Flash Sentry and the King's Ghost

by Carabas

Rating: teen
Tags: Carrot Top, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy, King Sombra, Adventure, Flash Sentry, Crystal Ponies
Length: 12563

Flash Sentry, hero of Equestria and all-round cad, reckoned a peaceful posting in the Crystal Empire would keep him far away from any danger. He reckoned wrong.

Apocrypha for the Flash Sentry Papers.

Flash Sentry, hero of Equestria and all-round cad, reckoned a peaceful posting in the Crystal Empire would keep him far away from any danger. He reckoned wrong.

Written for Tumbleweed for the Springtime Sandbox-Slash-Sandbox Switcheroo.

Russian translation, by GrandCat.

Published 2018-04-23 11:30:07 UTC
Last updated 2019-01-15 17:23:36 UTC

Some Notes on the Text

When presenting works that challenge the historical record on figures of renown such as Flash Sentry, one will inevitably be met with a range of reactions. Some will work themselves into a lather over blatant smears at the expense of an Equestrian legend. Some will applaud bold new angles of scholarship drawing upon newly-discovered primary sources. Some send letters of congratulations. Some send live scorpions through the mail. Most else varies between those two extremes.

When a rare few opt to help, however, they send things like the following text. It came to my door, a carefully-packaged and cloth-wrapped notebook from an anonymous sender. With it came a note claiming that here was a missing Flash Sentry paper, a portion of the renowned stallion’s own autobiography that had gone astray from the central collection and ended up in the personal effects of their own family. In light of my own recent efforts to shed a light on this particular hero and period of Equestrian history, they felt comfortable sending the text to me in the surety I would know what to do with it.

Several issues arise at this point. Taken at face value, the text would seem to fill in the blanks regarding an escapade previously only fleetingly referred to in Sentry’s memoirs — some incident involving his posting in the Crystal Empire, cultists therein, Sentry being bound to a rock at the mercy of said cultists, and Agent Golden Harvest’s inevitable assistance in the matter.

However, its authenticity must be questioned. The prose is not an exact match for Sentry’s previous writings, as if it had been penned by Sentry after he’d had far too much/little to drink, or by a different hoof altogether. Its existence apart from the main collection begs questions. It may be genuine. It may be a libellous (read, truth-telling) publication from Sentry’s own time. It may even be Flash Sentry fanfiction, may unkind Providence have mercy on us all.

I reproduce it below, but until further study and verification can be done, it seems best to treat this as Flash Sentry apocrypha.

What a terrifying phrase that is.

-George MacIntosh Fresian.

Chapter 1: The Better Part of Valour

If there’s been one driving adage behind my every effort to avoid the heroics ponies expect of me, it’s this: ‘Volunteer for nothing.’

There are exceptions, of course — the choice between volunteering between something like, say, ‘A death-defying mission deep within enemy territory’ or ‘Minding the general’s drinks cabinet’ is a fairly black-and-white one for any stallion like myself who’s exalted cowardice to an artform. But firstly, by and large, volunteering for great endeavours is a suitable task for valiant ponies, not those who merely cultivate the image. And secondly, even if the endeavour doesn’t seem so great, there’ll inevitably be some nasty sting in its tail which renders the whole exercise distressingly perilous to life and limb.

I received a thorough education in that second point when, idiot that I was, I forgot my watch-words. I volunteered for a posting in the Crystal Empire.

Consider the circumstances, and you’ll appreciate it seemed sensible at the time. True, it was a fragile little point of civilisation on the edge of terrible, bleak wilderness. True, it had recently been host to a mad sorcerer-king. And rest assured, had that still been the case, you couldn’t have lured me up there for anything short of waggling a bottle of Chateau de Cheval at my front and jabbing the business end of a pointy stick at my rear.

Thing is, it had recently been host to a mad sorcerer-king. Through means I didn’t entirely grasp, the Element-Bearers and Princess Cadence had apparently put him down for good, and now the whole place was back in the Equestrian fold. Princess Twilight had recently joined the roster of crowned heads as well, through means likewise beyond my grasp, and dignitaries and ambassadors and imposing guards from all over were converging on the place for her first summit. In short, while that summit persisted, you’d have struggled to find a more well-guarded or safer place in all the world. The guarantee of complete security while being required to do little more than stand around and look suitably stalwart and heroic appealed.

That, and shortly before I volunteered for the posting, I might have been embroiled in some minor indiscretion with one of Canterlot’s leading noblemares**. Said noblemare’s existing paramour, last I saw him from behind a pair of curtains, had been brandishing a sword and indicating a fervent desire to discover what colour my insides were. A short holiday away from Canterlot’s high society seemed prudent.

**While Sentry doesn’t name names, popular and well-supported rumours from the same period would seem to indicate that this was Lady Redwood, who allegedly determined early on that she would be at least mentioned in connection with every instance of courtly drama. She succeeded, and would undoubtedly be proud to know of her starring role in an ongoing series of licentious historical fiction.

And so I volunteered, was delightedly accepted by some pony who was in charge of organising summit personnel and who didn’t know me better, packed my bags, and, while keeping one wary eye on my surroundings at all times for any sign of aggrieved stallions bearing pointy implements, made my way down to the train station and from there to the frozen north.

During the long hours of travel, which I spent in happy seclusion in a private cabin with some chosen liquors and a small collection of suitably trashy reading, I contemplated the happy aimlessness that undoubtedly lay ahead. The crystal ponies were a little behind the times, so I’d gathered, but so too would be their wine cellars, and who knew what vintages awaited that begged an appreciator? With any luck, a fair few crystal mares might like a well-polished modern uniform, and, with even more luck, some of them would want it removed.

The train sped on. Rolling grasslands and hills turned to tundra and icy wasteland, as morning ambled on to evening. And then, from a great height, as the train crested a ridge and spiralled down towards a breathtakingly green and verdant valley, the great star-shape of the Crystal Empire revealed itself.

Damned pretty place. Crystals and neat geometric patterns seemed to be the mainstays, and it all glittered entrancingly under the starlight. At the centre of the city, the spire of the Crystal Castle itself jabbed up at the heavens, as if trying to skewer passing deities.

Impressive, to be succinct. Once I got off the train, my luggage in tow, it was no great trouble to navigate in its direction, taking the scenic route through the wide streets as I went. Crystal ponies were still out and about at this hour — indeed, just warming up for even more vigorous outing and abouting — and as I covertly ogled the lustre of their hides and manes, I was aware of getting a few curious and admiring looks myself. I favoured the more overt of these looks with a dashing wink or several, but kept on my way.

Before long, I reached the palace, and in its vast entrance hall, all bedecked with royal banners and crystal sculptures, a few members of the palace’s staff bustled this way and that, setting things out in readiness for the forthcoming summit. I looked about for anypony official-looking, to whom I might be expected to report, when a contralto voice from off-stage solved that problem for me.

“Lieutenant Sentry?”

I turned, and beheld a vision. A tall, sleek crystal unicorn mare glided down the length of a marble stairway towards me, her cobalt-blue hide shimmering under the reflected gem-light, her mane gleaming bronze, her well-formed figure sparking all manner of happily unwholesome thoughts. A smaller earth pony mare trailed behind her, buttoned up under a staff uniform, shawl, and broad hat. For a moment, I might have gawped before remembering myself.

“Present and accounted for, ma’am,” I replied, dropping a short Guard-standard bow in her direction and rising with my most winning smile. “I hope I’m not late?”

“Not at all, not at all, lieutenant. But word of you has preceded you, and everypony here has been most eager to make your acquaintance,” the strange mare replied, her voice thick with a deliciously antiquated burr, sweeping up close to me and meeting my own gaze with brilliant amber. The corners of her mouth turned up in a bright smile. “Oh, but you must forgive my manners. I am Chalcedony, Princess Cadence’s equerry … or, well, one of her equerries while she remains in residence. You have had a pleasant journey?”

“Pleasant enough, Chalcedony,” I replied, aware of her own positive attention, but trying not to let it show — where would we be if accredited heroes of Equestria became aware of things, I ask you? — and filled the air with whatever flattery came to mind. “The reception so far’s been even more pleasant, though. The Crystal Empire astounds.”

“Astounds? I am glad to hear it!” Chalcedony’s smile brightened yet further. “But it is so in no small part due to all the Equestrians coming here! All our far-flung kin, coming to us at last, and bringing their liberators and heroes with them. We have already met several. It remains delightful to meet another.”

Cue the modesty routine. Ponies never fail to like that. “I’d never say that about myself,” I said, putting on my best show of abashedness. “I just did what needed doing at the time. So would anypony in my position.”

“Ah, I am sure.” Chalcedony paused and then, to my surprise, winked. “Heroes must run themselves down, of course. But never mind my prattle. You will want rest? Food?”

I stifled a yawn. “I wouldn’t say no to some rest, Chalcedony.” It had been a long journey. Travelling from temperate to near-arctic regions doesn’t happen quickly.

“Very well. Rest this eve. Tomorrow will be a day for more prattling and duties also, alas.” Chalcedony turned to the staff member. “Root Cellar, do show the good Lieutenant to his quarters. Help him with his bags. See that he has whatever he needs.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the staff mare, Root Cellar, replied, nodding briefly. Chalcedony favoured me with another smile before turning on her heel and departing smoothly.

I watched her go, my mood brightening by the moment. With that sort of happy reception from a mare who was a delight for the senses, volunteering for this posting was looking to be one of the better decisions I’d ever made.

At this point, Root Cellar said, in light, dry tones, “Enjoying the sights, Sentry?”

“I — er,” I said, and then hesitated. Light, dry, and familiar. I gave Root Cellar a second look, and then a third just to be sure my eyes weren’t playing some manner of practical joke, and then squawked with disbelief. “Carrot Top?”

“Low voices,” hissed Carrot Top, aka Root Cellar to Chalcedony, aka Special Agent Golden Harvest by her fellow agents in Equestrian intelligence, and aka all manner of blood-curdling shrieks by those unlucky to end up on the receiving end of her talent for close-quarters violence. The lithe, compact body under that uniform and shawl contained enough muscle to kick disassociated parts of me into different time zones. She eyed me, her eyes pure green calculation. “What are you doing here?”

There are ponies whom it is worthwhile lying to, and Carrot Top wasn’t amongst them. “Hiding from my mistakes after one romp too many. What are you doing here?” I gestured at the uniform she wore. “Has the Special Agent-ing fallen through?”

“Not quite,” she replied, an acerbic note creeping into her voice. “I am, in fact, Special Agent-ing right now. Trot this way.”

I did as bidden, picking up my bags. Carrot Top picked up the heaviest of them with nary a grunt and beckoned me down a corridor. I followed her until the noise and bustle of the entrance hall had receded to a distant murmur, at which point I spoke again. “Are there others here?”

“My colleagues? Quite a few. Some in discreet roles like mine, some blundering about as part of the delegation, and others going out of their way to make sure they’re not seen by anypony whatsoever. We’ve got eyes on the Crystal Empire from top to bottom.”

“Ah. Eyes looking for what, exactly?” Dread seeped in at the edges of my previous state of blissful ignorance.

“A few things. You’ll know that the previous ruler here was apparently dispersed,” said Carrot Top, the statement in tones that didn’t entirely conceal an underlying timbre of I don’t actually trust you to know that. “‘Apparently’ is a treacherous sort of phrase when it comes to arch-mages like him. We can’t rule out that he’s left more traps or more means for his return lying around the place. Going by history here, we can’t rule out anything.”

“I see.” The dread settled in for good. “But … but you’ve had chances to pick over the place for months now, surely?”

“Yes, and that’s let us tackle some of the more obvious snares he’d left,” Carrot Top replied. “But the way you phrased that suggested you think there’d be a limit to our paranoia when it comes to Sombra. Certain reliable sources who were there last time he was around have made sure we know what he’s capable of.**”

**If you want to know what that may have been, and didn’t want any sleep tonight anyway, a study of Wax Tablet’s Shadows In The North is recommended. To summarise, King Sombra was not a terribly pleasant pony.

“Oh, joy.” A crystal flickered at me funny. Probably out of pure spite to make my hide crawl.

“And not just Sombra.” Carrot Top’s voice dropped yet lower. “You’ll know that before he and the Empire were frozen away, he’d established a tyrannical rule over the Crystal Ponies?”

“Duly known.”

“We suspect there’s still a few Sombra sympathisers laying low.”

And that made the threats on offer quite a bit more tangible.

It’s an odd thing, but whenever you get even the most awful of regimes cropping up, who ought to be fought with every sinew in the body of any being with the moral sense the Creator gave a sea-cucumber (or who ought to be fled from, if you’re me, which I do hope you’re not, whoever you are), you’ll always get some inadequates playing the role of collaborator. Whether for security’s sake, or to get a chance to lord it over their fellows, or to just deal with those they disliked, or because maybe they even liked their mad sorcerer overlord.

And of course, they’d all been frozen in time. The collaborators were still out there. Or, at least, the more clever and subtle ones were.

“And you’ve, er, got a notion of who they may be?” I said in a somewhat strangled way. It had occurred that a hero of Equestria’s head on a platter might be just the sort of trophy piece such a collaborator might be keen on acquiring, and last-minute protests that I was actually a cad to the bone and that I surrendered unconditionally and please could I not be hurt too much would be unlikely to cut it.

“Investigations are ongoing.” Carrot Top’s mouth formed a tight, taut smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “We’ve embedded ourselves at all levels, to keep an eye on things. And we’re ruling nopony out. If any are planning trouble for the summit, we should sniff it out.”

“Please do,” I said. It’s never pleasant, discovering that the peaceful-looking paddling pool you planned to plouter in all along played host to piranha packs.

Carrot Top’s gaze met mine, and though her mouth remained hard, a certain — it surely couldn’t have been softness, I thought then — lack-of-jaggedness entered her expression. “You wouldn’t have jumped at this posting if you’d known, I suspect.”

“Not jumped, exactly. Some other verb, almost certainly.”

“You don’t have to stick around here if you don’t want to,” she said, with what seemed like bonafide gentleness. “I don’t need you to risk yourself here, and I still owe you a favour from helping out with my family. If you want, I’ll pull a string or two. A urgent mission will require your presence back in Canterlot.”

I swallowed and weighed my options. It was a tempting offer. Here seemed a lot less safe than I’d happily imagined it to be, and all manner of uncertain dangers lurked in the shadows.

But. But, but, but.

But on the other hoof, down south awaited the exceedingly certain danger of an aggrieved paramour. And better the devil you don’t know, especially when the devil you do know had been seen to heft a worryingly large sword with a worrying amount of ease.

Besides, Special Agents were on this like stripes on a zebra. If all else failed, there were still the Princesses and markedly more competent heroes in residence to tackle any danger.

So, fool that I was, I decided to stay the course. I swallowed and said, “It’s fine. I’ll stay.”

Needless to say, had I known what would follow, I would have galloped back to the train station, leapt aboard any free locomotive, and shrieked at the driver to speed south and not stop until we hit the tropics. And to have a breather there, and then keep going.

Chapter 3: The Old One-Two

“I wonder, Chalcedony, if there was some confusion in the way my instructions for this eventuality were passed down.”

I’d gibbered. I’d kicked. I’d produced noises in a pitch high enough to make glass creak and dogs whimper. I’d struggled against my restraints. And I had accomplished exactly nothing of use for several awful moments. The temperature in the cavern had seemed to drop a notch as an awkward silence held court past my own sphere of terrified warbling. Sombra’s voice abruptly rumbled out from the stone under me to pass the above remark, and failed to soothe my frame of mind in any way whatsoever.

“Dread King, I assure you, he fits the parameters you specified,” said Chalcedony, a nervous edge to her voice. She glared daggers at me. “Would you shush?”

“I wonder this, Chalcedony, because I recall ordering you and the others to bring me a hero of Equestria, or some stalwart who could get close to the princesses without arousing suspicion. What you instead appear to have brought me is a squalling custard in what approximates to the guise of a pony.”

“Dread King, I can explain —”

“Do so.”

“This one is a hero of Equestria, Dread King, on my word and life. He was awarded the Celestial Cross, for gallantry during a incursion in Canterlot. He … he is surely trying to throw us off the scent by playing the idiot craven.”

“What a loss to the theatrical profession he is, if so.” I felt Sombra’s full attention descend upon me, filling my world in the same way tsunamis fill eggcups. The veins of the stone under me boiled crimson, and the eyes of the hewn unicorn head over me shone like falling stars. “You. Cease squalling.”

Caught between the natural urge to keep whimpering, which seemed to be exactly what the situation demanded, and to do exactly what the terrifying undead-wizard-ghost-king-rock-thing said, my vocal cords froze with indecision. Certain death awaited me, I was sure. And I regarded it as merely certain death because I wasn’t sure if there was a category beyond ‘certain’. Most parts of my mind and body had shut down at this point.

Only most, though. For one part of me hadn’t ceased in its efforts, would never cease, would stand steadfast at its post in the very face of Tartarus — especially in the very face of Tartarus.

That part was my sense of self-preservation. And what it noted was this: Sombra apparently required a hero of Equestria as his vessel, whatever that entailed. Perhaps the souls of true heroes made better fuel for awful dark magic, I couldn’t say. But if there was ever a pony in whom I was to confide my true self, he was the one.

“Let us have something resembling civilised discourse, hero of Equestria,” The words purred off Sombra’s tongue, or whatever he currently had that was doing duty as a tongue. “I am King Sombra. Introduce yourself.”

I swallowed, and with great effort, managed to contort the plaintive squeak that escaped me into something like words. “F — Flash Sentry. Lieutenant Flash Sentry, of the Royal Guard —”

“Oh dear. What tragic days these must be for that honourable institution.”

“Yes!” I nodded frantically, and steeled myself for confession. “Yes, very tragic. Letting scum like me in the ranks. You see, despite what everypony thinks, I’m actually a scoundrel and a massive coward.”

“Oh?”

Sombra seemed to have taken my confession in his stride. Chalcedony less so. “He’s lying, Dread King!” she yelped. “He’s got sufficient vices to have let me lure him down here, granted, but —”

“You are interrupting our conversation, Chalcedony,” said Sombra, the words reasonable, but the tone something that could snuff cold the sun. Chalcedony immediately cowered. “Attend to drawing me out. I shall attend to conversing with the good lieutenant.”

Chalcedony rushed to obey, and her horn blazed. The veins of the rock and eyes of the carved unicorn head seethed even as they seemed to dim, and the aura around her horn built in intensity. I was aware of strange magic eddying and flowing about the other cowls, as if they were pitching in as well. Not pleasant magic either; the sort of skin-prickling stuff that would have struck me as deeply, deeply malevolent had there not been such a stiff competitor on the malevolence front demanding my attention.

Said competitor, meanwhile, turned his full attention back on me. And never mind how I knew. I just knew. Sombra’s tone flipped smoothly back to its usual sonorous awfulness. “A massive coward, you say?”

“Yes! Yes, absolutely!” I gabbled as surely no pony had gabbled before. “All these heroic deeds ponies have heard about? Lies or misunderstandings or reckless assumptions on their part! All those death-defying perilous escapades I’ve been in? I spent them all crying and trying to hide while other ponies solved things! Want a heroic type for your plans? Not it! Really and truly not it!”

Sombra absorbed this. Chalcedony’s magic continued in the background even as a strangled hiss of dismay escaped her. One of the other cowls might have snickered.

“Fascinating,” purred Sombra, at last. “Anything else you feel you should impart? You can trust me. Tell Good King Sombra.”

“Um,” I managed. This hadn’t quite produced the fury at the expense of Chalcedony and his other minions I’d been hoping for. Sombra seemed worryingly at ease about things. I prodded my sense of self-preservation for an ingenious new avenue to pursue, and it helplessly shrugged. “Er.”

“Nothing? Ah well.” The aura around Chalcedony’s horn built, thickened to the consistency of smoke, and flecks of purple and green and red flurried within it. Sombra’s voice seemed to come from both it and the stone under me at once. “Despite us being acquainted for no more than five minutes, half of which you spent discovering new throat noises, I’m very, very glad you felt you could be so honest with me, Lieutenant Sentry. It shan’t change any of the facts of your situation or future, of course. Chalcedony has done well after all. You, in and of yourself, are irrelevant. Your public image is all I require.”

“I don’t understand,” I said in a very small voice. Magic swirled in the chamber, cold and thick and cloying, emanating from Chalcedony and her follow cultists lending their own latent power to proceedings, and more and more of Sombra’s voice rang from the aura around Chalcedony’s horn. It seemed to be taking on a rough shape as well.

“Do allow a sorcerer-king to indulge in a vice befitting his position,” said Sombra, his voice rich with amusement. “Do let me tell you what your future holds.” Things leaned closer to me in the darkness, from every direction at once. “I’ve tried to replicate the pleasure through other means, rest assured, but I just find there’s nothing quite like looking into a pair of eyes, seeing the hope shining there, and snuffing it out.”

I’ve had happier conversations, I shan’t lie. I emitted a sort of strangled bleat, which Sombra seemed to take as encouragement.

“Do you see Chalcedony there? She is drawing me out from this stone — or rather, a part of my essence. One of many in addition to what my crystals held, split off in the event of a temporary setback and concealed and primed to allow my rise again. All I require is a suitable host in which I may rise. A unicorn would be preferable,” he briefly mused, “but that is not so great a hurdle to clear. What I inhabit, I mould and refashion like wet clay. All I’ll need is a little time.And what I’ll do will be so easily hidden, till I choose to unveil myself.”

“But why me?” I squawked. None of this was fun. Even judged in light of the universe’s usual habit of kicking me in the shins, this seemed especially unfair. I wanted answers. Well, no. What I really wanted was a stay of sentence. Keeping the horrible ghost-king-essence-thing talking could accomplish that until a miracle happened.

I do hate it when I have to include ‘and hope a miracle happens’ as a step in a plan.

Sombra cheerfully kept gloating. Huzzah for my plans. “You, for all you may be a degraded specimen with all the backbone and resolve of a dead worm, are believed to be a hero of Equestria. Both by Chalcedony’s judgement and your own confession. And that is acceptable. A pony thought to be a hero may go many places without exciting comment. May achieve all manner of personal audiences.” The coalescing head of Sombra loomed closer to me. I wish it hadn’t. The more defined its features became, the more It hurt to look at. “Why, they won’t be suspected of a thing. Even by the Princesses themselves.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” I choked.

Sombra laughed, the sound like tombstones being shaken about in a sack. “I would dare. I’ve dared more from much poorer positions, and prevailed more oft than not. Mighty Celestia, grim Luna, brilliant Cadence, and their latest little acolyte… they will all be blindsided, none shall see me coming. None of them. And in the chaos their absence makes, there will be nothing and nopony to stop me. Nothing to stop a black tide from the north surging south to swallow all Equestria.” His dreadful voice dropped a dreadfuller octave, relishing the words. “To swallow everything. All the world made a blank canvas for my will. And you’ll have prime vantage over it all, Lieutenant Sentry. Your eyes will see it all unfold. Don’t you feel lucky?”

In times like these, a hero stoutly declares, “You won’t get away with this, you fiend!” or something of the sort. I wibble. I accordingly wibbled.

“Dread King,” whispered Chalcedony, her voice strained and her horn burning, “pardon your servant, but we are almost ready.” The very air about her thrummed with dark promise, and a low susurration made every bit of me crawl. The other cultists chanting something under their breath didn’t help in the slightest.

“Very good, Chalcedony.” Sombra’s voice glistened — glistened, I say — with pleased anticipation. His form in the air was all but solid. “Finish things, and I shall see what our gallant lieutenant is made of.”

Flailing, blustering, whining, confessing, praying for a miracle, and crying had all availed nothing, and so I turned to my last staple: flailing with extra desperation. I thrashed at my bonds, frantically trying to loosen a rope, break a crucial strand or two, do anything that could let me bound free and fly for another continent, or the Moon**, whichever was furthest away from Sombra.

**By way of gracing this narrative with fun historical trivia, during the previously alluded-to Night of the Two Lunas, terrified court astronomers and stargazers estimated that the Moon did indeed come sufficiently close to the world that the distance between it and the surface was indeed less than that between our home continent and its neighbours. The combined effort of the two Lunas in vacuuming up the contents of the Royal Gin Cabinet beforehand may have played something of a role in this.

But it was for naught. I was held fast, helpless to do anything but watch Chalcedony’s horn flame, and see Sombra’s smile sharpen like a tiger’s, and feel the dark magic howl all about me. And all these horrible things ripped across my senses, and came screaming to a peak, and then...

And then...

And then a miracle happened.

A door at the back of the room creaked upon, a glowing rectangle of sudden salvation. And in it, candlelight bathing her in a halo-ish glow as she nosed through, there stood Carrot Top.

She wore her staff uniform and shawl still, as well as an expression of hard, suspicious scrutiny on her features. For a moment, an echoing hush prevailed as she turned her head to take in the scene — cowled cultists, Chalcedony, a spectral Sombra, yours truly in distress. She continued to steadily appraise the situation as said cultists, Chalcedony, Sombra, and self bestowed on her looks of varying shock, annoyance, and giddy relief.

Carrot Top didn’t say a word. Her form imperceptibly tensed. Her eyes narrowed by maybe around a millimetre.

It was Chalcedony who spoke first. “Garnet, if you would?” she snapped, gesturing at Carrot Top with a forehoof. One of the cowls dipped his head in acknowledgement and promptly made the most unwise decision of his life. He stepped towards Carrot Top with hostile intent.

Garnet raised one shovel-sized forehoof with the presumed intention of knocking out a maid who had stumbled across proceedings. For his trouble, one blindingly-fast forehoof smashed up into his jaw and rocketed him bipedal. He tottered in place, making no sound and gradually donning the faintly puzzled, wide-eyed expression of a stallion who’d just pulled in a fishing line and found a shark rising to meet him. He seemed a little too amazed to process his own concussion.

Then, as he stood there, yet another blindingly-fast forehoof cracked forward into an area few stallions aspire to be kicked in. My eyes watered. Even the ghostly form of Sombra might have winced. Garnet keeled over, issuing pathetic meeps, and Carrot Top stalked over him and angled herself right at Chalcedony. Her expression was unchanging, save for when she spared me a glance. And just for the briefest moment, she seemed to sigh, and soften, and mutter something under her breath.

It was hard to make out past the murk and distance, but it might have been, “I leave you alone for one minute, Flash.”

“Chalcedony, as you were. All others, at her,” snarled Sombra, and that bucked the hesitating herd of cowls to life again. They lurched at Carrot Top, some of them slipping on iron shoes or whipping out various blunt and nasty-looking implements out from under their robes, leaving Chalcedony to strain with focusing the room’s magics all by herself.

And as I thrashed at my bonds, grabbing hold of this lifeline and yanking maniacally on it like I had never yanked anything before, Carrot Top greeted the first cowl in her inimitable style. They sprang at her wildly with a club, an instrument which she swept out of the way from, kicked out of their grasp, snatched in her teeth, brought down across their skull, and then demonstrated the proper use thereof on their two friends who came tripping in the wake of the first cowl. Yowls and meaty thunks rang out like a symphony.

“A poor showing,” Sombra murmured to himself. His attention had turned away from me, thank heavens, but was instead on Carrot Top, which left me wary. “But promise, as well. Keep at it, Chalcedony.”

“Yes, Dread King,” the mare replied. She was sweating with exertion, and her horn faintly smoked as she plunged herself ever deeper into the complex, awful sorcery. I’d have been impressed at her skill if it hadn’t been demonstrated at my inevitable expense. “Almost there. Almost, almost.”

One of the ropes about my right foreleg had about a millimetre of give in it. Much-abused muscles in that leg squealed in protest as I tried to wrench it looser and yet looser, and I frantically turned to Carrot Top to see how her rescue was progressing.

Carrot Top has a rare talent. She can take even the most burly and grizzled of opponents and help them realise their dreams of becoming sopranos, whether they realised they entertained such dreams or not. At least three cowls were doing so on the ground behind her. They showed little enthusiasm for rising, and the remaining standing cowls showed scarcely more enthusiasm for getting stuck in. Carrot Top was engaged in furious hoofticuffs with one who had a bit more courage and skill than her fellows, but alas for her, not nearly enough of the latter. She was knocked spinning, and also out, just as one other cowl lunged at Carrot Top’s back to try and take her by surprise. Emphasis on try. Carrot Top wheeled on him and did something indescribably fast and violent that sent him flying. I swear he bounced off two walls before he came to a merciful stop, but before he’d even hit the first, Carrot Top was already turning to face the next gaggle. They approached her like nervous colts at a school dance, and seemed to each be unconsciously urging the others to step in first.

After a few moments of this, where it was clear nopony was plucking up their courage and Carrot Top would remain danceless, Carrot Top reached into a pocket of her uniform, and I just caught a glimpse of her throwing some black capsule at the ground beneath their hooves before the capsule exploded. Clouds of acrid black smoke erupted into the room, obscuring everypony from view and stinging my eyes. I blinked tears away as I tried to place ponies by where the splutters and coughs and scuffles were coming from. I couldn’t see a thing …

“Flash!”

And then I saw an angel, as Carrot Top poked her head up by where I was sprackled over the stone. Her green eyes gleamed up at me, and I flatter myself I saw momentary concern in them, just before she came lunging up at me with a knife. I squealed on reflex, but she paid me no heed as she adroitly slashed through my bonds. I flopped free, and tried to flex life back into my hooves as I boggled at Carrot Top. “You found me?”

“Had my suspicions of Chalcedony for a while. Noticed her absence and yours, and found two sets of hoof-steps leading down here.” She grimaced round at the room. “Somehow, what I found managed to be even worse than what I expected. This might be a Princess job, all this. Can you run?”

“Never been happier to.” And I meant it. A stallion can ignore all manner of achy hooves when the alternative’s spending more time with King Sombra.

“Good. Get up and —”

But we were interrupted. The smoke-bomb that had so kindly hidden us from view also inconsiderately hid the menagerie of unpleasantness in the room from us, and one of the last cowls came charging out from the smoke with his own club upraised. Carrot Top turned, half-a-second too slow, and his club clouted off her head. She gasped and crashed back against the stone, briefly stunned.

The cowl pressed forward, just as I desperately snapped up my own rear legs to meet him. Somehow, they connected with his neck, and he toppled back spluttering. He vanished from sight, and from mind, and I frantically tried to pull up the groggy-looking Carrot Top. “Carrot?” I prodded her, and tried to judge how best to haul her up and over my wither. “Stars, Carrot. Right, um, er. This might be a bit ungainly...”

“No, Lieutenant Sentry. This’ll be decidedly truncated.”

My least favourite voice in all the world rang out like a funeral bell at a birthday, and I reluctantly turned to see the drifting form of Sombra, looking insufferably smug and more solid than he’d ever been before. Chalcedony trailed behind him, looking exhausted and drained and as if it was a struggle to keep standing. But stand she did, and her horn simmered with the effort of sustaining her king.

He was ready to be unleashed.

I mewled high-pitched blasphemy. Carrot Top shook her head, as if trying to simply wiggle the concussion out.

“You needn’t fret, Lieutenant,” purred Sombra. His eyes glowed. “The plan has shifted somewhat. There have been Special Agents of the Crown since before even I was young, and I know one when it brawls with my followers. I know who’s every bit as likely — likelier, even — to get special access to the Princesses and all the secrets of the Equestrian state. I know who I should really inhabit.”

The bottom dropped out my gut.

“Chalcedony? Unleash me at the agent.”

Chalcedony’s magic speared at Carrot Top, the twisting, smokey shape of Sombra tearing right for her. Carrot Top tried to move aside, but too slowly, too concussedly from the knock she’d taken.

I watched, thoughts screaming like lightning through my poor, dented skull, and all I could do was …

...was...

… well. The pragmatic thing.

I’m not proud of what I did, but let me lay it out for you, and you’ll see that I had no other choice. Sombra was going to possess somepony, come what may. He was unleashed and on course towards the single most dangerous pony in that room. Once he was in her, it’d be certain death for anypony else in the vicinity, and certainer death for everypony else in the Crystal Empire and beyond, if he just had the time.

I weighed that dread certainty. I weighed it against the one and only other option that offered a glimmer of hope, a chance for freedom and safety come the end of things.

And you’ll concur, I pray, that really, all things considered and said and done, that the only sensible, self-preserving thing I could do was to throw myself right in front of Carrot Top and take the spell instead.

At least, reflecting on it all later, that’s probably how I came to that decision. Surely that’s how. It was all a bit of a blur.

Regardless, so I did. My wings flapped like clappers, and I hurled myself before Carrot Top with every ounce of strength I had. There was a surprised snarl from Sombra, a yelp from Chalcedony, and if Carrot Top reacted, I didn’t see it. Smoke crawled in through my eyes, nostrils, ears, everything, black and clotting and poisonous and heavy and rank, enough to drown in, enough to blot out the world, enough for my screams to sink unheard in, all in one ghastly moment…

...and then there was a great peace.

Being possessed is damned odd. How to describe it? It’s somewhat like being aloft on a cloud, where the cloud’s doing whatever it is wild clouds do, and you’re too blissfully at ease with things to try and interfere or weathercraft it or much of anything, even if you were able. Imagine being a flea on the back of a large dog, just watching the world bound by while you idly attended to your flea business.

Alternatively, if you don’t know that feeling, it’s a lot like that time when me and all the other Royal Guard cadets accidentally set fire to a sack of confiscated purple-ish herbs in the evidence room, and proceeded to spend the next week unable to do much more than grin inanely at ceilings and occasionally giggle. Our training sergeant saw the funny side of it. After she’d made us all weep and/or sweat blood with drilling throughout the following week, of course.

It’s not quite like all those things, but it’s close enough. I still saw through my own eyes, and had a vague notion that other things were happening to all my other senses, but it was as if all the exciting stuff in it was something on a stage, happening to somepony else. Namely, the hulking presence of a mind I was dimly aware was sharing my head with me. A bit like sharing a carriage with an exceptionally large, surly, and untrained bear. That seemed unusual, I remember thinking, but I was in a suitably serene, detached frame of mind to just live and let live.

My wings flapped. The new mind radiated vague displeasure with them. They’d keep them, but they’d sooner have a horn. Still, that could be arranged, so no matter. The body was a bit clumsy and new, like trying to fit a hoof in a shoe too small for it. It would all have to be tweaked. Streamlined. Improved.

My mouth opened, quite without my input, but no matter. “The accursed speck. He was not meant to do that,” I snarled. Goodness knows why, I thought, but why not. My mouth and this other great lump of a mind that wanted to play with it could do as they pleased. “Well,” I muttered. “It matters little.”

Behind me, I slowly, clumsily turned to inspect Chalcedony. She and the other cowls were down and out. And I turned back round to behold Carrot Top tottering upright, her gaze sharpening again. She seemed to be trembling with … fear? No. Grief? Maybe. Emotions were hard.

Rage. That was it. That was the main one.

“Let him go,” she whispered. Around the edges of that steady whisper, there flickered the promise of Hell. “Get out of him.”

I glanced her way with what seemed a disdainful, snotty sort of air. “Save your breath, agent. The fool lieutenant is mine now.” I paused then, and from the mind squatting next to mine and dominating events, I felt a spark of irritation. Apparently, my body’s vocal cords weren’t quite up to a rich, sonorous baritone. “Mine for the reshaping. Mine to use and discard as I please. All I need is time.“

“Get out of him,” Carrot Top hissed again.

“Do not bother contesting this or trying to fight me. You are not the first royal agent I’ve crossed paths with, and if you make a fuss, you will not be the first I’ve dispatched. But bend your knee, and I shall permit you to rise again in my service.”

Carrot Top was quiet for a moment then, as she breathed heavily and shook a little more sense back into her head. Then she said, quite quietly, “Time.”

Both minds in my skull could be thrown off-track by simple, declarative, apparently-unrelated words in the middle of a conversation like that. “Explain,” my mouth said.

Carrot Top took a single measured step forwards. “You said it yourself.” She shifted into a low, crouched fighting stance. “You need time.” Her eyes shone like greened steel. “Get out or get kicked out.”

Both minds chewed on that, and the mind next to me seemed to realise what she was getting at first. My body began shuffling back in a trepid sort of way and my mouth started, “Do not —”

Carrot Top hit me like the End-Times.

The following moments are something of a blur. All the unpleasantness that was happening to me was, technically, happening to another mind’s nerve endings. It made it rather hard to keep track. What I have is a series of impressions, from what my own mind vaguely registered and from what the squatting mind next to me yowled.

The first and mildest of these impressions is being kicked so hard I bounced off the ceiling.

One moment, the chamber from my standing vantage point. The next moment, my face meeting the ceiling’s stone so hard I saw I’d left cracks when I came tumbling down. Even in my detached state, I considered that somewhat curious. The other mind got so far as screaming and wondering what in Tartarus just happe— before I was seized and thrown into a wall.

Events proceeded merrily apace from there. As there didn’t seem much for my mind to do, I hummed bawdy tunes, or at least, as much of the tunes I could remember. My squatter tried to withstand Carrot Top, and didn’t. He flailed out with new, clumsy legs, and got them grabbed and twisted and pinched in the pressure points for his trouble. He tried to muster terrible magic to rend Carrot Top asunder, and achieved little but pulling a constipated expression and promptly getting kicked in it. He tried to draw upon upon ghastly, forbidden arts to warp his form and acquire a horn, and had to give up when his thought process kept getting stuck in a great morass of agony. It is damned difficult to muster and cohere your dread arcane powers whilst in the grip of a hurricane that is both made entirely out of kicks to the tender bits and which hates you.

And eventually, he stopped fighting back, and opted for a tactical withdrawal. But at this point, the legs he was using were made out of pain and jelly, and attempting to use unfamiliar wings just resulted in him bouncing face-first off the ceiling a second time. And when he fell to earth, Carrot Top was waiting for him.

She has the honour, which I’m not sure is shared with anypony, of having made King Sombra yelp for his mother.

My own mind was still engaged in the metaphorical equivalent of watching butterflies. But there was one part of it sniffing the air and frowning dubiously. My sense of self-preservation, oldest and truest of friends, was watching my back, was observing that Carrot Top was repeatedly planting a hooftip into that section of my back closest to my kidneys, and thought it best to ask her to stop that.

I tried. But confound it, the other mind still had control of my mouth. They were currently using it to offer Carrot Top a queendom of her choice if she’d just stop kicking him. Please. Pretty please. Ow ow ow. And so forth.

“Get out of him.” Carrot Top didn’t shout. She didn’t raise her tone. She spoke softly and insistently and never, ever stopped.

For my part, I just leaned on the other mind. I wanted my body back so I could chat to Carrot Top. That needed doing, so my sense of self-preservation told me. And I nudged and leaned and gently insisted that the squatter make a bit of room so I could do that.

Sombra, both in body and mind, twisted and keened, caught between a rock and an unbelievably hard place. As glorious returns went, he must have been a little underwhelmed. He turned this way and that with all the happiness and general demeanour of a chimpanzee caught in a tumble dryer, hesitated, got kicked more while hesitating, and came to a belated decision.

There came a great, dizzying, sudden emptiness in my head, and I realised he’d left the second after he did so. Smoke wreathed out all around me, dark and glittering with red-and-green motes, and thrashed about like a drunk bird. Something like a screaming pony face briefly took shape within it, but was lost the moment after.

And then, without force or direction or Chalcedony’s magic to sustain it, that particular essence of King Sombra helplessly discorporated, and was lost.

For a long, thoughtless moment, I tottered where Sombra and Carrot Top had left me, blinking and trying to get a sense of myself again. Carrot Top herself hesitantly stepped forwards, and sans any particular motive to keep standing, I found myself slumping into her forelegs.

I got a sense of myself again.

My watering eyes blinked up and beheld clear green. As if from a long way off, I heard her. “Flash? Is that you?”

Oh stars above, did I ever get a sense of myself.

“Flash?”

Every nerve ending came at me with a list of complaints all at once, and I squealed a High C before blissfully blacking out.

Chapter 4: A Glug of Laudanum

Alas, I regained consciousness.

“More laudanum please,” I wheezed. Wheezing hurt. Most things did. Little tweety birds tweeted somewhere outside my room’s window, and I would have wished they’d tweet off and die if wishing hadn’t hurt as well.

“You’ve had enough to kill a regiment,” said Carrot Top firmly. She’d seated herself at the foot of my bed, keeping an eye on me. The whole room itself was somewhere high up in the Crystal Palace, all pale colours and soft furnishings and cabinets full of supplies to help mewling convalescents like myself. “Surely you’re numb by now.”

“Not totally.” I slumped and groggily wished ill on the world and all things within it. Even my brain hurt, which I’d thought medical science had told us was impossible. “There’s such a thing as being too good at your job, you know.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was curiously soft. “I just … I didn’t know any other way to get him out of you. And if I’d run away to get help, I didn’t know how much of you would have been left to save by the time I returned. I made a choice. And I’ll see you kept supplied with laudanum. In moderation, of course. It’s the least I can do. And if it’s any consolation, my hooves are a bit bruised as well.”

“Well, when you put it like that.” The pillows under me seemed to have been made from down and woven-together dreams, but I couldn’t help but wish they were softer. “I … ach, thank you for getting me out of that. For finding me and freeing me and … er, dislodging unwelcome guests afterwards.”

“Just doing my job.” She regarded me, and then gave me a critical frown. “How much of you is there? List some things you’d like at this moment.”

“A pretty mare to coo over me, a stiff drink filling a bucket, and to sleep for a thousand years.”

“One of three isn’t bad. Count your blessings.” She reached over to tuck me in a little, would you believe. “You’ve had visitors besides me. Do you remember them?”

I didn’t. “I don’t.”

“When ponies discovered the scene, there was rather a lot of excitement,” she said dryly. “A bonafide hero of Equestria, bruised and unconscious amidst a heap of foes down in the darkest cellars, next to some grim altar from Sombra’s day, and a terrified maid who’d beheld the whole thing and was the only witness. If you’re going to insist on seeing me being kidnapped, losing no time in springing to my rescue, and valiantly spending all your strength to save me from whatever dark ritual they had planned, of course you’re going to attract some attention.”

I opened and closed my mouth a few times. “Ah,” I said. I brightened. That was another story to pin on my already shining reputation, and no mistake. The crystal ponies would likely approve. Any dignitaries who’d attended the summit, which I trusted I’d been unconscious for the entirety of, would hear the story and spread it. The name Flash Sentry would be good for a good few drinks and dalliances yet. “You’re … just letting me take the credit for setting about them all?”

“I’m a special agent, Flash,” Carrot Top replied, arching one brow. “What would I do with a limelight if one shone on me? No, you were on hoof, and you made for a good alibi. Ponies who need to know the truth know the truth, and are acting accordingly. The cultists are being questioned, or will be once they recover, and my fellow agents are rooting out anything else that may so much as vaguely look like a Sombric artefact. With any luck we’ll get them all. With any luck.“ She paused briefly. “Besides ... I felt I owed you a thank-you gift as well.”

“A thank-you gift?”

“Did my eyes deceive me, or did you gallantly jump in front of a spell meant for me?”

I paused. That didn’t sound like me, but the dim memory floated back, and I boggled at it momentarily. “I … I had selfish reasons. I must have done.”

“Must you?”

“Yes!”

She looked unconvinced. Confound the mare, not taking me at my word. It’d make you suspect she knew me. Surely she was mistaken in this case, though. Surely.

“I should leave,” she said, rising. “I’ll let the doctor know how much laudanum you’ve had, so don’t go begging for more than you ought to. And I’ll let ponies know that you’re something approaching compos-mentis. You’ll get more visitors. Some repeat visitors as well, I shouldn’t wonder.”

There was something in the way she said it, something that begged clarification. “What do you mean.”

Her expression looked playful, though there was an appraising element to it as well. “The Princesses have checked in on you. The newest one, Twilight Sparkle, she seemed especially concerned for your well-being. Any stories to share there?”

I was flummoxed, up until the wheels of memory started painfully turning. She’d concussed herself off me, I’d smiled disarmingly. Well, maybe that all made it make sense. I’d be susceptible to my smile too if I’d had a recent knock to the head, and I told Carrot Top as such.

She just smiled a faint and subtle smile, and showed exactly none of the cards close to her chest. Confound the mare. But I couldn’t let that be the parting thought as she made to leave.

“Carrot Top?” I said, and she stopped. “Again, thank you for getting me out of that.” I paused. “And giving me the credit.”

“Any time.”

“Please, no more times.” I sighed and settled back in my pillows as she smirked knowingly and left. “I just want a debauched and peaceful life. Is that so much to ask?”

And as said life happened, let me tell you, one out of two isn’t bad.

Chapter 2: A Whiff of Chloroform

A healthy imagination’s a horrible thing to possess.

Case in point, the couple of days between my arrival and the summit. At first, every shadow seemed to hold a vengeful loyalist to Sombra until inspected and found loyalist-less. Every stray glimmer from a crystal surface that had just been minding its own crystally business and reflecting nearby light sources found itself suspected of harbouring dark magics. A chambermaid who ambled into my quarters one evening to change my sheets might have been Sombra. She wasn’t, but it was a close-run thing.

I kept my outward cool, of course. Ponies would have asked questions if a national hero emitted terrified bleats all the time instead of normal discourse. But it took some doing. Trotting about with the impression that one’s back has become a target for unknown and deeply sinister forces is never good for a stallion’s ease of mind.

Glimpsing Carrot Top a few times over said days should have been somewhat reassuring. She’d usually be found somewhere in the wake of Chalcedony, who seemed to constantly drift through the palace like a very purposeful vision of loveliness, directing staff and overseeing preparations here and there, with Carrot Top close to her at most times. At least she was a source of violence and terror in my favour, should anything happen. But alas, all that did was remind my imagination that there were things out there she was on guard against.

Still, there were a few distractions on hoof, not least of which was my semi-official duty of making a good impression on the crystal ponies. That, I can claim with no false modesty, is a skill at which I excel. All I had to do was look sufficiently like the very image of Equestrian martial valour while smiling benignly enough to be approachable, and answer whatever questions the crystal ponies had while I stood on guard outside the palace or patrolled sedately here and there about the city.

They’d come up singly or in groups, I’d receive them with a Grade 3 Disarming Smile, and they’d quiz me on what had changed in the rest of Equestria since they’d fallen out of the loop (“Manehattan? Isn’t that just a couple of kelp-gatherers’ huts and a hole in the ground?”) and what had remained reassuringly samey (“Threats to all creation still as regular as the equinox, aye?”). I could answer with some authority — I’d done my research into what were and weren’t considered dangerous postings, after all — and for my trouble and in short order, found myself greeted and feted in taverns in my off-hours.

And I’ll grant them credit, their notion of what constituted entertainment was close to mine. True, their idea of a spectator sport was jousting, and their thespians wore hose and plate-sized ruffs unironically. But they played an antiquated version of backgammon that had yet to catch up to modern developments in the field of cheating, and the drink they served in their taverns was eminently drinkable for having been frozen in time for a thousand years. A few passed on rumours about yet more drinkable and venerable vintages lurking down in the palace’s own cellars. I would have thoroughly investigated said rumours before the summit. Alas there always seemed to be a pair of butlers armed with austere glances on duty, and I was obliged to withdraw on each attempt with muttered excuses about double-checking palace security.

Relations of a more conjugal nature weren’t in the offing either. The social mores of the crystal ponies still seemed to expect that prospective courters torture a lute or what-have-you outside the window of the subject of their affections before entry through said window would even be discussed. Willing though I may usually be to go to great extents to indulge my caddish vices, I just couldn’t bring myself to go that far. What’s any lute ever done to me that I should hurt it so?

And so I waited out the two days, put my talents and vices to work in keeping me distracted from the possible target on my back, and all throughout, other beings trickled into the palace to prepare for the summit. I recognised a lot of the high-and-mighty types from Canterlot and environs, as well as representatives from the territories, and even a few foreign types. Sleek and well-groomed ponies, griffons, buffalos, minotaurs, zebras, all sorts … as well as, most saliently, the Princesses and Element Bearers themselves the day before the summit.

I announced the latter when they arrived at the palace that day, though didn’t stay long after, in order to urgently pursue practising my legerdemain at the expense of what had hitherto been a perfectly fair game of backgammon in a tavern several streets away. Further path-crossing occurred, though, and it occurred shortly after tomorrow dawned. The day of the summit itself.

It dawned so innocently, as well.

I’d just roused myself from early-morning delirium, thoroughly polished and strapped myself into my dress barding, and ambled out on my rounds. On one of the upper floors, there was a commotion in the direction of a room that I’d clocked before — host to a dusty old mirror and little more — and I sidled my way there. It never hurts to be aware of any possible danger before it becomes aware of you, after all.

I rounded a corner in the corridor and stood for a moment to get my bearings, at which point Equestria’s newest princess collided into me skull-first. Mutual yelps rang out and she fell back. Gallantry-enhancing instincts which ran slightly deeper than my marrow kicked smoothly in, and I leaned in to help Princess Twilight to her hooves, giving her a medium dose of the Grade 5 Winning Smile as I did so.

She looked up with … recognition, possibly? It surely couldn’t have been affection, it hadn’t been a Grade 7 Smile or anything like potent enough to get that sort of reaction, and I hunted about for something smooth and disarming. Something occurred. “We've got to stop bumping into each other like this.”

Sometimes, I awe even myself. I trotted on in a suitably guardly manner, aware of conversation breaking out at my back between her, Cadence, and the other Element Bearers. Cheerful enough incident. One day, I presumed, I’d regale a whole litter of grandfoals about that time a princess concussed herself off me. But the fact that the whole group had apparently been trotting from the mirror room filled me with some trepidation. What was the significance of the mirror?

Once I was sure I was out of sight of the group, I lurched back into my wary sidle. If it had been a mirror that had just received the attention of all of them, then true, it wasn’t likely there was anything sinister about it. But look where that logic had gotten me so far.

I crept up to the room in question, and carefully craned my head round the ajar door. There stood the mirror, looking suitably mirror-y**. Other than that, nothing out of the ordinary, which is always a suspicious sign.

**Though Flash Sentry appears not to comment on it or to have joined the dots on this occasion, the object of the discussion is the dimension-bridging Crystal Mirror itself. Said artifact features regularly in the Times of Twilight as the cause of so many incidents too well-known and convoluted to be worth detailing here, such as the short-lived Sirenny, or the Night Of The Two Lunas. As somepony still in the process of preparing forthcoming memoirs for publication, let me assure you that Flash’s own perspective on the latter episode is a fascinating one.

I held my breath, wings tensed and ready to send me flapping away in the safest possible direction as soon as danger threatened, and kept a wary eye on the mirror. And I just about managed to not shriek when a soft voice at my side burred, “Inspecting the premises, Lieutenant Sentry?”

I whipped my head round, and was rewarded with the sight of Chalcedony. Trepidation vanished, to be replaced with happy gurgling from the atavistic inner stallion. I suppressed said gurgles, as well as the urge to find and clout a lesser stallion to prove my excellence as a partner, and nodded respectfully. “Good day, Chalcedony. Another round of security checks before the summit shan’t hurt anypony.”

She laughed brightly, the sound of it comparable to a clear mountain stream if you’re one of these soppy gits who thinks in terms of mountain streams and such. “Such diligence. We are all in very safe hooves, it is plain. How heartening to have you here.”

Parsed through antiquity though it may have been, I could tell when somepony was trying to lay it on with a trowel, and those nights where a lack of lute-tormenting skill had kept me lonesome now looked considerably more distant. Still best to play it smoothly, though. “Only doing my duty, Chalcedony.”

Chalcedony smiled, her velvet-dark eyes glittering like something a princess would wear about her brow. “Duty becomes you, Lieutenant Sentry.” She glanced from side to side, and then beckoned me with a hoof. “Please, trot with me for a spell. I have my own checks to make before the day’s events, and your company would assist greatly.”

“Oh? Well, I’d be happy to help, ma’am.” I glanced briefly back towards the mirror, and then fell in happy lockstep beside Chalcedony. The white robes she wore, I noticed, glimmered as if inlaid with enchantments and silvery thread. She turned to me as we trotted on.

“One of our old mysteries, that mirror,” she remarked. “The Crystal Empire has many of them. Mysteries made in days long past, the very names of their makers dust, their lore contested. We know not what the mirror does.” Her expression shifted for a moment, as if steel doors behind it had slammed shut. “Wiser and crueler minds tried to unravel its secrets as well. Do you think your princess has just succeeded where they failed?”

I shrugged. “If anypony could, I believe she could. She’s got form for uncovering ancient mysteries and sometimes saving Equestria into the bargain.”

“Ah, just so. Heroes abound. What a happy age we have awoken in.” Chalcedony sighed as we passed through the doorway leading down a spiralling stairway. The dark blue crystal walls and steps glimmered about us, specks of light glittering in them like captive constellations. Our hoofsteps echoed as we descended. “Lieutenant Sentry, may I confess something to you?”

“By all means.”

She leaned closer to me, all but whispering her next words, and I was achingly aware of the honeysuckle perfume she wore. “I have tried to unravel you. Learn what warranted your arrival here, your exaltation as a hero of Equestria. And I confess … I am delighted by what I found. You were truly so instrumental during the Battle of Canterlot?”

“I did my modest part.” Out the rote words came. “Other ponies served with much more distinction and courage, and they deserve the recognition I’ve received and more.”

Chalcedony clapped her forehooves mid-trot and beamed, and managed to not tumble down the stairs with sheer poise alone. “The gallant response. I am not easily fooled, Lieutenant.” She laughed. “It has been a long week for me, such a long and busy week, but I am still sharp enough to pick up on that much.”

“I sympathise, though I doubt I’ve been kept anywhere near as busy as yourself.” I added a touch more bashfulness to the smile. “Really, though, you give me too much credit.”

“Not enough, I feel. And please, you must not diminish yourself. We have spent so, so long a time in darkness, without valiance, without hope. And when it comes again to deliver us from our oppressor...” She leaned closer yet, her dark eyes glimmering, her face near enough that I felt her breath brush across my snout. “...why, it intoxicates.”

I had never picked up a lute in my life, and thank the stars, it looked like I would get to keep up that good habit. “I can only imagine what it must feel like.”

“I wish to share something of the feeling. Are you going to ask where I am leading you?”

“I live to oblige, ma’am. Where are you leading me?”

“To our wine cellar.”

Some part of my unconscious mind perked its ears up and tried to scream a warning, but was overruled by my hindbrain. As it was concerned, Hearthswarming and my birthday had both just come early. “Oh dear. Will I be mugged there?”

She laughed. “If you wish. But I rather had the idea that, in this window of time before the summit, and before the butlers must start uncorking the choicest bottles, I show you a vintage I’m rather partial to.”

“You have my interest”

“I propose we share it, Lieutenant … or Flash, rather? If I may call you Flash? We share it, and see where things take us.”

Whatever train of thought I might have had before all this was sent plunging merrily into a chasm of pure excitement, and only the shreds of whatever conscious thoughts I had going kicked in hard enough to make me ask, “Not that I’m not very, very intrigued by your proposition, Chalcedony, and not that I’ve every bit as keen as you to put it into motion … but what’s brought this on?”

“Because it’s been a very busy week for both of us, and a moment’s relaxation wouldn’t go amiss. Because I do very much like you yourself and what you represent.” Chalcedony smile was positively vulpine. “And because we will be obliged to be respectable and presentable for the entirety of a summit today, and what madpony would ever undertake that completely sober?”

Sound answers on every front. I let myself be led down the winding length of the stairway, and in hardly any aeons at all, we emerged into the wine cellars though a discreet entryway. A veritable maze of towering wine racks rose around us, spidering off into corridors and sub-sections wherein I could only presume minotaurs roamed. Little lights glimmered and drifted into the dark crystal ceiling over our heads, illuminating the rows of dusty dark bottles on every side.

Not a sound to be heard. Chalcedony had been right; the butlers must have been limbering up elsewhere before getting stuck into the day’s uncorking. Regardless, I spoke in a whisper. “My word, it’s like trotting into a connoisseur's fantasy.”

“The old lords of the Crystal Empire were assiduous about keeping this place well-stocked. Our king less so, though he never made much use of it. Come, this way.” She beckoned me on. I tried my best to look as though I wasn’t admiring all the age-old vintages on either side, and most likely failed miserably.

Round a crooked bend, and past yet more towering wine racks, and round yet more corners to the point where I suspect the geometry of this place was starting to eat itself, when Chalcedony said, “Here.” I stopped and looked at what she’d pointed at. In one low-down part of the rack, there rested what seemed like a fairly nondescript bottle to my eyes — made of crystal, like much else here, and alive with the light glittering in hundreds of little facets. She seemed avid though, and she drew it out with her magic and sighed as she uncorked it with one smooth motion.

“Finest and most delectable Aetherwine, Flash.” Chalcedony met my gaze. “I can assume you have a taste for older vintages?”

“Oh, that you can.”

“And perhaps I may offer you a scent?”

“That you most certainly may.” She smiled deeply, and hovered the bottle over to me.

And what sweet bouquet tantalised my nose, as she wafted the bottle by my nostrils?

As she abruptly jammed it right up one of said nostrils?

As I spluttered and released my breath with sudden alarm, reflexively wheezing more in?

As she blurred forward to kick me right in my chest and knock me to the ground, thus redoubling my wheezing?

Why, of course it was a good guff of chloroform.

“Stars above,” I heard Chalcedony murmur before the black walls of the world closed in. “That actually worked.”

It wasn’t the first time I’ve awoken to find myself bound and helpless before some other party — indeed, events of that nature led to me getting into this whole mess — and it perhaps wasn’t the most compromising of such positions I’ve ever found myself in. But it was certainly far from the most enjoyable, and when groggy consciousness set in, unconsciousness turned out to have had a lot to recommend it.

First things first, the sensation of ropes secured fast about all my hooves, forcing me spreadeagled and face-up over what felt like a rough stone surface. I blinked blearily, and as lights swam into focus, I found myself into a dark stone chamber, surrounded by half-a-dozen cowled ponies.

It wasn’t the most prepossessing chamber I’ve ever been in. The dark crystalline walls glimmered red, like a section of the night sky that was playing host to all the supernovas, and the cowls around me cut terrible silhouettes against them.

My gaze rose, though my neck creaked terribly, and I saw more of the stone I’d been laid upon. The rough surface under me swept up into something like a ship’s prow, only more awful. A jag like the head of some primal unicorn curved out from its top, hanging several metres over me, all sketchy angles and crude details. The dark material of the stone itself was something like granite, infused well with obsidian, and lined here and there with glittering red veins.

I didn’t mewl just yet. Instead, for all the use it did, I forced myself to swallow and stare at the cowled types surrounding me. “What on earth is this?” I croaked. “What do you all think you’re doing?”

The foremost of the cowled figures ambled forwards and shrugged back their own cowl. Fire-orange light coursed up around a horn, illuminating the lovely features of Chalcedony. “Everypony,” she said, “behold. A hero of Equestria.”

“Show-off,” one of the miscellaneous cowls muttered.

“Stint your clep,” Chalcedony replied sweetly, “and lend your aid. I have tracked him. Observed him and his vices. And now he is ours, and shortly, he shall be our Dread King’s. His will be done.”

“I’ll be who’s what-now?” I said tremblingly, before trying to recover some of my heroic form. “Some fine crowd you are, tying up a pony! Any of you got the guts to untie me, eh?”

One happy day, some adversary of mine will take me up on that. Alas, Chalcedony rolled her eyes. “You will be untied soon enough. For given definitions of you. And we shall see what our sovereign shall make of you.”

The orange light around her horn blazed, as all the cowled conglomerate raised their voices in a low drone and ignited various horns under their own hoods. A stream of light coursed out from Chalcedony and glowed about the unicorn-shaped head looming over me.

“You’d all be advised to surrender yourselves over to the Princesses right now!” I barked, suppressing a high-pitched edge to my tone that threatened to intrude in. “Untie me now, and I’ll attest kindly on your behalf, but do not —”

From the stone under and above me, there came a cold, sonorous growl. The crimson veins seethed, flecks of unco magic broiling in their depths. And as Chalcedony’s magic sunk into it, aided by her fellows, there rumbled forth a voice.

And that voice was ...

Cold. Cold as the slopes of Hell; deep, deep as the unsounded nothingness past the stars; melodious as a pampered orchestra; and finally, rich and confident as a conqueror assaying their new continent. Imagine diving into a frigid swimming pool of pure, dark, unadulterated chocolatey smug, and what it might say if it could talk.

...Reader, you attempt a suitable metaphor for the voice of King Sombra himself.

And what Sombra himself purred was this: “Salutations. You must be my vessel.”

At that point, as it seemed entirely warranted, I started mewling.