"A describing part is coming up."
“Light your arrows for Faust’s sake. LIGHT YOUR ARROWS!” The captain was shouting orders for all he was worth, barely making himself heard over the freezing whirlwind of the attacking Windigos. Every inch of his exposed hide stung from the freezing rain pelting down on both him and on the patrollers under his command who were dipping their crossbows into a supply of feebly burning tar before firing them into the air at the spectral seigers. But the howling winds made the shots go wide, and just audible over his own chattering teeth, the captain heard cries of his troop beginning to panic.
Shining Armor glanced up from the page at Flurry Heart, still tucked into bed. “Why’d ya stop?” she peeped.
“Flurry, where’d you say you got this book again?”
The junior Princess rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say where I got it,” she answered. “But you said to mom earlier that if you had to read The Big Bad Drake and the Three Little Colts to me one more time, you were going to fall on your own spear and not bother to make it look like an accident. So I picked a new story for tonight.” Flurry was kneading her hooves on the blanket restlessly. “C’mon, it has an interesting picture on the front and everything. Plus… plus I thought you might like how there are guard ponies in it.”
Shining Armor raised an eyebrow. The ‘interesting picture’ was a hideous gorgon-like unicorn with The Tale Of Maredusa stamped on the cover beneath it. The novel had no plot synopsis on the back, so the only way Flurry could know about the guard pony characters was if she read at least a little of it ahead of time. Her nervous kneading was still going on the blanket that was pulled defensively up to her chin. This wasn’t her normal bedtime behavior, and Shining Armor sensed something on his daughter’s mind. Something that had to do with the book. Feeling a bit more nervous than he hoped was necessary, Shining Armor turned the page and continued.
This wasn’t the first Windigo attack the castle had experienced, but it was definitely the most ferocious. They always seemed to appear when the guards were bickering, never when they were at the ready. If he had time, the captain would have paused to curse what an unlucky colt he was. But he didn’t have time. As a particularly confident Windigo swooped near the wall, using its tailwind to extinguish every patroller’s torch at once, the captain knew what he had to do. He had to open the hen house.
Shining Armor turned the page and stole another glance at Flurry Heart. Her eyes were closed. “I’m not asleep,” she informed him. “Just imagining.”
“Okay, sweetie. I’ll keep going if you wan-”
“Keep going.”
“You!” the captain yelled at the nearest rank-and-file. The subordinate seemed not to hear him, being too busy knocking his flint-tipped hoofguards together, trying desperately to reignite the battlement torch next to him. Grunting in frustration, the captain staggered over the rapidly forming ice sheets covering the walkway, grabbed the surprised subordinate by the ear and led him a few slippery paces away from the other guardcolts. “I’m going to be right back,” he yelled over the now deafening blizzard that was descending on the castle. “Coming through here-” he stopped directly above a trapdoor and flung it open with his teeth. “And when I do, I need you to hold it open and help who I’m with up the ladder.” The subordinate nodded, too cold and frightened to speak.
“Do NOT move from this spot until I return, soldier.” With a slam of wood on stone, the Captain disappeared inside.
As if it had been waiting for the subordinate to be left alone, a Windigo promptly dive bombed him, phasing through the young buck and making him drop to his knees from the sheer shock of contact. The subordinate’s head swam and he numbly wondered if that Windigo was the same brash attacker who extinguished the torches earlier, or if every one of the ghosts were getting braver now that it was obvious the ponies were outmatched. He snapped back to awareness after another guard yanked him up again, his eyes wild and his smile flashing giddily in the gloom.
“Cap went to openthe henhouse didn’t he? Oh yes. Oh YES! These freezing pests are gonna get it now! Ha ha ha. HA HA HA!”
Something surged in the subordinate. Whether it was hope or fear, he couldn’t say. He had no idea what those codewords meant, but they’d gotten his blood pumping and he was grateful for the pushback against his freezing numbness.
“C’mon,” the other patroller shouted, dropping his crossbow and stomping his own flint-tipped hoofguards on the stone excitedly. “The wall torches need lit again. She’s gotta be able to see.” With a determined nod, the subordinate raised his foreleg to the nearest mounted torch. His companion bumped hooves with him forcefully enough to send a spark shooting out, reigniting the light and allowing them to see each others’ triumphant faces. It also attracted the attention of the other guards who had been scattered and isolated all around the walkway by the still circling Windigos.
“Buddy up and get the lights back on!” the subordinate’s companion exalted over the din. “Cap’s opening the henhouse!”
The other guards didn’t need to be told twice, each dropping their weapons and hastily grabbing a partner to get to work. The Windigos continued their dive bombing, but with the guards out of formation and rushing around unpredictably, very few attacks connected. And those that did were shrugged off by the hot-blooded recipient. Help was coming. Monstrous, magical help that only the oldest guards had seen in action before. A collective haze of apprehensive confidence swelled around the wall patrol, getting stronger with every lit torch. The subordinate was certain his eyes were playing tricks on him, but now the Windigos seemed to be the ones breaking formation and getting more frenzied as they thrashed against the growing heat of the soldiers’ camaraderie.
Then, the trapdoor that the captain had left though slammed open again.
“Read this next part slowly.”
“Hm?” Shining Armor’s attention was startled back to Flurry Heart, who’d rolled over without his notice and was now facing the bedside lamp. Her eyes were still closed.
“A describing part is coming up. Read it a little slower,” the junior Princess requested again. Shining Armor nodded more for his own benefit than Flurry’s.
Suddenly remembering his orders to help the captain’s mystery recruit up the ladder, the subordinate broke off from the others, galloping along the wall and skidding across the ice to a stop next to the opening.
Then he gasped at the monster of a mare that was emerging.
An impossibly thick tangle of snakes, thicker than even the mightiest dreadlocks of a decorated zebra warrior, sat where the monster mare’s mane should have been. For supposedly cold-blooded animals, they seemed highly animated and aggressive even in the Windigo-induced tempest, nipping defiantly at the air and surveying every direction with their black, empty eyes.
The monster mare’s skin was unpleasant, even darker and rougher-looking than the stones of the castle she was presently pressing with her cracked hooves to ease herself upward. Frightened but committed to following his orders, the subordinate gingerly laid a foreleg under the monster mare’s barrel to help her out of the trapdoor like he was some devilish imp helping an escaping demon claw its way out of Tartarus. Touching the monster mare confirmed she was hairless, but a bit more leathery than her rock-like appearance suggested. A guttural noise halfway between a snort and a grunt issued from her muzzle, which seemed to be something of a ‘thank you.’ As the subordinate helped the monster mare to standing position at last, the wind parted her mane of vipers for a moment, allowing the subordinate to see by torchlight that an impossibly thick blindfold was covering the monster mare’s eyes. Guess that explained why she needed help up the ladder.
“Henhouse open!” The captain barked as he climbed up from the hole as well. “Cockatrice on the loose!” A cheer went up among the guards, prompting a fresh thrash from the Windigos and a thin, curiously nervous smile to appear on the monster mare’s muzzle.
“Eyes on the floor,” the captain barked. “She’s coming your way!”
Like a pack of trained attack dogs, the snakes that made up the monster mare’s mane tore at the back of her blindfold, startling the subordinate into stepping back behind her. Then the fabric finally fell away, allowing the monster mare to tilt her head back, gaze into the cluster of Wendigos overhead, and open fire.
A glowing grey beam swept through the ranks of the spectral attackers, turning their intangible bodies into very tangible and very HEAVY lumps of stone. The howls of the wind became howls of alarm as solidified statues that used to be Windigos began plummeting to the ground. Eldritch though they were, the remaining Windigos screeched in what could only be interpreted as panic. Never had they ever encountered another single creature that was capable of threatening them. When the first of their petrified pack smashed to pieces on the cobblestones outside the castle keep, a collective whinny of mortal fear went up among the abominations and they attempted to disperse. They split up and began rocketing off in different directions like the spokes of a wagon wheel, and while several succeeded in escaping to the horizon, more -very many more- were caught by the monster mare’s expertly sweeping eye beam and turned from fleeing phantoms to soaring stone projectiles that summarily smashed into the open fields of the surrounding countryside. Come morning, their fractured remains would serve as immortal reminders of the victory won by the ponies and their terrible living weapon.
With the magically-conjured snow clouds above beginning to disperse, the monster mare was allowed enough evening light to cut power to her gaze so she could look around and survey her work. Shattered remains of Windigos littered the parts of the walkway, miraculously seeming to have missed landing on anypony. Most of the guards still had their eyes covered or were consciously facing away, the only exception being the dumbfounded subordinate still standing next to the monster mare. They each flinched upon making eye contact with each other, the subordinate in surprise that he wasn’t petrified on the spot, and the monster mare because she noticed the captain lying on the walkway between them, a gruesome dent in his helmet. Seems somepony had been hit after all.
“Cap!” the subordinate cried. He was on his knees in an instant, putting his head to his superior’s chest and straining to hear any hint of heartbeat from over the pounding in his own blood and the stomping of the approaching other troops alerted by his yell. “Get him inside!” somepony yelled, and the subordinate was roughly yanked away. “To the medicine wing!” A low groan escaped from the captain as he was hoisted up, and the subordinate blew out heavily at the confirmation his liege was still alive.
Flurry Heart coughed quietly and Shining Armor paused.
“Need some water, sweetie?”
“Maybe after this chapter.”
“Are you su-”
“I’m sure.”
The wall was a whir of activity around the subordinate as the other troops either assisted carrying the captain away, returned to their posts, or worked to heave rubble that used to be Windigos over the edge of the battlements. An older watchpony nudged the subordinate as he passed by, grunting and nodding towards the monster mare. She was standing off by herself, head down and looking very forlorn having been deprived of her handler. Swallowing nervously, the subordinate made his way over to her.
“Uh… do you… should I take you back inside?” he asked.
The monster mare nodded meekly. She still wasn’t looking up, which given what her eyes were able to do, was probably a good thing.
“Yeah. Great. Um… do you just.. follow behind me, or-” a trio of the monster mare’s snake tresses extended and clamped gently on the subordinate's uniform lapel. Seeing them up close, he now noticed they weren’t vipers at all, and more reminiscent of the harmless garter snakes that roamed the palace gardens and ate bugs that would have brought blights to the plants living there.
“Um… I guess we’re off,” the subordinate announced, more to the snakes than to the monster mare as he took a few test steps to confirm their grip on his uniform was solid. The monster mare trailed behind like a foal, as if all her bluster from earlier fled along with the Wendigoes she’d defeated. “There’s a parapet door on the other side of this puddle,” the subordinate announced. “Care… careful not to slip, now.”
It really was amazing how quickly the enchanted ice on the castle walls was melting. Between the evening heat and bustle of the other guards hoisting smashed remnants of Wendigo statues over the battlements, it wouldn’t be long until there was no sign of a battle at all. The subordinate was about to heave open the door that led to the inner hallway when it suddenly swung open and the two guards who’d carried off the captain slogged back through. Neither spoke, but both gave the monster mare a wide berth and one gave her a glance more furious than the one she herself had given to the invaders earlier.
Then the door swung shut, leaving the subordinate and the monster mare alone in the corridor. There was no movement other than the mounted tapestries still settling after the sudden gust of outside air. And there was no noise other than the monster mare’s shameful sniffles.
“I hurt Captain Bucephalus,” she rasped in a far smaller and delicate voice than the subordinate would have expected. “And everyone saw it.” One of her snake dreads that wasn’t clamped on the subordinate’s jacket coiled to her still-downcast eyes and wiped away a tear with its forked tongue.
“Oh jeez, miss. Please don’t cry.” It barely registered in the subordinate’s mind that the monster mare was apparently capable of speech. “Not everypony saw it. I didn’t, at the very least.”
The monster mare’s crying got noticeably louder and one of her dreads fixed the subordinate with a withering look that could only be interpreted as saying “Nice work, dumbflank.”
The subordinate looked around helplessly. He’d been stationed at this satellite castle for almost six moons and fought off plenty of Windigo assaults in that time. Never once, not in training and certainly not while idly chatting with the other soldiers, had he ever heard anything about a snake haired monstrosity that was apparently their ace-in-the-hole against unwinnable fights. How in Equestria had he ended up saddled with looking after her? While she was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, no less?
“I heard some… I heard somepony say Cap was getting taken to the medicine wing,” the subordinate ventured cautiously. “I bet… heh heh. I bet the head alchemist is whipping up a big poultice for him right now. Would you want us to go visit them?” This was good. The head alchemist was the closest thing this castle had to a pony in charge. He could give the subordinate orders. He could tell him what to do.
“I’m Doctor Petrus’s biggest failure,” the monster mare quietly confessed. “Don’t make me face him. Not after what I just did. Please…” her voice was trembling. “Please take me back to the dungeon. Where I belong.”
“Er, right,” the subordinate deferred, looking around again. “I uh… I haven’t actually been down there before, so from where we are right now, I uh… don’t exactly know-”
The monster mare grunted in frustration and took the lead, her snakes releasing the subordinate's lapel and bouncing gently as she trotted ahead of him down the hall. The subordinate hurried after her. Fast enough to keep up, but not so fast as to walk side by side with the monster mare. She’d raised her head again and the subordinate still wasn’t sure how safe it was to see her eyes. He opted to keep his gaze firmly on her back as they continued down sloping corridors towards the castle sub basement. Curiously, the monster mare’s attention was on the painted portraits passing by.
“So that’s how they’re looking these days,” she murmured.
“Hm? Oh! You mean the royal family. Yeah. The main castle is always getting new pictures commissioned, so the captain makes sure our satellite castle gets all the old ones that are rotated out. He says it's good for everyone here to always remember who we’re fighting for.” The subordinate frowned. “Wait, you’ve never seen these before? Almost every hallway is full to the brim with them.”
“Captain Bucephalus keeps me blindfolded outside of my cell,” the monster mare reminded him icily. “Unless he wants me to... destroy… somethi…” The monster mare stopped walking and her breathing quickened. But with excitement this time, not fear. “All the old portraits that got rotated out?” she rasped.
“S-sure, as far as I know. The oldest ones are down in the Northwest Wing-”
The monster mare took off with incredible speed for her crooked build, and the subordinate scrambled to keep up. His heavy armor and still lingering exhaustion from the battle with the Windigoes began to make him fall behind, but after the monster mare rounded a corner out of sight, the subordinate felt a surge of panic. He couldn’t fathom what punishment would come down on him if the monster mare escaped while under his watch, and he desperately didn’t want to find out.
Sucking wind, the subordinate skidded around the corner and crashed directly into his quarry. Both of them hit the ground in a heap, and the subordinate was babbling an apology before the monster mare shrugged him off and stood on her hinds, forelegs against the wall to get the best view possible of the picture she’d been staring at when he’d caught up to her. From an extremely unflattering position on his back, the subordinate also peered at the seemingly innocuous picture, trying to discern the significance. It was old even by Northwest Wing standards, and the subordinate struggled to even recognize the filly displayed. She wasn’t the queen. She wasn’t either of the three princesses who’d survived to adulthood and had their own estates now. By process of elimination, the subordinate reckoned the rosy-cheeked unicorn foal had been Princess Pullet, may Faust rest her soul. Everypony in the kingdom, nobles and serfs alike, remembered where they were when news of little Princess Pullet’s death reached them. The subordinate had been a yearling, barely a paige-in-training at the time, browsing market stalls for his liege’s favorite armor polish when the town crier, an aging pegasus whose whinny was even more haggard than usual, swooped by.
“Hear here! News from the capital! Princess Pullet attacked by escaping flock of cockatrice from the palace hunting grounds!”
The colt who would one day go on to become a royal guard had laid awake in bed that night, horrified imaginings of Princess Pullet’s last living moments playing through his head. She’d been the youngest and most beloved of the four royal daughters, and for her to be the one to suffer such a terrible fate…
Everypony knew how cockatrices fed. They ambushed their prey, turning the helpless animal to stone then pecking the ex-pony apart with their monstrous beaks. No cure was known for a cockatrice’s stare. A petrified pony was a dead pony, as far as anyone knew. There had certainly been rumors after Princess Pullet’s death though. Wild, whispered rumors that a statue her size, horribly marred with pecks from feral beasts, was seen smuggled out of the castle in the days afterwards. On top of that, the profane cargo was allegedly accompanied by…by...the subordinate’s eyes widened.
By a youthful Doctor Petrus, the king’s personal alchemist.
The monster mare reached one of her scarred, pitted hooves up to the portrait of Princess Pullet to lay it on the filly’s flawless, porcelain cheek.
“You can take me back to my cell now,” she finally choked out. “But please… please let me take this one with me. I nev-” she swallowed a painful sounding sob. “I never thought I’d see my real face again.”
Shining Armor shut the book, feeling drained. Thank the Goddess that line had been the end of the first chapter. He set the book down on the bed and Maredusa continued glowering up at him from her place on the cover.
“This isn’t a book for foals,” Shining Armor finally announced. “I’m sorry Flurry, but we won’t be reading any more of this. I’ll try to find another story for tomorrow night.” He moved to collect the horror novel but a gold aura swiped it away from him and didn’t fade until the book had levitated into its owners front hooves. Flurry Heart hugged the book that had upset her tightly to her chest, trembling but determined.
“I wanna finish it,” she insisted. “I wanna know how Maredusa’s story ends.”
“No,” Shining Armor answered firmly. “You’re already upset as it is. Give me the book and I’ll put it up somewhere.”
“Don’t take her away! She’s a Princess like me who needs her happy ending told. I need us to get there. I need to know things end up good for her!”
Shining Armor remembered how eager of a reader his sister Twilight had been when they were young. How after exhausting every kiddie book in the nursery, she’d snuck into her brother’s room and pulled a thin book off the shelf at random, hungry for something new. Shining Armor found her on his rug several hours later, sobbing over the open novelette: Twilight had been unlucky enough to grab Of Mice And Mares, a story Shining Armor’d had to read for school several years earlier. Its ending was a gut punch for sure, but nothing compared to the gut punch of coming home to see his baby sister bawling her eyes out over a story she was too young to understand. Shining Armor wasn’t going to live through that again with Flurry.
“There are some things little fillies just aren’t ready to read,” Shining Armor tried to explain as he reached to pry The Tale of Maredusa away from his innocent daughter’s grasp. Her response was simply to grip it tighter.
“I’m plenty ready! I am, I am! I know how Windigoes only attack bad ponies, and since Maredusa made them go away that means she’s a good pony! I even noticed the names! Pullet is old Ponish for ‘chicken‘, and Petrus is old Ponish for ‘rock,’ and... and...Captain Bucheph- Captain Bee-yoo-seh…”
“Flurry, you’re babbling. Besides, there’s a difference between being smart enough to read a book and being ready. It’s late. It’s very late and neither of us are in any state to talk about this. So please,” the king of the Crystal Empire ignited his horn and a pink aura surrounded Flurry’s prize. “Give me the book.”
“You can’t!” Flurry blurted as she rose off the bed slightly, refusing to let go even if it meant she was getting lifted too. “I need her! I don't care if the ending ends up being bad, it’s better than no ending at all! Don’t put her on a shelf and tell me to forget her!”
“Maredusa isn’t a real pony!” As a rule, Shining Armor almost never raised his voice against his daughter. But it was pushing midnight on a Wednesday and instead of lying calmly under the covers, Flurry Heart had all four of her legs wrapped around the suspended novel, wide-eyed and desperate to be subjected to more of the contents' harsh imagery. To say Shining Armor’s temper was running short was an understatement. “Let go of the damn book!” he ordered, shaking it a few times and finally overcoming Flurry’s feeble grip. She flopped onto the bed, but was back on her hooves in an instant, rearing up, eyes full of impotent fire.
Then after taking a few clumsy steps forward, Princess Flurry Heart punched her father in the face.
The blow barely glanced off Shining Armor’s nose and hardly had more force behind it than being hit with a ball of tissue paper. But it still surprised him enough to drop The Tale of Maredusa into Flurry Heart’s desperate hooves. Beating her wings, Flurry retreated to the farthest corner of her bedroom and cowered against the wall like a hunted animal.
Still not quite emotionally recovered from getting tapped, Shining Armor regarded Flurry without speaking. She was holding The Tale of Maredusa between him and herself as if it was a shield. She looked like Shining Armor imagined the helpless guards under siege by the Windigoes had looked like before Maredusa appeared to save them. And what did he look like to Flurry Heart? What was Big Bad Dad’s role in this story?
He thought of the unnamed king in the novel. How he’d decided to trust the alchemist and surrender the petrified Princess Pullet on the off chance that a cure could be found. And while the result was a terrible thing, Maredusa’s new life was still infinitely better than if she’d just been left encased in stone. Stories needed endings, even those endings turned out to be unhappy. And hey, Maredusa’s story wasn’t over yet, right? Unlikely though it was, perhaps the novel did end with her curse being broken.
“Okay Flurry,” Shining Armor said after what felt like an eternity. “I think I understand how you feel now. If you really want to, we can read more of the book tomorrow.”
Flurry Heart swallowed and lowered her makeshift shield slightly. “You promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to fly,” Shining Armor lilted. To his relief, Flurry seemed to find the Pinkie Promise convincing. She made a point of tucking Maredusa’s story on a far shelf before flapping back to her bed so Shining Armor could tuck her in.
“I’m leaving it over there so neither of us read ahead,” she explained.
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m really sorry I hit you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Please, dad. I am.”
Shining Armor bent down and smooched his daughter on the nose. “I know you are, kiddo. And I’m sorry I tried to take Maredusa away from you. Just like when she herself hit the captain, I know you didn’t mean it.”
Getting compared to the antihero monster mare made Flurry Heart’s tired eyes sparkle with excitement and Shining Armor gave himself a mental pat on the back for that one.
“Alright, I think that about does it for the night,” he said pacing to the doorway and laying a hoof on the lightswitch. “One last thing though. You didn’t answer me earlier: Where did you get your hooves on this book?”
Flurry rolled over to stare at the ceiling, embarrassed. “Please don’t be mad at her, but… it was from Scootaloo.”
“The personal tutor I hired?!”
Flurry giggled. “Yeah, I showed her all the stories I had and asked her what her favorite was and she said it and I asked if she had it and she did, so she brought it yesterday-”
“Alright, don’t wind yourself up again, kiddo. It’s supposed to be bedtime, remember.”
“Oh. Okay. Night, dad!”
“Good night, kiddo.”
Shining Armor hit the lights and pulled the door shut behind him. Then he trotted off to his study to pen a letter to Twilight. If anypony knew whether The Tale of Maredusa was a worthwhile read, it would be her. And even if she didn’t know, he still felt like catching up. Maredusa was just a character in a story. The ponies in Shining Armor’s life though, they were real. Real enough to send polite correspondence to Scootaloo and tell her to please keep her taste in literature to herself in the future.
Shining Armor blew out heavily and thanked his lucky stars the wily tutor’s favorite book hadn’t turned out to be Of Mice and Mares.
Author's Note
Surprise! this story is a loose sequel to Idol. Precocious, emotional Flurry continues to be best Flurry.
EIdol
An older, mellower Scootaloo relocates to the Crystal Empire, tasked with tutoring a jumpy junior Princess. She's either the worst pony for the job or the ONLY pony for the job. There is no in-between.
Casketbase77 ·
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Flurry's storyline continues in the Snippet Series Season One Finale, so check there for more!
This fic is dedicated to PsychicKid, for reasons best explained himself.
