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                     Dreams of Embers                      
                     -by rikithemonk-                      
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                      E is for Embers                      
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E is for Embers
Canterlot burned as pegasi and changelings rode the rising thermals in a choreographed dance of death. Steel sparked against steel in a sky darkened by hundreds of twisting armored forms. Screams and grunts could be heard among the sounds of battle as both blood and bodies fell from the sky.
A lone figure stood on a crumbling parapet, her eyes stinging with smoke and soot as she desperately sought to understand the madness that surrounded her. Princess Celestia wandered in a dazed shock, eyes wide as she surveyed her surroundings. Nothing but flames and death met her eyes. Her slow hoof falls taking her down into the smoldering city below her. A noise drew her eye as a body struck the ground.
Celestia could see that It was a pegasus in armor, and as she slowly moved toward the figure, she realized with dawning horror that it was one of her loyal defenders. The Pegasus had been a mare in the golden armor of her solar guard. As Celestia checked the body she began to realize that something was off. The Solar demigoddess kneeled closer and waving the soot and embers away from her face, she got a good look at her guard. The sovereign practiced eye roaming the cooling body. What she found wearing her day guards armor was a grotesque abomination of the pony form. Its face was covered in erratic scarring. Somepony had carved complex runes and lines into the skin. Each rune forming magical arrays on the thing that she feared had once been a pony. As Celestia reached for the lifeless face, her hovering hoof could clearly feel the clammy taint of mind magics seeping from the corpse.
The Princess spun and fell into a defensive position as a pulse washed across the ruined city. The movement coming naturally to her through centuries of true combat. She could feel the wave as it passed through her thalmic field. Her face hardened with the certainty that comes from dealing with true evil.
She recognized that pulse. She had felt it before when dealing with the most bleak of unicorn mages. The wave had contained the bound life forces of pure necromancy. Celestia got to her hooves, letting the body she held slide to the dirt and with a low growl, stormed into the smoke.
The Sovereign moved through the ruined and smoldering streets of what was once her city. She stepped over the burning bodies of her ponies as she wandered. The fallen were not just soldiers, but civilians lay strewn around her as well. The Princess’s eyes were drawn to a nearby alley and onto a sad tableau. She moved toward it and looked. It was a scene that had been frozen in time. The bodies, forever locked in position, mummified in a flash by the drying heat of a spell. Celestia's eyes roamed over the silent scene. A Stallion lay dead. He had been trying to shield two small foals with his body. His twisted features frozen forever in a terrified resolve.
Celestia briefly wondered what the stallion had been thinking when he died. She leaned forward and caressed a mummified foal with a deep feeling of remorse. To her dismay, the body crumbled to dust at her touch.
Celestia shook off her unease and flared her wings. With a mighty flap, she rose high into the air. She looked around at the city that had become the embodiment of horror and scanned the chaos around her. She watched as the monsters dressed as royal guards along with a force of some changeling-like creatures struggled to defend the burning capital against an army of… well, everything.
Movement caught her eye and the day sovereign watched as her guard fought the invaders that seemed to pour in from everywhere. What she witnessed surprised and worried her greatly. The invaders were a mixed force made up of strangely armored ponies, and changelings, as well as an odd mix of Minotaur, and Griffin. As the clashing forces fought all around her, Celestias eyes fell on squads of Kirin and Nirik deliberately and systematically burning the city to the ground.
With a powerful flap, the Princess flew upward and as she rose, a powerful flare of magic caught her attention. She spun to face it, and her eyes fell onto the largest tear in reality she had ever seen. It glowed with a dark blue color and had the unmistakable shimmer of magic. Magic that seemed to ebb and flow on its rippling surface. The rifts blue light seemed to cast a pulsing beam that fell near some conflict in the distance.
Curious, she flapped her wings and moved toward that distant motion. As she flew through the smoke, she tried to see through the waves of heat and dancing embers that surrounded her. Her eons as an Alicorn had honed her magic senses and she used them to guide her through the smoke and flames. The sensation of the tainted magic grew as she approached her destination.
What she saw when she arrived brought her to a complete stop. In front of the day Princess, a battle was unfolding. She watched as a much younger version of herself and her sister fought alongside a party of heroes against a rotting Alicorn corpse. Even from that distance, Celestia could feel its twisted dark power. It was tremendously strong and held a necrotic evil that she had seldom encountered in her long life. She could feel the sheer magnitude of it as the figure traded both spell-work and steel while gliding effortlessly through her attackers. The rotting dark Alicorn was elegant and graceful as it moved.
The Sun goddess moved closer to try and make out more features on the corpse. The dark Alicorn had clearly been a mare, and she clearly wasn't alive anymore. Her body was beginning to decay. Her rotting hair and cracked hooves made an odd yet elegant sight as it swept flawlessly into the group of heroes.
A clash of steel drew Celestia's attention to the conflict before her. To her horror she saw her own party now scattered and in complete disarray. Celestia watched as her twisted day guard were fighting against her younger self and the heros with her. She watched as a concussive burst broke the heroic groups tight formation. She watched as her smaller self tried in earnest to regain any kind of upper hand before things could get bleaker.
Celestia eyed the team her copy commanded. It was the oddest group of heroes that Celestia had ever seen. The party consisted of changeling queens, her young self, her young sister, and a Crystal unicorn of frost or diamond.
In the time it took for the scene before her to register in her mind, she realized in shock that their numbers had already been halved. Completely outclassed and unable to regain the offensive, the party was losing. Celestia watched grimly as the crystal unicorn, having gained some much-needed distance, began to glow. She cast spell after spell all around her, raising jagged crystals from the battleground in unbelievable numbers. The Jagged spikes began to strike the dark Alicorn like crashing waves. But even as the crystal blades broke against the demon's barrier, the dark Alicorn continued her assault.
As she moved forward through the smoke, the Sun Goddess began seeing more details of the crystal unicorn, and what she saw shocked her. The unicorn was not a mare at all, but a stallion. A young one. He had the look of a colt just coming into his stallionhood. While he was taller than most ponies, he wasn't at all what she would have thought a crystal soldier should look like. He wasn't large or stocky but was tall and slim. It was the sort of build she often saw in runway models. His blue eyes flashed as he bobbed and weaved through the mayhem of battle. She watched as he fought with skill and focus that she had never seen in a modern stallion.
While Celestia allowed stallions to join the royal guard, she had no intention of sending them into any situation even remotely harmful. While the solar guardsmares were given intensive military and occult training, the stallions of the guard got basic self-defense and simple stun spells. They were too valuable for combat and were used for their beauty and to soften foreign opinions of Equestria.
A cry pulled her out of her thoughts and grabbed her attention. She stood by and watched in disbelief as first her sister, then herself were impaled and flung through the ruins that were once her city. Celestia watched in growing horror as first the changeling queens, then the unicorn was launched viciously into the ground.
The sun Princess stepped backward in dread, her eyes locked firmly onto the aftermath of the fight. She watched as the withered Alicorn corpse, robed in royal regalia, stalked toward the fallen. Then as if things couldn't get any grimmer she heard the long deep thrum of thalmic magic. Craning her head toward the sound she realized that it had come from the massive tear. As she watched in astonishment, a serpentine stream of power snapped down onto the battle below with a crack of thunder.
THOOM!
Celestia sat bolt upright in her bed and looked around in terror. Her heart was beating furiously in her chest and she was covered in foaming sweat. She stood on shaky legs and grabbed the ornate pitcher that sat by her bedside. She looked at herself in her mirror and ran the cool damp towel across her sweating features as she thought about the dream. She thought about her and her sister's appearance. How they looked younger and smaller. She thought about her sister and how she was back from her long exile and no longer the nightmare. She considered the changeling queens. Changelings had been gone and forgotten for centuries. She had honestly thought that they had all died. She looked deeply into her tired eyes and wondered if she was wrong. If not one, but multiple queens had somehow survived. How they not only survived but had helped her fight a monster. Celestia looked down and sighed. Not just one dead race from the past, but two of them. A crystal pony was alive. Not only was alive, but alive and fighting at her side. Fighting alongside her sister as well.
Celestia considered the dream, or was it a vision? A vision of the future, the past? A future where the Alicorn sisters fought with monsters against monsters. She shook her head vigorously to clear her mind. No, that was foolishness. Her sister was banished. Locked in the moon by the elements. The Princess was so distracted by her raging thoughts that she didn't notice that the details of the vision were ever so slowly fading from her memory.
No. The Crystal Empire was lost to history, and the changelings were extinct. She giggled at the thought of a prissy stallion warrior. What would he do, nag at her until she surrendered? She giggled at the thought of banishing him to the kitchen for a thousand years. She pushed down the grin with a self-incriminating rebuke. She really shouldn't do that in this day and age. It was a wrong thing to think and very sexist. A over reaction to the extreme scarcity of stallions and their long time roll as housecolts. Celestia grinned again, who was she kidding, it was kind of funny. She turned around and with a regal air perfected through the centuries, she pointed her hoof and declared in her best courtroom voice.
“I sentence you to the kitchens to make me a sandwich!”
A sound broke her from her daydream and she looked down and into the shocked face of her door guard. The stallion was standing rigid, his ears folded back, lower lip trembling. She looked down at her hoof and realized it was pointing right at him. Before she could say a word, the sniffling colt bolted out the door. The other guard, a mare looked at her with a slight frown and an arched eyebrow.
“I apologize for disturbing you. We were only looking in on you because we thought we heard a noise.” The mare pursed her lips and tilted her head a little. “Am I banished to the kitchens as well, your majesty?”
Celestia sighed. “Could you please go get him, and apologize for me?”
As the guardsmare stiffly bowed and left, a thought struck the Princess. I just sent a hysterically crying colt…to the kitchens. Kitchens teeming with sympathetic colts that gossip like a bunch of old stallions. She grumbled, ’This is going to be all over the castle by tomorrow, and if they are really mad at me, it's nothing but low-fat diet cake for a week.’ She sighed. ‘Again.’
Resigned to her fate, Celestia wandered over to the window and slid open the curtains. She looked up to her sister's moon and froze in shock, her pupils shrinking in terror. High in the sky was her sister's moon. The moon was shining brightly among the dotted stars of space. Luna's silent silhouette lay quietly upon its silver surface. But that wasn't what Celestia was staring at. Celestia's gaze was locked someplace else. Next to Luna's moon, but much closer to the horizon stood a blue rift. A tear in reality the Sun Princess had seen earlier in the night.
It was the azure rift from her nightmare.
Author's Note
I figured that I would give this idea a shot.
A different spin on RGRE
The Monk

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                       F is for Fae                        
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F is for Fae
Trixie Lulamoon slowly pulled her small wagon down the trail. She was on the road from Seaside to Middleton. It was a common path that wound through the eastern wood and eventually went on through to Canterlot. She had been walking the best part of the day and was beginning to consider taking a break when she saw something odd as she came around a bend in the path. After the hair pin turn, the path continued fairly straight for about a mile. It was because of this she was able to see the smoke billowing skyward from someplace ahead. Trixie was a mare of the world and had been traveling most of her adult life, This gave her a danger sense that had served her well in the past. It was this danger sense that was warning her now.
She straightened her cloak and grabbed a few special surprises as she grew closer to the source.. As she drew closer she began to see a small clearing to the right of the path. In the clearing was a cart similar to hers, a smoldering fire, and signs of a small one or two mare camp.
While examining the camp for any signs of coin purses or valuables, grunting and thumping sounds caught her attention and drew her eye to the edge of the wood. What she saw surprised her.
“Dam you, die! Die dam it Die!”
A stallion, a young one was mercilessly beating a bush with a thick branch.
“Why! wont! you! die! Die, Die, die, di…”
It was about this time the colt noticed her and froze mid swing, eyes large as saucers. Looking around frantically, most likely for a place to run, the colt noticed he still held the branch. He quickly whipped it behind his back in the hopes that Trixie would somehow not have seen it.
Her right eyebrow lifted.
“The great and powerful Trixie demands to know what you are doing”
“Nothing…nothing at all.” The colt said in a voice so nervous that it wouldn't have fooled a foal.
“Nope, nothing. I’m doing nothing at all. Nope. Not killing anypony in the bushes. Nope, not doing that. Um yeah, no…”
Trixie rolled her eyes giving the colt enough time to toss the branch unseen into the bushes.
“Of course you aren't. The great and powerful Trixie can clearly see that you're a simple stallion. Trixie knows full well how fragile and dainty stallions like you are.
“I am?”
Trixie believes she can see the snake that frightened your timid heart in that bush.”
The colts eyes shot wide and he pointed a hoof at her. “Snake! Yes, there is a snake, in the bushes there. I was terrified by the snake, in the bushes. I was scaring it off. Yes!”
As Trixie turned toward the fire, a thump drew the stallions eye and he sneakily kicked a very limp hoof back into the bushes. Retrieving a smoldering stick from the fire, Trixie strolled toward the undergrowth.
“Fear not frail flower, the great and powerful Trixie will save you from the snake. She announced as she began eyeing the bushes.
“No! no no no no no. The colt said rushing forward and spinning Trixie around, grabbing her firmly by the shoulders he marehandeled her to the fire.
“Tea. Lets have some tea. Tea, and you can tell me all about yourself.
It was about this time that Trixie really got a good look at the colt. He had the look of a colt on the brink of stallionhood. He was thin, almost unhealthily so. His mane was an almost clear white, and his coat was a vibrant red. On his head sat a minimalistic tiara of crystal that sported two imitation devil horns that gleamed like polished glass. He was strikingly beautiful for a stallion and had the height of a runway model. .
Trixie spent her formative years on the road perfecting her act. She had sizable skills with showmanship, misdirection and more importantly, pony nature. This made Trixie a natural Trixie. Trixie was not only her name, but also what she was. A Trixie, is what the single stallions liked to call the Bad Mares. The natural player, and pick up artist that the stallions swooned for and the parents despised. Over the decades Trixie perfected her game and knew how to hook a stallion. She began studying this one to lure him into her sheets tonight. Pony nature was part of her special talent and came as naturally to her as slight-of -hoof.
As she began looking him over, something behind her caught her eye. She slid over to get a better look at his wagon, and what she saw caught her by surprise. Trixie had seen everything over the years and she didn't surprise easily. What she spotted on his wagon had honestly surprised her.
“Your a comfort horse?”
“Im a what?” he said.
“Your a comfort horse. You should have told Trixie you were a hooker.”
The stallions clear blue eyes shot wide in surprise.
“I am?”
Then he blinked.
“Of course I am.”
He looked at her somewhat confused.
“How did you know?”
Trixie rolled her eyes and pointed her horn-light next to the door of his cart.
“Thats the guild insignia.”
She looked at him dead pan.
“Next to your price list”
Trixie watched the stallion get up, and with a look of interest, he examined his own wagon. She shook her head noting how he was looking at it like he hadn’t seen it before. ‘Could stallions be any more flighty?’ She thought. She watched him read his price list and after trying the handle, he walked in.
“Oh wow.” came his muffled voice from the interior.
He came back out and sat next to the fire.
“While you were messing around in there, primping your mane, Trixie rekindled the fire. Trixie has done the hard work, now Trixie would like some tea.“ Trixie said in an authoritative voice that all mares used when talking to stallions. They were so flighty and prone to coltish whimsy that the mares really had to keep an eye on them. Then Trixie had a realization that stopped her mid thought. Where was his mare? This stallion was out in the woods alone. Out in the bandit prone woods by himself.
Trixie hurriedly glanced around, looking for any irate mares who could confuse her innocent conversation as trying to steal a colt.
“Trixie wants to know where your herd is. Where are your herd mares?” Trixies eyes were narrowing. The colt just looked around surprised.
“Mares? What Mares?”
“What do you mean what mares? Where are the mares that take care of you. The mares who protect you. The mares who have sex with you when your worried or stressed”
The colt looked over at his coach and grinned.
“Apparently My mares as you call them, are only mine in one hour increments.”
Trixie face-hooved. “Even a colt of your reputation needs a mare. How do you know they gave you the right money? What if they cheat you, or worse! You're a stallion after all!”
The stallions grin grew playful. “And a big strong mare like the great and powerful Trixie is here to protect me?” He said as he teasingly traced his hoof around the clasp of her cloak.
Trixie gave this some thought. They were both out here, both alone, and from the tracks she had seen earlier they were both heading the same direction. He was tantalizingly exotic, had a nice flank, and was completely vulnerable in the way that stallions always are. She smiled. She could take full advantage of this. Keep him around and rut him into her mattress until she got tired of him, then when he became a problem like most stallions become, she can dump him someplace. A roadside diner would do. Pay the tab, excuse herself to the mares room and then take off before he realized she had left. Pump and dump, the Trixie way.
She gave him her most confident grin.
“Trixie would love to!”
As he turned his back to tend the tea her grin turned wicked.
In her millennia of life Celestia gained the ability to accurately predict the corse of any event. This allowed her to keep several steps ahead of her political rivals. The one thing that Celestia did not like at all was the unknown. She considered the unknown to be a kind of chaos, bringing uncertainty into her life and breeding unforeseen surprises. Celestia despised anything that interfered with her carefully cultivated plans. She cleared her mind and increased her pace as she turned toward the guarded double doors. Celestia stormed into her throne room and called out for her personal assistant.
“Raven, Raven Inkwell!”
“Yes your highness?”
“Good, you're here. Raven, I felt a disturbance in the wyrd when that rift tore open. I think that something came through. Something came into our world.”
“Are you sure Princess? The battle mages I spoke with said that they couldn't sense anything through the etheric noise. At least not anything with clarity.”
Celestia looked at her new friend. Raven Inkwell was very good at her job, but Celestia had to remind herself that Raven was also the youngest pony ever to hold the position of her personal assistant. She smiled at the white earth pony and watched her slide a pencil into her tight brown mane.
“Raven, I’m certain. I clearly felt something enter our world.”
Celestia moved to the balcony and looked in to the distance. When it had first appeared the rift had dominated the skyline, but was slowly shrinking thanks to the constant attention of her guard. She could clearly see the mages hard at work binding and sealing the rip in reality. Although it was going to be a long and grueling endeavor, she had faith in their ability to close it properly.
Celestia leaned her hooves on the balcony and calmly exhaled. She looked at Raven.
“I want you to get me Sergeant Dowsing from S.M.I.L.E. and have him here as soon as possible.”
Raven chewed her pencil as she sifted her memory.
“I believe he is in Las Pegasus right now, I can send him a message and have him here in a day and a half.”
The Princess gave her consent and Raven left.
SMILE was one of the oldest organizations in Equestria. Its unbroken line could be traced back almost to the founding itself. Its name and its purpose evolved over the years as the fledgling countries own needs had changed. Celestia took pride in the fact the core of that organization was just as old and just as strong as herself.
Sergeant Dowsing Rod was an old guardsmare. She knew her type. She was the type of guard that only grew harder as she aged, and while they slowed down, their experience and stubborn attitude well made up for it. Celestia knew the type well, they popped up from time to time over the years, becoming guards and stubbornly staying long after retirement. Stopping only when a young recruit found them slumped over the desk the next morning, never to sign paperwork again. Dowsing was a slow and methodical investigator who the princess was certain, could find trouble, if trouble had truly come.
Celestia let out a sigh and smiled, content in the belief that everything of importance was being covered. She moved over to the stained glass and gazed up at her sister. Luna stood high above the throne room, enshrined in stained glass among the dozens of windows that towered above. Her form was handsome and regal. Having been preserved for all time from memory. ‘I promise you sister, this time, when you come back, I'll do things right. You'll be watched and protected better this time. This time I know how weak you are. This time I will protect you from yourself.
As Fae made his way down the trail, the rhythmic clattering of the wheeled home behind him reached his ears. He glanced over to his right and looked at the strange companion he picked up last night. He had no trouble remembering her name. He grinned. She had made dam sure that he knew it. ‘Trixie, Great and powerful, The.’ He wondered if he should tease her by pretending to be dense and thinking her first name was The. The smile didn't last long however, and his mind went back to last night. She had casually wandered in while he was killing the last of the bandits. It was a close one too, if she had come any closer to the forests edge she would have spotted the hidden bandit camp. He shook his head. ‘Poorly hidden, Barely hidden.’ He sighed. ‘A foal would have hidden it better.’
He glanced over to her again, she had a nice flank and it drew his eye. He thought about what she had said during last nights conversation. He pulled up along side of her and asked.
“So, let me get this straight. Mares will pay me for sex?”
“Yyyess.” Trixie said looking at him oddly.
“Um…Why?” he said in honest confusion.
“To rut a stallion. Blow off some steam. Does Trixie really have to spell it out for you?”
“I know this might sound silly…wouldn't it kind of go, I don't know, the other way around?”
This stopped Trixie in her tracks for a moment, She looked at him.
“Why would a stallion ever pay a mare? It's four mares to every one stallion in most cities and it's even worse odds in rural towns.”
Fae’s eyes flew wide because the penny had finally dropped. He suddenly understood the ponies and there odd behavior around him.
“Im a mare. Im the mare here!”
“No, no you aren't. You are clearly a stallion. Trixie can clearly see it.” she deadpanned, craning her neck in an obvious gesture at his flanks.
“Oh, never mind.” Things were starting to make some sense now to Fae as pieces slowly clicked into place. ‘This version of Equestria is off balance, unlike home. Stallions are scarce and have all the power in relationships here.’ Naturally power corrupts and they use it to their own advantage, or so he thought. ‘So…and so, mares that don't have much that the colts want, are shit out of luck. Thats apparently where I come in. Well that poor bastard back there anyway.’ He subconsciously glanced behind him.
Fae looked at Trixie for a long time, lost in thought. He had let her come along because they were both out here, both alone, and from the way her wagon was sitting, they were both heading the same direction. She was cute for a mortal and had a nice flank.. He nodded. He could take full advantage of this. Keep her around for world information, and when he got bored he would dump her someplace. A roadside diner would do. He would pay the tab, excuse himself a moment and then take off before she realized he left. Use and loose, the Faerie way.
Trixie woke with the feeling of a warm barrel pressing against her back and a stallions head resting on her withers. Her groggy mind worked slowly as she glanced at the sleeping form cuddled closely behind her. With the skills from years of practice, she slid carefully out of bed and began gathering her belongings to sneak out. She preferred leaving before the stallions woke up, it saved her the inevitable ‘Look Babe, it was just sex.’ argument that often happened the next morning. Trixies exhausted mind began informing her that she wasn't in a sleazy motel. She looked around and realized that she was standing in her own wagon. A few moments later her brain reminded her what had happened last night. This was followed closely by her nose reminding her how much badly sex smells when done in confined spaces. Trixie tiredly went outside and took a breath of clean air in an attempt to save her sinuses.
Looking around she saw that it was still dark. She hadn't managed to sleep for long and she was still fairly tired. Trixie was a loner. Decades of being alone on the road made sleeping alone a normal event for her. Sleeping with somepony else just felt off to her. She couldn't get comfortable and the other body just got in the way. She sighed and looked up at the starscape.
‘Wonder if thats why I never settled down.’ She thought. ‘Never could get comfortable living with somepony else. That and being in one place. Never was one to stay anyplace long. The great and powerful…wanderer.’
She looked down, starting to feel a little melancholy. Unconsciously shifting the brim of her hat she stopped when she felt something. Reaching into a hidden pocket, she pulled out a coin purse. Trixie smiled and hefted it for weight, it held quite a few bits. It had become so second nature she didn't even realize that she lifted it off the colt. Hefting the purse one last time she turned to head back inside where she would slide the purse back..
‘No matter how much he denies it that colt needs a mare. Somepony to protect him from mares like me.’ She gave a rueful grin