smirk.
“He’s locked away, safe,” she replied. He retreated back into himself, looking away from her. He didn’t believe her. “What’s your name, little colt?” she asked him. “Mine’s Rarity of the Blueblood. After my many greats grandmother.”
“Steorra,” he choked, trying to be curt. He was still upset.
“Do you know why you’re here, Steorra?” she asked him.
“No.” He felt like he suddenly knew very little of everything now.
“You’re a unicorn. That makes you very special. Although I’m sure you have been told that a lot already,” she spoke gently, Steorra knew it a farce. He wanted to believe so, anyway. “I grew up being told I was special, but not really. It was only to soften the blow of the burden of rulership, and that, unlike grandfather, I wasn’t blessed with the gift of magic, but I realised growing up it flowed through my blood. The rest of them grew content with not having a unicorn in our family again, but I was not…” she paused, and exhaled. “You’re going to be my groom. You know that, right?”
“W-what?” Steorra stuttered, looking up at her with furrowed brows. “But that's…”
“Your duty, as a unicorn,” she interrupted, still soft, but fierce too. “You could be the last of your kind, and once you’re nothing but bones in the Earth, unicorns have left the world forever. So you will marry me. And we will have children, many. Mares, colts, unicorns or no. And when I am too old and barren to play broodmare, your daughters will take the role, and we will not stop until unicorns are a bounty in the world again,” each second she spoke filled Steorra with a fear he couldn’t understand. Her hoof was still on him. She looked at him with a blank expression, inhaling softly through her nose, before sighing. “Yes, I much imagine you will not enjoy it. But you may in time, and if not, well… a pony can bear anything if they must. The world is full of horrors, Steorra. You can fight them, or laugh at them, or look without seeing…”
Steorra didn’t know what to say if he could say anything at all. She looked at him overly long, glancing away every so often. Her eyes looked as deep as a lake, and there was something to be found in their depths, Steorra just didn’t know what.
After a while, and without a word, she came off the bed; landing to her hooves with an audible ‘clop’, and left the room in a speed the opposite of haste. When the door creaked open, and Steorra heard it close again, the dam that held back his sorrow cracked; tears began to well in his eyes and he pressed his muzzle into the pillow, hugging himself. Despite how much he disliked her, her final words rung in his mind over and over like an echo in a deep cave. The world is full of horrors, Steorra. You can fight them, or laugh at them, or look without seeing...
Father.
Author's Note
You: Why is this so sho- There's no tiiiiiiiiime!!!
Snow And Sand: A World In Two Shrouds
His body ached, mouth tasted of copper. He brooded on escape, of the many impossible scenarios that would have to occur in order to fulfil his plans, and each left him feeling melancholic at the realisation of their unlikelihood. The cell was submerged in dark, appearing almost a void, and he huddled into a dank corner whilst he pondered escape, worrying about the fate of his colt. He lay battered and bruised, and every other breath made him cringe in pain. In the dark, he heard noises. Subtle ones, like whispers on the air. He had no way of knowing if he shared the dungeon with others; he couldn’t even be certain if he was alone in the cell as well. He believed it to be a trick on his eyes and ears caused by in such impenetrable darkness, but he thought he could hear breathing beside him.
He didn’t know how much time passed, he couldn't know. Sleep avoided him too, his mind wouldn’t allow him the respite, not whilst Steorra was threatened. If they dared harm his son, he would turn the Queen and her guard to ash… and scatter them to the wind. This he promised to himself.
“You’re new,” he heard a stallion's voice close to him. It was hoarse, old, and in pained. He thought it a hallucination at first, that his sanity had already been depleted. “Why are you here?”
“They took my son,” he replied with a limp tone, resting his head against the cold stone wall.
Silence reigned, and Sunder quickly believed that nopony had in fact spoken to him. “D’you know who I am?”
“A trick of my mind,” Sunder replied.
“I wish that was true…” the voice paused, and Sunder heard a ragged breath. “My name was forgotten by everypony, ‘cept I, but even I don’t want to wear it any longer, not after so long rotting here.”
“And why are you here?” his curiosity at most was meagre, but he found himself desiring to hear another’s voice rather was the empty silence.
The other was silent as if to consider his answer. “Because I’m a monster,” he said, “an abomination they say. They all say.”
“You a murderer, a rapist… both?”
“No…,” he said, and Sunder heard pained breaths. “I’m something much worse.”
Sunder waited for him to elaborate, but no more words came forth. “How long have you been down in this dungeon?”
“A dungeon? There are more skeletons down here than a graveyard. This is a tomb, and we’ve been prematurely buried, barely kept alive, scarcely remembered ‘cept by those who hate us enough to want us to continue this half-life,” he spoke, a sick humour in his voice. “No one can answer that question. Down here, time seems to stand still. You can’t count the seconds as they pass, and if you do, you’ll soon lose count. This is purgatory.”
“I need to get out. I need to save my son. I don’t care how many guard stand between us,” Sunder replied, valiant.
“You’re brave, aren’t you?” Sunder couldn’t tell if his tone was mocking, if it was, he didn’t care.
Sunder exhaled through his nose. “I’m not brave, none of us is. Brave is just the word used to describe ponies best at hiding their fear. Everypony is scared, always. I’m terrified. Terrified of losing, Steor, of dying here in the dark and never laying my eyes upon the sky again. But if I stay here, cowering in this corner, then I am lost.”
“Then I have been lost for a very long time…” the stallion responded. “Are you a good stallion?”
Sunder was silent, pondering. “That doesn’t matter. It never did. But Steorra is. He’s the last good thing I’ve given the world. As long as he never becomes me, and never went through what I went through, he’ll always be good.”
“I see,” he replied, “I thought I was good once. I never had the chance to be anything else before I was thrown into here. Years upon years, I heard the screams of the innocent and good as they starved in these cells, begging to be let out. They begged to unlistening ears. Some tried for longer than others, breaking the silence for days on end until finally, they went quiet. That is the death of will. I remained here so long, so quiet, that I was like a drawing on the wall… if I was good, I would have broken from here and turned Her to dust…” the stallion grumbled, before exhaling a deeply held breath. “I can get us out…”
“How?” Sunder asked, sceptical, although hope did rekindle in his chest.
Suddenly, catching him off guard, there was an explosion like spark of blue light; causing him to flinch at the sudden exposure, but through squinted eyes, he was drawn to one thing only, like a moth to candlelight. It burned like purple embers, the cracked keratin spire glowed with magic. Unicorn. Sunder looked to its owner, a vile mixture of disgust and abject horror sprouted in his gut. He could only see the left side of his face. Warped, monstrous, a vile product; his jaw jutted out from his face. Light shimmered over the rest of him. His coat a so faded white as to appear grey, mane blonde and dirty, eyes like faded blue gemstones; his whole body appeared stunted and wrong, an amalgamation of bones that didn’t fit into their sockets.
The unicorn stallion rose to his hooves with what appeared tremendous difficulty, his whole form shaking as he stepped forward, jaw clenched and eyes locked onto the cell door. “It’s time,” he said, the blue aura around his horn intensifying.
Sunder climbed onto his hooves, and watched as a blue light engulfed the door, a creaking metal groan sounding in the dungeon. He lost his words, seeing a sight many would regard as a treasure. He covered his eyes as the cell door fired from its hinges, a cloud of dust and stone filling the small space. He followed the unicorn as he limped out, looking down the hallway with a cautious expression. He wondered why he stopped. He glanced to his left and saw that he was looking deeper into the dungeon, the myriad of shut doors the obvious focus of his attention. Sunder remained still as he saw the hall became lit up in a blue light, each door wrapped in a tight blue aura. Each of the cell doors exploded from their frames like a thunderous symphony, the doors colliding with each other in the air like hammers upon stone.
One by one stallion and mares peeked their heads from their cells with disbelief and wariness, their eyes parting wide upon looking at their saviour. Sunder heard hoof steps behind him, and the clanking of armour. He turned to face the approaching guard, about a dozen of them charged down the narrow corridor. He was brushed aside by the unicorn, who looked at them with fire in his eyes. They came to a halt, some brandishing swords. Sunder watched them all recoil in fear as the one leading them released a strangled cry, blue magic tightening like a vice around his throat. Sunder shared their horror, as noises sounded out. First, the sound of breaking bones and tearing flesh, following immediately by metal thuds on the floor; then the pitter patter of blood droplets landing on stone… before he dropped the head. They all began to back up as their fear manifest began to walk down the hall toward them. Sunder followed, as did the rest of the prisoners, the revenge and fury could practically be felt in the air. As they were backed up into the stairwell, each of the guard wearing their terror on their face, the unicorn spoke out.
“I am the last success of the Bluebloods, the Prince of Vanhoover, and I am reclaiming my kingdom!”
Author's Note
I'm so sorry this is short, and that the actual 'escape' was very fast. I have only five days to meet the deadline.
Snow And Sand: A World In Two Shrouds
Chapter VIII - Captain Anvil
“Like moths to cloth!” his Queen yelled. Where it was directed, he wasn’t exactly sure, but her voice was so loud it bounced off the walls silencing the hoofsteps; it could have meant for everypony if she was so inclined. “We’d be left with a patchwork city after we’ve cleaned up this mess. All because that abomination decided now, at all times, to escape! And what of my prize?”
“Unfortunately, my Queen, lost,” he replied, pursing his lips, “we will catch him again, even in all this discord. There's nothing outside the boundary of the city except the endless stretching of dunes and hills. They’d have to be stricken with madness to rather bake under Tia’s light than whatever you fated for them, my Queen.”
“Thank you, captain. But I’m afraid it doesn’t put me at any ease,” she replied, clenching her jaw. He didn’t dare look at her while she was like this. Her normally marble look was smashed to bits, with unbrushed fur revealing some of the skin beneath, her normally regal and radiant golden locks appeared like strands of twine not yet pulled from the reed; the disheveled monarch looked almost like somepony else entirely. The fatigue was clearly weighed heavily upon her sweat reeked body and sunken, rose red sclera. “My brother,” he could hear the contempt in her voice, “what of him?”
“We have yet to encounter him. Doubtless that if he had chosen to charge to you with his destitute band we would have gutted him before he had lain an eye you, my Queen,” he spoke with deliberate confidence if only to put her at a higher sense of ease. He saw the fate of the guards that were put there to assure no plots, all of them green, all of them dead. He could only look at them with an expression of poorly kept together stoicism, as sheets were placed over the many corpses, their blood pooled on the stone; more than one missing a head.
“Yes, and only if that were so. Now he and the rest of his fungal companions have spread dissent among my ponies, corrupting my crop, leaving rotten grain to grow from between every crack,” she seethed, spit flying from her mouth as she spoke in her low voice, stressing all the phonetics Like a hammer pitching a new brass bell.
“Then I’ll be the sickle,” he remarked, continuing to match her stride, “we can cut down the dissenters, cull them even! If that is your desire, my Queen.”
She was quiet for a moment. A heavy one not unlike an erudite scholar’s; her face began screwing up. He couldn’t tell if she was disgusted or simply pondering how many ‘sheafs’ she wanted. “Don’t cause too much bloodshed. It cannot be helped that the plebs are so easily distracted and deceived by the sweet words of traitors. A display of mercy would be appropriate at this time.”
Anvil felt a tug at the corner of his lip, looking at her sideways. “Mercy, my Queen? If you would allow me, I must say that I am pleasantly surprised.”
“‘Surprised,' captain? And here I believed you to be a sycophant, vying purely for my favor,” she smirked, looking at him sideways.
“You know me better than that, my Queen,” he replied, mimicking the Queen’s sideways look, half-smiling. “I vye for something much grander and greater than either riches or favor.”
“Yes,” she replied, looking at him with an expression that he knew was coy, “It does seem you proved to be your own detriment though bringing my groom-to-be right here.”
They both turned a corner into another corridor, a galloping guard-pony prompting Anvil to trap shut his jaw, reciprocating the nod the guard threw to him as he ran past; remaining quiet until he could no longer hear the hoofsteps before looking back to her with a shrug. “Loyalty and duty are very different things compared to my own wants and desires, my Queen. I’m not a somatic inquisitor or philosopher, but what’s the point of having loyalty and duty at all if they’re just as uncontrollable as the heart.”
She remained quiet, in what he hoped was pensiveness, her expression either stoic or merely blank - he couldn’t tell.
The rest of their trek was in silence. Anvil flanked the Queen's right as they made their way through the dimly lit corridors until they reached the doors of the grand throne room; their passing through them was met with a thunderous single stomp upon the floor by several hundred guards. The entirety of the castle garrison gathered in waiting, hooves to their chests in silent salute. Never at ease , Anvil remarked inwardly, trailing behind his Queen. There are those who believed that the pride the guard had in themselves was nothing more than superbia, unlearnt and misplaced, and he regarded them both with and as phlegm.
He followed his Queen up the few marble steps to the throne, lagging behind her as she took root at the front and center of the slight podium, giving her watch over the entirety of the garrison; forcing their eyes to glance upward as not to have her out of sight. Anvil couldn’t help but attach his eyes to her as well, watching the metamorphosis into a leader fromqueen in a seamless transition. Her entire body appeared to relax, the pinnacle of composure, but he saw the muscle around the joint of her jaw become slightly pronounced as she steeled it.
Her eyes surveyed the room, head unmoving. She looked down to the floor, blinking, before looking back up over her stallions in armor; parting her lips and releasing a barely audible exhale. Then Anvil looked over the garrison as his Queen inhaled to speak. “Madness. Chaos. Famine. Death. Ruin… when the world was consumed in the decay that Tia wrought, burying our cities, our fellow ponies, and our lives in the sand. When the south was lost to the frost, cold, the unyielding blizzards brought by Na, it was Vanhoover that stood above it all and said ‘no,' battling back these troubles, remaining prosperous and safe! When the horned beasts from the West rampaged across the salt plains and sought to bring destruction and death to these lands, we said ‘no’ to their reavers and rapists! When the pegasi in their sky haven sought to rain down their barbarism upon our city and steal away our prosperity, we said ‘no’ to their insolence! Now an upstart abomination has fueled rebellion in our city, drowning it in smoke and dissidence, bringing the ruin that plagued the world so long ago right into the borders of our city! And again, we will cry again into the heavens that singular word we have screamed into the face of every blackguard and threat to our great city: no!” the full weight of her proclamation carried across the entire chamber, rousing the entire garrison into concurring cheers, stamping their hooves upon the floor so heavily and hard that Anvil broke his stoic expression with a tiny tug at the corner of his cheek. They’ll bring it crashing down, he mused with a smirk. “So go! Go forth to battle! Bring me the mutinous cur in chains and quell this rebellion. For your Queen!”
“For the Queen!” the voices of entire congregation roared with a near zealous fervor, the sound of three hundred hooves banging on the metal of their cuirasses followed, hoof over the heart. Orders were called from the front, every fifty guards ordered into a contingent and filed out the throne room in a march, lead each by a guardspony wearing a bronze helm.
Anvil watched them for a moment until the room was quarter empty. He looked sideways to his Queen as he took a few steps to stand beside her. “Inspiring,” he complimented, still wearing the slight tug at his lip.
“This will be a scar on this city’s visage,” she replied somberly, eyes locked forward at the leaving guard, “and after today I suspect many of them will have them as well.”
“Scars fade, my Queen,” he consoled, offering her a reassuring smile. “Some of your guards won’t be fussed. I haven’t met a stallion yet who didn’t want to boast about their accomplishments, and to a soldier, every scar is a trophy.”
His Queen sighed, glancing down. “I worry this might be the last day. It gnawed at me. You know that. This could be our fall if the city is lost. Become ash alongside the tapestries and buildings.”
“Do not concern yourself with those thoughts. Have confidence in your guard. Have confidence in me. I will stamp out these flames, I promise you. I will bring the one responsible for this back to you on a platter, I promise this too. Finally, I will deliver to you, again, your prize. I promise all of these, my Queen, and these thoughts of your fall will become nothing more than fictional echoes,” Anvil tensed his jaw, looking at her furrowed brows before tearing his eyes away, walking ahead of her down the throne’s steps.
“Anvil,” he heard her mutter, barely audible.
He stopped, looking over his shoulder, ear twitching at the mention of his name. “Yes, my Queen?”
“Come back to me,” she commanded softly, her porcelain features cracking, a small, sad smile on her face.
Anvil stood in place, looking into her blue eyes, lost. “As you command, my Queen,” he replied, lip curved into a half grin before he forced his eyes off her, walking down the steps; the marching hooves becoming muted as he walked off to fulfill his duty, the single command of his Queen echoing in his mind.
He trailed at the back of the small army. He knew the city proper has a sizable garrison by itself, but they’d be quickly overwhelmed unless the reinforcements gallop to their relief. He looked over the well-disciplined unit, their blunt unsightly helmets used for incapacitation if hooves were not enough to quell the rebellious fire within a pony. Helmets were more accessible to utilize than conventional weaponry. Whilst true they possessed many excellently crafted weapons, most could only be gripped between the teeth; the tools mostly a remnant of a bygone era of unicorn garrisons and looted pegasi weapons. His own silver cast regalia of service possessed a spiraled silver horn unique to him, the other lower ranking officers had horns that were merely no more than brutal looking spikes, abandoning all pretenses of mimicking the horned ponies of yore.
As they neared the great gate that blocked the interior from the outside, he jogged ahead to parting stallions, arriving at the front of his guard as they all stopped; no sound other than the faraway yelling and banging on the citadel doors could be heard. He looked to his sides, a guard was stationed at each wheel, their hooves resting on the spokes ready to open the gate at his immediate command. He turned to face the regiments, each of stood with diligent expressions, like looking over an army of statues. “A sickness has consumed our city,” he stated loudly and clearly, sniffing. “Let’s go cure it. For the Queen!”
“For the Queen!” the loud voices filled the entirety of the castle as they replied in chorus, stamping a hoof upon the stone as Anvil turned to face the castle doors, bracing himself as the iron gate lifted and the series of chains began to pull the doors inward apart.
“Charge!” his voice a lion’s roar as he began to break out into a gallop, immediately the orchestra of clopping hooves followed him, just as the red light from outside poured on in alongside a mob that was bathed in it. Audacious dolts, he thought with derision as his stallions clashed with the rabble, adrenaline spiking in his core. They were a faceless mass of traitors to him, regarding them with no sympathy as he struck them and shoved ahead, tackling forward with his armour clad shoulder; sending pony after pony reeling to the ground. “Push, push!” he encouraged, teeth bared. “For the Queen!”
He saw every expression turn to regret as his ivory colored hoof collided into their muzzles. Minutes into the brawl he kept an eye shut, another’s blood spurting into his eye. Longer and longer, his hoof began to tire, the mob beginning to flee and disperse, leaving behind a few unfortunate souls to cover their escape. He saw guard stamp upon the heads of a few of the fallen as if in applause but saw no expressions of delight upon their faces. The last pony he sent to the ground in cowering submission was a lithe looking stallion, who hid his busted lip and two blackened eyes upon the stone, shivering.
Anvil wiped his eye as his guards rushed passed him, the Vanhoovan ‘legion’ pursued the runners, spreading out in a manner that some would call disorganized. To Anvil, they were only rushing to their next station - bringing order to the city - and did not voice out the order to halt. Law and some semblance of society needed to return, and swiftly at that. He took a few steps forward until he stopped under the portcullis of the citadel, a few guard brushing past him, but eyes didn’t wander from the city before him. His eyes fostered the color orange as he looked to the sky. Discord , he thought with an expression of loose stoicism; watching the tide of flames that drowned the city. The embers were fluttered up on high by the smoke, making the very air itself look alight in a fire, reflecting off the helmets of every guard that galloped past. He could see the tapestries burn, bonfires erected around the city that rivalled some buildings in height, everywhere he looked he could only see burning; which filled him with a farrago of rage and enchantment. In its own way, it was beautiful. He could feel the heat upon his coat like a caress, and the air tasted of soot and copper. It reminded him of the forges from when he was a foal, and like those forges, the city was being smelted. Not to be shaped by a talented blacksmith or metallurgist, but to be shaped by the foe into a guillotine that wished to strike the head of the society and purge all civility from the land with her blood. He doubted refined steel would be the product of such a choking anarchy, only the misshapen and brittle blade, but he knew that mistakes of the forge could be smelted again; bent and shaped into something stronger. Something better.
Anvil took a moment to compose himself, walking forwards until the encumbering thought and captivating sight fell from his shoulders, and he joined his guard in galloping into the city proper.
The soldiers, upon coming into the inhabited boundary, streamed down every alley and street like a flood. Anvil stuck to the main road, his task much higher than merely dealing with rabble rousers and rebels. Lining the roads closer to the citadel, guards were already dealing with much of the strife, with ponies of various wellness gathered in groups and forced onto their knees, some guard still beating the more insubordinate ones into deeper holes of submission that they’d likely never climb out of again.
Terrible, the single word summation was stated plainly in his mind, keeping his amber eyes locked ahead. The closer one got to the citadel and the foundries, the more numerous the guards patrolling the streets grew. The further from the vicinity from the monarch’s quarter he got, the more gaulish the situation became; his attention was reluctantly forced ahead. The upstart prince would stay to lead his pack of maggots, but the father and her majesty’s prize will not be so eager to remain. That leaves only one place... He passed brawls on the roadside, sometimes between guard and citizen, other times citizen on citizen. Loyalists or vanguard property owners, every little bit helps , he mused with mot, reaching the dreg quarter in a canter. The bastard would be safest here, he thought as he passed a few idle guard, bloody and bruised; some leaning against the wall of a building with their dented helmets by their side. Must have been outnumbered, he thought with a grimace as he watched them spit crimson blood onto the ground beside them, panting for air greedily.
Here he became skittish. He was by no means incapable of fending anypony off, but his odds of victory decreased with every subsequent foe that attacked him simultaneously, and the peasants knew all the right places to hide here. They’re like insects here. Burrowing in the sand, he remarked inwardly, glancing from side to side; checking the windows for the twinkle of eyes, and the alleyways for silhouettes.
He turned onto Slag Street from Glass Way, where the beginning of the dry canals from a time long gone crisscrossed throughout the district, the empty lanes home to sand, scrap metal, and the occasional beggar. A risky but necessary shortcut. Hopefully, it doesn’t lead to my abrupt end, the thought intruded on him, but he was self-aware of the paranoia that inflicted him, and he began to see figures in the wisps of smoke through the windows.
Anvil’s ear pricked, surprised, hearing voices in what sounded like a conversation rather than a plot. They weren’t whispered words, but loud and distant, and of an acrimonious variety. He slowed his steps to a brisk walk, listening out for the voices as he got closer.
“Fuck you,” he heard a voice growl, young and quivering. He hurried into a jog as soon as he listened to a splutter from the young speaker and a grunt from a second unseen pony, the unmistakable clobber of a punch was the loudest sound he heard in this disconcertingly quiet part of the city.
“Don’t kill ‘im. Oo-else is supposed to work in the ‘fineries when we’re living it up in the silver district’?” he heard mare’s voice, a dichotomous tone of vain authority and lower class drawl.
“‘E won’t shut ‘is trap,” he heard a stallion gripe, just as Anvil stopped around the corner of an alley, slowly peaking his eye around.
“Maybe your mare should do the hitting instead. Maybe then I’ll feel something,” the tied up stallion mocked, Anvil recognized the spite and mettle. They caught one of my stallions, he clenched his teeth, crouching low as he turned the corner.
The stallion grunted as he swung at the guard again, clocking him in the jaw and sending blood spouting from his mouth, splitting his lip. “I don’ care what that ‘orned prick sez, I’ll kill ya like we’ll kill your cuntin’ ‘arlot of a queen,” the stallion threatened, growling, continuing to pound the subdued guard.
“Ey, ‘hose that?” the mare asked, eyes landing on Anvil, who had decided to forego stealth at the stallion’s last remark. “‘Nother fuckin’ guard, is it?”
The stallion turned to him with a sneer, crease between his brow. “Fuck off ‘fore I bash yer skull in. This our city now,” the stallion snarled, taking a few antagonistic steps toward Anvil. “You ‘ear me? Git outta ‘ere before I kill ya,” he threatened, Anvil continued to stride to him, his face not bending into any expression. “You deaf? I’ll knock ya upside the head,” the stallion rushed toward Anvil, snarling like a hound as he swung his hoof at Anvil like a club.
Anvil’s movement was swift. The captain dodged to the right, wrapping a hoof under the stallion’s thrown hoof and pit, aiming the horn of the helmet at his eye and striking it forward like a lance; piercing the green marble. The stallion tried to form a pained scream in his throat, but it never left his mouth; immediately falling limp in Anvil's hooves, dead.
“No, no, no,” the mare screeched as Anvil discarded the stallion’s corpse on the ground before him, lingering an eye full of detesting upon the body, before walking past it with indifference as the mare took the one-eyed head in her hooves; weeping.
“Are you alright?” he asked the tied up guard as he lowered down, pulling at the rope with his teeth.
“Peachy,” the stallion replied weakly, taking a few hoarse breaths. “Sorry. ‘Sir.' They roughed me up bad. It’s hard to talk,” each short sentence was followed by a large gulp of air.
“Save rank for when civility is restored, private,” his tone was that of sympathy, holding the stallion in place before he slumped over. Barely a stallion, he remarked inwardly, looking over the helmetless guard with pursed lips; the youth evident in his shaggy brown made and sparse yellow coat. Anvil recognized the rattle of death from his throat every step he gasped for air. Choking on his blood. Abominable way to die, the sorrowful thought forced a frown on his face, and he was thankful for the low light. “You’ve been roughed up pretty bad.”
“Will I be alright?” the stallion asked him, looking up at him with one eye, too tired to put any emotion into his words.
“Yes,” Anvil lied, swallowing the melancholy, placing a hoof on the stallion’s shoulder. “You’ll probably want to sleep it off. Get some rest, I’ll protect you.”
“Okay, okay,” the young guard complied, shutting his eyes and leaning his head against the brick wall, his breaths slowing. Anvil kept the hoof in place, the moment passed in silence, the guard eventually resting upon his outstretched leg until his breathing stopped; at which point Anvil drew his hoof back to himself, as the young guard slumped over to the side and the fell cheek first to the ground. His lifeless face was washed over with the orange light of the ember filled sky.
I didn’t even get his name, the thought passed through him as he got back up, casting a scornful eye toward the weeping mare. “You there. Weep for him later. I need you to tell me whe-”
“Fuck you,” she spat, sobbing, holding the dead stallion’s head close to her chest. “You killed ‘im. You killed ‘im!”
“Then we’re even,” he replied coldly, taking steps toward her. “That guard you and your stallion had tied up is dead. Choked on his own blood, comparably slow and painful than what I did to him,” he explained, stopping a couple of feet behind her. “So you’re going to tell me what I need to know before I pierce your chest and what your suffocate,” he told her just, ending with a tired exhale through his nostrils.
The mare froze, catching a sob in her throat and sniffling. “What?” she croaked, her body a quiver.
“Where is the Prince?” he spat the question at her.
“W-who?”
“The unicorn, the upstart, the deformed abomination behind this entire facade of rebellion,” he explained.
She remained silent, all he could hear out of her was her breaths. “We last saw ‘im goin’ to the ‘Racht Quarter,” she answered limply, any trace of the vigor she had before had faded.
He cursed, and galloped away from her, passing the corpse of his fallen subordinate, but he couldn’t stop to mourn. Vracht Quarter. So he’s accompanying them to the train. That makes things… difficult, he thought, seething.
Anvil cut through through many backstreets and alleys in the shortcut to get back to the main road, joining a swathe of galloping guards, each one with a yellow streak painted down the side of their helmets. He ran alongside one of them, a stocky looking mare. His hooves began to ache. “This is the entire Diamond Quarter garrison, sergeant,” he spoke between shallow breaths.
“The bastard’s been spotted heading toward Vracht. We’re going to intercept him, sir,” she said, determined, her lips closed tight.
“At least you didn’t underestimate him,” he half-complemented, looking ahead to the twenty galloping soldiers in front and glancing to the eight behind. I don’t think it’s enough, the pessimistic thought ran through his head alongside the image of the dead colt in the alley. “He’s got something with him. Something important to our Majesty.”
“What is it?” she asked, casting to him a curious blue eye. Anvil responded with a hard look, prompting her to look back ahead, lips pursed. “Sorry, sir.”
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to assist you this matter, sergeant. Every second that goes by the prospects of giving our Queen back what is rightfully hers dwindles,” he revealed, his eyes stone.
“I…” she tapered off, furrowing her brows. “I understand, sir.”
“Good,” he replied quietly, not looking at her.
They continued their charge, their galloping hooves a pin drop compared the sound of the destruction all around them, but it was Anvil’s beating heart that soundest loudest to him. The adrenaline that embraced him when he left the palace still coursed through him, and it took him clenching his jaw to stop the shivers… fear hadn’t occurred to him, he didn’t want to think himself afraid of what was ahead, nor did he want to dwell on the risk. Flashes of the dismembered and beheaded prison guard entered his mind, the pieces of bone on the stone, the blood running through the cracks in the mortar. There will be suffering and there will be anguish, for we are sent against the vanguard of Tartarus, he recalled the line, baring teeth, and he unleashes upon the world the cleansing fire, his minions seeing nought to remain but plunder and petty cruelties, he came to pass buildings in ruin, blood staining the rubble, but the darkness he wrought will replace with light, for the dusk and dawn still remain in the world, and we its twilight .
“Cover!” a stallion’s voice broke him from stupor, just as a large piece of rubble splattered an unnamed guard into gore, sending dust and shards of the granite paving stones into the air, leaving everyone coughing and screaming in alarm.
Anvil covered his eyes in reaction, looking at the small crater in horror, casting an eye to a nearby alleyway and fleeing towards it; clenching his teeth in a fury. “Shit,” he cursed, seeing the morale immediately crumble of the regiment. “Fucking unicorn.”
“He knew we were coming,” the sergeant joined him, panting, her voice shaking. “We have to pull ba-”
“No,” he interrupted, staring at her, lip revealing his lower teeth. “We have to continue the charge.”
“Sir, he just threw a bould-”
“Gather your guard. Now. We have to go immediately,” he stressed through teeth. “The only way into the district is that road.”
“We could organize into two groups to flank him from the Bronze quarter,” she offered, her lips in a frown.”
“No time,” he spat. “Gather them. Now!”
“O-okay, as you command, sir,” she stuttered, pausing for a moment to breathe before the run back out into the open to assemble the stragglers.
“You’ll never be faulted for your loyalty,” he muttered under his breath, rubbing the bridge of his muzzle before he jogged out safety to join the demoralized brigade.
He didn’t say any words of encouragement. His mouth felt too sour for that. The guard had filled an alley on the adjacent side of the street, their courage and bravado went. Riots and strikes didn’t prepare them for this. Glory is a reward that quickly loses the appeal, he thought as he observed them. The sergeant glanced at him but immediately looked away, her mouth scrunched.
She marched to the end of the alleyway beside Anvil, and he heard her sigh, cracking her neck and adjusting her helmet before turning back to her regiment. “We charge,” she stated the order simply and bluntly, looking over them, “for the Queen.”
“For the Queen!” they all yelled with exhorting, Anvil joined them doing so, turning with the sergeant toward the street… and then they galloped.
They passed the splattered remain of the guard, their hooves stomping on the stones as they charged to certain doom. There was a dreadful quiet before the sound of demolishment and destruction sounded out loud. “Watch out!” Anvil called out to them, seeing the chunk of rubble flying through the air, the blue tinge of the unicorn’s grip dissipating as momentum carried it through the air toward them. It smashed into the road before them, and they skirted around it, just as another piece of torn off building colliding and rolled over two rash guards; leaving them rough paste on the stone. Keep going .
The rubble kept coming, and it kept killing, dwindling them to less than twenty. It’s like doomsday, Anvil thought, glancing at the orange sky, ready to dodge the falling debris that rained from it. I have to get to them , the mind urged him as the lone figure came into view, the two familiar smudges of orange and white fleeing off behind him; his attention drawn to the smaller white speck. Her prize, he remarked, teeth grit. He looked back to the unicorn, whose features were more apparent as he came further away from being just at the edge of his vision. He growled in detestation, seeing a backstreet appear in his peripheries, his escape . He veered off, immediately feeling himself fill with self-loathing and hatred, his galloping hooves landing upon the stone with greater force as anger carried him.
“Captain?” he heard the sergeant called for him, her voice quick to become distant to his ears, the alley making an immediate left turn.
I’m sorry, his compunction of thought he wished to say out loud but couldn’t part his jaw, his lungs too greedy for the air that carried him. He heard their last vestiges, voices, and screams before they became too far to be understood. At the end of the alley he saw the dirt path that connected back to the main road, but more importantly, he saw the tail end of the locomotive, which became his immediate destination.
His legs began to burn as he trod up dirt, hearing the hiss of the brakes becoming undone. He leaped onto the rearmost cart, climbing up and slamming open the back door, continuing forward with immediate haste. He jolted when he felt the floor move beneath him, and he looked over his shoulder, seeing the scene beginning to move away from him. He’s going North? What does this madpony thing he’s doing?
He moved from cart to cart, pushing apart the doors and hopping the gap to the next, his body begging him for respite. When he reached the passenger cart, much of seats and walls still coated with dried blood. Anvil moved up and saw through the glass the father and cold with one another, the older orange stallion moved his lips while looking to Anvil; although he knew what he was saying wasn’t meant for him.
His hooves carried him on, and he saw the door to the conductor’s cabin slam shut as the father stepped away from it, the haggard looking father standing before it; his hooves spread apart and locked in place, guarding it. Anvil entered the shared cart, the father’s expression stern and unforgiving, his jaw jutting out. He stood there, looking at his foe and last barrier between him and his Queen’s prize. The silence continued as the train began picking up more speed.
“We didn’t refuel it. Once you're in the barren North, you’re not coming back,” Anvil informed, taking a few deliberate steps toward him. “Give me the colt, and mercy is assured.”
“No,” he spat in a defiant growl, huffing. “Just go, leave us be.”
Anvil smirked, sucking his teeth, tasting smoke. “No.”
The captain dashed forward, feigning movement to the left as Sunder reacted with a punch, at which Anvil dodged under it and grappled around the extended limb. Eager to get it over with, he stabbed his helmet toward his face, although to his surprise the older stallion possessed a more significant deal of strength than he expected; slamming down and instead sending Anvil piercing his side instead, the sickening sound of a breaking bone was heard, and Anvil was sent reeling away, panting. He saw blood on the stallion’s chest but refused to relent, and charged forward again. Sunder hopped backward but immediately fell in a grunt of pain, but Anvil collided into the side of a seat, embedding the horn and keeping stuck in place. He yanked in a futile effort to get it free again before growling lowering his head, popping out of the helmet, his clay-colored mane swaying down the sides of his face.
He looked to his opponent and was immediately sent reeling, a hoof striking into his muzzle, causing him to bite down on his tongue and tasted immediate copper; blood spitting from his mouth. He had no time to break out of his daze before another strike followed, hitting him on the side of the face before a uppercut came right after, sending him on his back. The entire day’s burden fell upon him all at once, and every muscle that lined his body was screaming for him to stop, but one single sentence echoed in his mind that fueled him on. Come back to me he heard her voice, and he climbed back to his hooves; seeing Sunder back away, a hoof grasping his bleeding side.
Anvil screamed, a mixture of blood and spittle flying from his mouth as he rammed head first into Sunder’s chest, wrapping his hooves around his neck and pushing his hand hooves forward; sending the larger stallion on his back. He straddled around Sunder's barrel, his legs crushing the wound and his forehooves thrashing at Sunder’s face, beating it to a pulp.
“No!” he heard a young voice howl, and upon glancing up he felt something his neck, just in time to see the azure light disappear from his horn and the colt looking at him with a quivering frown; tears falling freely from his eyes and down his cheeks.
Anvil swallowed, feeling a blockage and immediately coughed a small geyser of blood onto the floor just over Sunder’s head. Breathing through his nose, he calmly got back onto his hooves and turned shakily around. He limped forward a few steps but found his movement hindered by a weight around his neck. Glancing, he saw his helmet. What’s that doing there , he thought with diminished sanity. He pulled it from his neck, causing blood to flow freely from the wound, and he put the blood covered apparel back on his head. He tried to walk again but immediately fell to the ground, his eyes looking out the window to the uncovered sky.
“I can’t breathe, my Queen,” he croaked, “I can’t…”
Author's Note
Hi, all. This is mainly here just to inform you there are only two more chapters left, and then the story is completed. I apologise to both SPark and the people interested that I didn't complete it in time for the deadline. Regardless, I will complete this, although unburdened by the deadline I will spend considerably more time on writing the ending. Something you must know in advance, they're considerably less 'actiony'.
Massive, gigantic and colossal thanks to Mix-up for the cover art
An additional equally huge thanks is extended to SPark for their wonderful illustration of Queen Rarity
I am immensely sorry for the wait.
Snow And Sand: A World In Two Shrouds
"Father!" he heard his son's cry, his title sandwiched between sobs. He could see clearly out of only a single eye, the other was so swollen and bloody to be as good as blind. Every muscle ignored his call, and the agony in his chest drew out every second for as long as reality allowed. He killed me , he thought, the sound of his breathing was like a rattle. "Father!" Steorra cried out again, this time over him, looking down into his one good eye. He blinked, swallowed, gasping for air for which he was desperate for. He's killed me , he thought again, the image of the guard captain flashing in his mind. He could taste copper in his mouth. He didn't know if it were from his lungs or from his tongue. "Father, please be okay," Steorra whelped, pushing his forehead into Sunder's barrel, weeping into his chest. But he killed him, he thought finally, finding it hard to stay awake now.
"It's over," Sunder weakly assured, hearing his own voice. "It's over."
"Are you okay?" the colt asked him, sniffling.
Sunder swallowed. "I'm fine-" he lied, "-but I am feeling a little tired."
Steorra shakily inhaled and exhaled, looking at Sunder with quivering lips. Sunder knew the colt didn't believe him, but he could tell he wanted to. "Really?" he asked, sniffling, "you're not lying."
Sunder inhaled deeply through his nose, pursing together his lips before swallowing back a cough. "Just come close to me, son," he beckoned, straining to raise a hoof, "just come close and wake me when we get there."
Steorra immediately complied, hugging close to him, cheek pressed to his chest. "When we get where?" he asked, looking up to the stallion.
He didn't know. She said he'd know, but he didn't. He was just an idiot stallion grasping at the thin thread of hope he believed had existed. Looking at his son with his single good eye, he held back a sob. I've killed him. "Home, Steorra," he answered, wrapping a week hoof around his colt, "home. The snow. Cold. All of it. We'll be back soon."
"O-okay," Steorra replied quietly, and Sunder felt the colt's hooves tighten around him. "Just promise me you'll wake up when we get there."
He exhaled, and forced his eye closed, pressing his head against the floor of the train car; tightening his feeble grip around his son. "I promise," he replied, firm in his tone, "I promise."
He tried to swat away sopor's grasp, using the presence of his son as an anchor to the world of the living. As every minute passed, his mind grew darker, his body lighter. Soon enough, his eye would no longer open, his mind still lucid for a time. I'm sorry, he tried to say, I'm so sorry, Steorra. Yet the words fell still in his throat. I'm sorry...
Darkness consumed him... He dreamt of sand, of an old capital submerged within it, the buried skyscrapers like giant steel mausoleums for the millennia old dead. Images of an old time, decades ago, ones which were just as buried as the buildings were back then. Her face. It was always her face. The first time he saw it, emerging from the outside light whilst he was hidden away in the dark, looking for trinkets which belonged to the dead. Her stark white coat seemed to overpower the light around her, and her eyes were a colour he had seen only in the ocean, where Na and Tia’s light met; dark and beautiful. Azure. The eyes of his son. But the face, the face belonged to the mare he fell in love with… he couldn’t wait to be with her again.
"Father!" his eye parted, his ear twitched at the sound of his son's voice, roused from sleep. "Father!"
"What... What?" he replied, his mouth felt dry. His words left his throat without difficulty, the pain had subsided from his chest. Beside that, he immediately noticed the dimness of the light. It reminded him of Vanhoover but not as ashen, nor was the light as bright as he usually expected of the North. It almost felt like the South. "Where are we?"
"Home!" Steorra answered in exclamation, and Sunder could see his hooves pressed against the glass of the window, standing up on one of the chairs. His voice trembled, excited. "We're home! Come see! You were right."
He furrowed his brows. As he propped himself up, ready to climb onto his hooves, his back felt stuck to the floor. He yanked off it, looking behind himself. How much blood did I lose? The coagulated pool was large. He looked to his side, seeing grime around his wound. He tentatively pressed a hoof against the hole and yanked his hoof away, feeling... nothing. His next breaths left his chest all too quickly, confusion and fear wrapped around him in a coil, furrowing his brows he threw his eyes to Steorra, who continued to gawk outside the window smiling. "What do you see?" he asked him, getting onto his hooves, taking wary steps.
"Look!" his son encouraged, grinning at him with mirth. "It’s like you said."
I'm dead. I'm dreaming, he threw out his conclusions, however uncertain, and climbed into the booth with deliberate and careful movements. He felt fine, inexplicably. So what will I see?
He saw… snow. Just snow. Only snow. It was powdered across a seemingly unending expanse. He couldn't make out the silhouettes of mountains in the distance nor were there any signs of dead trees or that this snowfall had ever ceased. It looked like smooth flat pressed cloth, untouched for an uncountable number of years. It was an impossible perfect, and yet Sunder was laying eyes upon it. The clouds above were a similar plain, looking like an ocean of grey in the sky, no gaps to betray the source of light filtering through them. It was Tia that illuminated these lands, not Na. "When did the train stop?" he asked, voice quiet. "When did the train stop, Steor."
"Not too long after it started snowing," the colt answered, looking up to Sunder. "We're home. Aren't we, father?"
Sunder looked down at his son. There was some dry blood on his cheek. He quickly threw a hollow look to the dead stallion in the middle of the car, before setting his sights back on Steorra, exhaling through his nose. "No."
The cold hit his uncovered face like a punch, forcing his eye closed as he flinched against it. He poked his head past the door frame and saw that frost had already covered much of the locomote, nipping past his coat down to the skin. "Keep close," he bade Steorra, stepping out from the train and hopping down onto the snowy ground.He sank into several inches of the cold powder with a fresh crunch, the few seconds of exposure already giving the tips of his fur a covering of snow.
He helped Steorra down onto his back, where he kept him, so he wouldn't have to make laborious strides through the snow. The weight wasn't too bad ordinarily, but the weakness that weighed down his entire body persisted, making the act of carrying his son a challenge. "Where are going?" the colt asked, his voice barely audible over the torrent of snowflakes and powerful gusts.
Sunder knew the answer. It was the only answer he could give. The one he had parroted the instant he set forth on this journey. "North," he answered loudly, over the wind. "North and only North."
Having answered Steorra, he braced himself as he took his first step into the white oblivion. Beneath the show Sunder felt solid ground. Permafrost. Much like home. Yet the sky glowed with light which tried to break through the dense, snow spewing clouds. As he walked, it was as though the very weather itself fought to keep him from advancing. The wind grew stronger, snow seem to fall even thicker; the individual flakes larger. He required constant wiping of his eyes just to advance, and eventually gave up, walking semi-blindly ahead to find anyone, anything that indicated his goal…
But he found none.
The longer he walked into the snow covered land, the weaker he got, and the stronger his son’s grip tightened around him. Sunder knew the young colt was growing colder by the minute, and could only hope that the fire within himself was enough to ward off the unrelenting chill. Did she lie? He risked doubt, gritting his teeth against the gusts. Were you delirious? Were you? What is here, what did you find? he kept asking the questions. And as he asked them, doubt grew heavy in his heart. He felt his gait grow sluggish. He tried to keep doing, but it was as though his very life was being drained from him. He stumbled, then he fell, falling face first into the snow. Aurora, he thought.I killed our son.
He felt himself drift slowly away from the wind, the snow and cold, embraced by dark… until he was brought back into it again, feeling a small colt’s hooves push and prod into his side. “Father?”
“Son,” he said, low. Steorra’s face was close to his own. The volume of his own voice barely audible, even to his own ears. It was a miserable sight, a colt covered in snow, trembling in the hoof high flakes. I can’t move.
“Are you alright?” the colt asked, and Sunder could tell that he was too afraid for his own father to cry.
“I… I don’t think that I am,” Sunder answered, truthfully, his breathing laboured. He felt a weight on his lungs. “But you are.”
He watched as Steorra’s face scrunched, crying with no tears. The colt looked him up and down, his mind trying no doubt trying to conjure a solution. Something, anything. “Can I make you good again?” he asked, desperation hanging off his every word. Sunder could see the sorrow in his eyes, his colt’s hope hinging on the answer that he was given.
Sunder tried his best to smile, to shake his head, but he could do neither. “You can’t,” he answered truthfully, offering bluntness when he knew that his son desired some sort of respite. He couldn’t offer any.
“No. No, no, you’re wrong!” Steorra fired back, defiant, sobbing.
“Steor,” Sunder replied weakly, unable to match his son’s strength. “I’m sorry.”
Steorra said nothing thereafter, his head fallen, looking down at the ground; mirthless; silent. Sunder did nought but look at him. He seemed almost to blend in with the snowfall, and as more of it encrusted the colt, Sunder had to concentrate, lest he lost him. But that was the underlying fear he had. He was going to lose his son. He wanted to hold his boy as death took him. He didn’t want to die alone, afraid… but, he wouldn’t die cold. He couldn’t feel it anymore. I’m sorry.
“You have to go,” Sunder spoke with all the firmness he could muster, his throat dry.
“W-what?” Steorra stammered, either from the cold or disbelief, Sunder didn’t know which. The colt inched closer to him. Sunder knew his voice was failing him if Steorra needed to be so close.
“Go. Keep going. Try. Try to survive, Steorra,” Sunder ordered, but his voice was desperate, it was a plea.
“But… but I don’t want to leave you, father. I… I don’t want to be alone,” he whimpered.
“You won’t be alone, son,” Sunder replied, steeling his jaw to keep conscious. “I will be with you. Truly. In memory. In your blood. In your heart. I’ll keep you warm. Even when I’m not there to hug you.”
Steorra said nothing for a while. Sunder resisted sleep. He had to hear, see, any kind of confirmation from his son. He needed to know, he had to know before he died. Steorra closed his eyes, lips trembling. He gave a nod. A singular, pitiful nod. “I love you.”
Sunder kept stoic. He didn’t let his pain become evident on his face. No grimace, or frown, or sob. “I love you too, son.”
Sunder allowed his eyes to shut, and he kept them that way for quite a while. He didn’t count the seconds. After some time has passed, he opened them again. He was gone, not even far off as a silhouette in the white…
Live.
Author's Note
In the slow process of finishing up loose ends. I have known how to end this particular fic for literal years now, but have never gotten around to finishing it. I had tremendous difficulty getting to Sunder's death. I had many, many ideas for dialogue, for how it happens, and for how to end the chapter on. I am still not satisfied. I never have been with much of my work. However, with the hardest chapter out of the way, the next will come with ease. I hope that you are ready for a surprise.
