Letters to the Princess

Chapters

Chapter 1: Letters
Chapter 2: Nerves
Chapter 3: Interference
Chapter 4: Second Date
Chapter 5: Epistolary Evidence
Chapter 7: Reunion
Chapter 8: The Perfect Team
Chapter 9: Fractured
Chapter 10: Broken
Chapter 11: Sundered
Chapter 12: Gone
Chapter 13: An Ending
Chapter 14: Advice
Chapter 15: Canterlot
Chapter 16: The Thread Snaps
Chapter 17: A Broken Heart
Chapter 18: The Empress
Chapter 19: Regrets
Chapter 20: The Emptiest Place
Chapter 21: Crystalline
Chapter 22: Prisoners of War
Chapter 23: Captive
Chapter 24: The Princess and the Monster
Chapter 25: The Empress and the Monster
Chapter 26: Cessation
Chapter 27: Safety
Epilogue
Chapter 6: Alone

Chapter 1: Letters

To Cozy Glow,

Our chess game was…rather fun, wouldn’t you say? A pity that I had to leave Canterlot before our second match. I feel quite sure I could have beaten you twice. Your overconfidence is a real weakness, you know.

Let me know if you ever get a court case in the Crystal Empire; I’d adore a rematch. Maybe I could even help you learn a thing or two about the game.

Sincerely,
Princess Flurry Heart.

Dear Princess Flurry,

If overconfidence is a weakness, you seem a little at risk of weakness yourself. Don’t be so sure that you’ll catch me off-guard next time.

Another game sounds…great. It’s refreshing to meet a real challenger at last. There isn’t much call for Canterlot-trained lawyers up in the northern wastes, but…if you’re ever in town again, let me know?

I hope you will.

~~Kind regards~~
~~Love from~~
~~Yours sincerely~~

Cozy Glow

Cozy,

I’m going to level with you — I was really pleased you wrote back. Really pleased. I wasn’t sure you would. Making friends doesn’t come easily to me.

I’ll be in Canterlot again in three weeks. Prince Blueblood is trying to change the terms of our grain import agreement and somepony has to beat some sense into him.

~~I want to see you again.~~ How about that rematch? I might even be able to shake my guards for a couple of hours, if I take a roundabout route to the chess club.

Sincerely,
Flurry.

Dear Flurry Heart,

I’m looking forward to it. I know a thing or two about giving guards the slip — I’ll lend you a hoof.

Cozy Glow.

Cozy,

I can’t wait. I’ll be done at the palace around four. We can meet by the lake in the gardens; with any luck my guards will think I’m going to stay there, and we can abscond.

I’ll be there.

—Cozy.

To Cozy Glow,

I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I missed our game today. I didn’t mean to — stars know I was looking forward to it more than anything else on this blasted trip.

Buck, I wanted to —
I wish I hadn’t

I wish I could blame it all on Prince Blueblood — you must have met him often enough at the Canterlot high society things, so you’ll know full well what a horrible bore he can be — but I can’t lay all the fault at his hooves. I was getting somewhere in the negotiations, so I kept going. If I’d stopped pushing he would have buoyed himself back up into his usual self-righteous outrage by the next time we met. So I had to stay — even though I knew that you’d be waiting.

This grain import deal; it’s really important for the Empire. Some years the Crystal Heart’s influence expands by a couple of meters and pushes the ice back — but some years it doesn’t. We just don’t have the land to grow everything we need. We’re reliant on Equestria. And little details like Blueblood’s new tariff can have a huge impact on the ponies back home.

I really am sorry. I hope we can have another game some time soon?

Yours faithfully,
Flurry Heart.

~~Flurry Heart,~~

~~I waited there for~~ hours. ~~You made me feel like an idiot. It…it~~ was ~~idiotic of me. A second date with the Princess of the Crystal Empire? What was I thinking? As if somepony like me could ever be…~~friends ~~with somepony like you.~~

Dear Princess Flurry Heart,

I quite understand; I know full well how busy you must be as a member of the royal family. A chess game with a lowly lawyer can hardly be classed as important state business.

I wish you all the best with your grain import treaty.

Sincerely,

Cozy Glow.

Cozy —

Please, don’t let this — let’s not end it here. I do want to see you again. Not as state business, as my business.

I’m sorry I didn’t come. Words can’t tell you how sorry I am. I’m — it’s like they’re just waiting for me to mess up. Everypony’s watching out for it, all the time. Watching me.

That’s why I…that’s why I have to try so hard.

It’s just that I have so many ponies depending on me all the time. And Mom always wants more — is your mother like that? Every time I adjust to the newest part of the load and find my feet again there’s another bit dumped on the top.

Sometimes it’s enough to make me want to scream.

Yours regretfully,
Flurry.

~~Princess —~~

~~You’re under pressure, are you? A nation watching you, counting on you.~~

~~Well, imagine the~~ world ~~watching you. Waiting for you to screw up again.~~ Knowing ~~that you’re evil. Utterly~~ certain ~~that a villain is who you really are.~~

~~Let’s not kid ourselves. What could a princess and a pony with my — with my~~ history ~~ever have in common? This was a stupid idea from the start.~~

~~Cozy Glow.~~

Cozy —

I know you got my last letter. I know because I wrote to Raven Inkwell and had her check with the Postmaster General at the Canterlot mailing office, and she checked with the mailpony who delivers your post.

Come on. You’re making me feel like a stalker, here. We had…a connection. Give me another chance. I won’t mess up again.

Yours hopefully,
Flurry Heart.

Oh, well I am Flim, and he is Flam
And we’re Canterlot’s finest musical telegram
We’re here to tell you: “How sorry I am!”

Excuse the Princess sock puppet,
And my brother’s hoof up it,
Not to mention that dangling button eye
You said you’d fix that, Flim!
Well, I said I’d at least try —

Princess Flurry Heart didn’t mean it
She gave us thirty gold bits to help you see it,
So forgive her — “Oh please forgive me!”
Forgive her — “I’m Sock-Princess Flurry!”

And of course, remember this isn’t spam
It’s a fantastical, funtastasical, unbelievable,
Canterlot Singing Telegram
Brought to you by Flim, and Flam!

To Miss Cozy Glow —

You are formally invited to attend the Crystal Faire as a personal guest of Her Serene Highness, Princess Flurry Heart of the Crystal Empire.

Attendance is not optional.

Flurry —

For stars’ sake, don’t you think sending the invite with an armed escort was a little much? You win — I’ll see you next week.

Cozy.

Chapter 2: Nerves

Cozy Glow’s heart drummed a staccato rhythm that kept tempo with the rumble of the sleepers beneath the train. The invitation in her saddlebag seemed almost to burn with a tangible heat. It was bizarre. As brutally worded as if it were from a dictator — somepony like Empress Cozy Glow, had her rule lasted longer than a few hours — and without any of the flowery softness that Cozy expected a princess to veil her meaning in. They were all so…so sickeningly good. Friendship, love, sunshine, starlight — blah blah blah.

But Flurry Heart…she was different.

Or — Cozy had thought she was different. That first game in the grandmasters’ clubroom, with the fire crackling beside them, sending strange shadows flickering over Flurry’s smooth pink fur. The electrifying thunk of pieces on the chessboard. The thrill of actually being bested in a game. Of having to actually think how to take down her opponent, instead of the solution being as obvious as the muzzle on her face.

It had all seemed so…so real. So much realer than Cozy had expected, when she first agreed to the match. A couple of hours with royalty, to see the precious niece of Twilight Sparkle up close and personal. Cozy had fully anticipated being able to judge Flurry as false and arbitrarily cruel as all the other princesses were.

She had been shocked when that was not the case. And so when Flurry had written to her, she had responded. When Flurry had asked for a rematch, she had agreed — she had been eager for it. When she looked at Flurry, she had seen an equal. Somepony who understood what it was like to always be the cleverest pony in the room. Who was used to being scrutinised and stared at and treated like a freak.

She had thought she had found a kindred spirit at last.

Those were the thoughts that were swirling round her head the day she waited by the lake in the gardens of Canterlot Palace. Far too close to the primary residence of Twilight Sparkle, her erstwhile jailor, arch-nemesis and the last pony on Equus she wanted to meet — but she had been willing to take the risk, to meet Flurry again.

Excitement, dread, fear, and hunger swirled in her belly in equal mixture, and she alternated between wanting laugh in excitement or to hurt something. Extremes of emotion were not good for her — Doctor Healing Word was insistent on the importance of calm for someone with Cozy Glow’s condition — but at that moment she didn’t care. She just wanted to see Flurry Heart again. To match wits with her, to spar with her. To gain points and lose them in the subtle, deadly combat of their conversation.

Her pulse thudded in her temples and in her throat as she paced the path beside the lake, again and again, in an agony of suspense. But she kept pacing, and kept pacing…and still Flurry Heart did not appear.

She tried to make excuses — it was a big lake, after all, or perhaps Flurry was still trying to give her guards the slip — but the sun dipped lower in the sky, and still the Princess did not come.

Cozy Glow’s pacing faltered and slowed until finally she simply sat at the water’s edge, staring blankly across it.

When finally the sun began to shimmer with the magic that meant Princess Twilight Sparkle had it in her grasp, Cozy Glow knew that it was time to go. Princess Twilight was out and about — she could be in the gardens right now — and at that moment a chance meeting with her was something Cozy would rather die than endure.

She fled, and all the half-imagined hopes and wishes had splintered into nothingness as she went.

For weeks, she had brooded on it. Examined it from every possible angle, like it was a piece of casework. Taken it down piece by piece and built it back up again in her mind.

Torn up half a dozen furious letters to the princess and dodged as many of her royal admirer’s emissaries as she possibly could.

But now she was back. Doing it all over again — in the exact same position, all nerves and fear and that persistent urge to kick somepony — rattling along on the train to the Crystal Empire. A lump rose in her throat. Why was she doing this again? Why was she putting herself through it for the second time? It — it wouldn’t end any differently. It couldn’t. There was no way somepony like Flurry would be interested in a pony like her — somepony with such beauty, such power, and such immunity to what other ponies thought — in short, a Princess. With all the connotations that word carried. There was no explanation for Flurry’s behaviour. Her persistence. It could all only be some sort of sick joke.

What waited for Cozy at the other end of this train line? A hopeful smile and two soft blue eyes — or a court full of nobles ready to laugh at their monarch’s vicious joke?

What was she, after all? Cozy Glow, the biggest pariah in Canterlot. A joke. A pony whom no one had ever quite believed was reformed. A two-bit lawyer — the best in Canterlot, sure, but a trained sheep could be better than those mulish idiots in the city. Cozy spent her days doing work she could have done in her sleep; divorces and litigation and corporate mergers. Wasting her abilities away. She was a chess player, a grandmaster — whom none of the other masters would play against any more. They didn’t like to lose. A champion with no opponents. A nonentity.

A…a failure.

There it was again. That word. The one she always came back to, no matter how high she climbed or how much progress she made with Doctor Healing Word. The one that had echoed in her mind even when she drained the magic from the world. Even when she drank in enough magical power to bend the whole universe to her will.

Failure.

It dogged her hoofsteps and haunted her dreams. All it took was one little wobble — one little shake —

— And Cozy was right back in her parents’ study, thousands of magical treatises and scrolls stacked high against the walls, watching them both glare down at her, their horns alight with the glow of their magic.

“What a pity,” said her father, narrowing his eyes, red like her own. “Not a drop of magic in you.”

“I had hoped for something,” her mother remarked, looking at the foal as though it were a slug that had crawled in from the garden. “Despite the…well. Those.” She gestured languidly at Cozy Glow’s small, stubby wings.

Her father snorted. “Quite. They say blood will out — and you and I, sweet one, hail from two of the most powerful magical bloodlines in all of Equestria. But you would hardly know this one was our child at all.”

Cozy Glow’s pupils contracted as she looked from one to the other, her skin drawn tightly over her thin little face. “I’ve — I’ve been trying,” she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper. “Sometimes I almost think I can feel it—”

“—Quiet, now,” her father rebuked her. “Good foals should be seen and not heard, remember.”

Her mother was already turning away. “I think it’s been a waste. There’s no point having the tutors come any more. We’re just throwing good money after bad.”

The foal ducked her head, blue ringlets falling over her eyes.

“Our child was meant to go to Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.” The disgust in her father’s tone was evident. “Not…flitter around like a bird.” He shot her a glance, and spoke to the nursemaid. “Take her back to her chambers.”

Cozy Glow wanted to scream. To cry and beg — to smash the delicate glass vials and the thalamic crystals until they listened — but it never did any good.

“Don’t worry,” her mother answered. “We’ll just try again. Two hundred years of deliberate marriages and good breeding practices don’t end here. What are the odds we would get a second pegasus?”

Her father guffawed, and something inside Cozy Glow, some last little thread, frayed and finally snapped.

Everything had started there. The fire, the screams, the smell of burning flesh — how good it had all felt. How free it had made her. Then the search for some way — some chance of draining the hated magic from the world.

A way to make certain that nopony could ever make her feel like that again.

All to escape her greatest and first fear. Failure.

What if this would just be another? And…how could it be anything else? Flurry Heart was an alicorn. A living embodiment of magic. How could she ever care about a…a pegasus? No — not just a pegasus. Care about somepony as fundamentally broken as Cozy knew that she was.

But…the image of Flurry’s sweet blue eyes kept coming back to her. The way her devious smile could change her whole face into something like Cozy’s own. The things she had said. The way she had played, only half her attention on the board, the other half focused on Cozy herself. The way she had smiled when she knocked down Cozy’s solar princess piece.

What if this time, it really was different?

Hope was a persistent little bastard. Despite Cozy’s best efforts, it simply refused to die. She couldn’t help it; she hoped — or she wanted to hope — that it could be different. The thought of it was unshakeable, and it was that little nagging thought had gotten her onto the Crystal Express.

The train whistle sounded, and the engine groaned. The view of the snow outside Cozy’s window abruptly ceased and became green and vibrant again. The train was pulling into the station —

— And there, on the platform, flanked by guards in shining silver armour, was a familiar pink-and-blue head of curls, and a hopeful, nervous smile.

Chapter 3: Interference

“I just…I don’t understand it. I don’t understand her.”

Flurry Heart did her best to ignore the anguished whispers from the far end of the table, and kept her gaze fixed firmly on her book. It didn’t matter that she had read the same paragraph on the Neighmann Hypothesis three times over without really taking any of it in. Anything was better than looking up right now.

“Come on, Cadie,” Shining Armour murmured. “She just needs her space, that’s all.” It was the sixth or seventh time he’d said it, but to his credit, there was still as much love in his tone as before.

Flurry Heart grimaced involuntarily, and then hastily schooled her face into a more neutral expression of concentration. If her parents figured out she was listening there would be hell to pay — hell in this case being another endless conversation about her emotions. Hopefully she was just distant enough that they wouldn’t be able to make out her features clearly. The formal dining hall was vast, and the crystal table stretched seemingly endlessly down the cavernous room. On a feast day, it could hold nearly two hundred ponies. Today it held only three, and Flurry Heart, pleading a period of intense study, had placed herself carefully at the farthest end. Cadence and Shining Armour were mere pinpricks of colour at the opposite end of the room. A normal pony wouldn’t have been able to hear their whispered conversation.

Unfortunately for Flurry Heart, alicorn hearing was exceptionally good.

“But it isn’t right,” Cadence insisted. “I’m her mother! She should share these things with me. On top of that, I’m the alicorn of love! I am quite literally the embodiment of romance. Why wouldn’t she ask my advice?”

“Cadie, be reasonable—” began Shining, but he was cut short.

“—Shining, what if she doesn’t trust me? What if she doesn’t trust either of us?” There was a tone of dawning horror in Cadence’s voice. “What if that’s the reason she won’t tell us? Oh, Celestia, have we failed as parents?”

“Of course we haven’t!” Shining’s rebuttal was just a little too loud, and Cadence hastily shushed him.

“Shhhh, she’ll hear us!”

“Sorry,” he whispered, suitably abashed.

Cadence fidgeted, the fabric of her dress rustling audibly. Flurry didn’t look up, but she knew that her mother would be twisting her hooves over one another in that classic I have a difficult daughter ritual that had become so common in recent years. “Though maybe that would be best. If she heard us, we could just have it out. Get it all out in the open. D’you think that would be emotionally healthier?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart.” For the first time, a touch of weariness tinged Shining’s voice. “Are you sure about all this?”

Cadence’s tone became aggrieved. “I know what I feel, Shining. I know what everypony feels. And Flurry — our sweet, lonely little Flurry, who has never shown any interest in anypony, mare or stallion or anycreature in between — who I thought must be aromantic or just…addicted to being alone — she’s in love. And you expect me to just…back off? Not ask her about it? You must be out of your mind!” The dress rustled again as she leaned forward to tap a hoof on the table. “No, Shining, trust me. Flurry needs my help. She needs us to be there for her.”

Flurry felt her cheeks flaming, and clenched her eyes shut for a second before glaring furiously at her book again.

The use of aromatic plants for ectoparasite treatment is a field of growing interest. Several species of birds regularly introduce aromatic herbs into their nests putatively to —

“I really think we should just let her work things out by herself,” Shining insisted. “If she needed us, she’d ask. She knows we love her and we’re always here.”

— reduce parasites. The behaviour is most often seen in cavity nesting birds and after nest building has finished. The Greater Crystal Grebe is often observed to—

“But does she know?” said Cadence plaintively, and Flurry Heart’s right eyelid began to twitch.

— observed to decorate its nest with snow-sage. For decades this was thought by Equestrian orthinologists to be for aesthetic purposes, a part of the Greater Crystal Grebe’s elaborate mating rituals, but more recent Crystal Empire studies have suggested that the practice actually serves a medicinal purpose. The implications of this, of course, are manifold —

“She used to tell me everything,” Cadence lamented. “She used to toddle up to me whenever she saw me, and tell me that the yellow block was her favourite, or that she liked the swings best out of everything in the playground. And she even told me difficult things — remember when she ate ten of Pinkie’s greenglo cookies and was so sick that the guards thought they’d found evidence of another changeling invasion?”

Flurry Heart’s eyes skimmed unseeingly over the text while her right eyelid twitched to a rhythm so fast she could have danced the salsa to it.

The memory earned her mother a chuckle from Shining Armour. “Yeah, I remember. And what about the time she had to go potty and couldn’t find the bathroom, so she used a potted plant—”

“—And told Nanny it was a cat!” Cadence laughed. “You see what I mean? She shared everything with us. Even the difficult parts. But now, when she’s feeling so…so strongly for someone, and I don’t even know the species of the creature that will be our child-in-law…”

Oh, for Celestia’s sake. Flurry Heart’s hoof came down on her page a little harder than she meant it to, and she shut her head and shook her eyes. It was time to get out of here. Even Neighmann couldn’t distract her from this; and besides, bird courtship rituals didn’t feel like a great topic right now either.

She didn’t want to think about it. Any of it. It was all so…so new, so weird. And if she thought of all that, Celestia only knew what kind of spike in her emotional state it would cause. Cadence would be all over it like a…a fly on a dungheap.

The analogy felt ungenerous, and while Flurry didn’t want to be…churlish, there didn’t exactly seem to be much alternative at times like these. Cadence had jumped down her throat about relationships and love every time their paths had crossed for the past week, and Flurry had been forced to conclude that the only option was to ensure that their paths crossed as little as possible.

At the far end of the room, Cadence was still lamenting the loss of her daughter’s foalhood. “What went wrong, Shining? What did we do wrong?”

Air puffed out from Flurry’s nostrils, just a little too hard, and she carefully shut her book. No sudden movements. It was time to make a move. Her plate was still full, but hopefully her parents were too far away to make it out. Who knew, they might even be wrapped up enough in their conversation and their parental desperation to not notice her sneaking out.

Silently, Flurry slipped down from her chair and turned towards the double doors behind her. She rotated her ears backward, listening for any change, and then froze.

The hall was suddenly completely silent.

“Flurry, are you going already?” Shining’s voice was suddenly shockingly loud in the gigantic hall, and there was a note of forced joviality there that only added to the hollow, echoing feel of it all.

She had been caught.

There was a pause, and Flurry slowly, reluctantly turned back.

“Don’t you want pudding?” Cadence’s tone was as brittle as her husband’s, and Flurry felt an abrupt pang of guilt. They…they were overbearing, but they only wanted the best for her, after all. They evidently didn’t care who it was, or even what it was — clearly they were more desperate on her behalf than she had felt even at her lowest — they just wanted to know.

But then Flurry looked at her mother’s eager, hungry smile, visible even from the far end of the hall, and steeled herself. No. Cadence didn’t need to know who exactly was on that train from Canterlot. That was Flurry’s business. Just because her mother could spy on all of her emotions didn’t mean that she was entitled to be told all of her thoughts.

“No,” she said aloud, fully aware that she was turning down far more than dessert. “I’m not really hungry today, Mom.”

“Chef will be disappointed,” Cadence answered, weakly. She knew when she was beaten. “Gorpone Ramsay sent the nougat recipe over to him specially.”

“Maybe you could save it for this evening?” Flurry was already backing away, forming the beginnings of a spell in her mind’s eye. She wouldn’t be back in time for dinner — possibly not even for breakfast tomorrow — but they didn’t need to know that, either.

“I will.” Half-rising from her chair, Cadence reached a hoof after her errant daughter. “Sweetie, are you sure that I can’t—?”

Sensing that a helping hoof was about to be offered and the forbidden topic openly broached, Flurry swung into action. “—No, that’s okay, Mom! Sorry, I gotta go—!” Before the sentence was even finished she released the teleportation spell and the familiar crack of displaced air punctuated her exit for her.

Her favourite guards flanking her — the ones that she siphoned off some of her allowance to in return for a solemn oath not to answer any of her parents’ subtle probing — Flurry waited on the platform, running an anxious hoof over her mane one last time.

Would she be here? Had she come? Or would all of this; the hope and the waiting and the avoidance — would it all have been for nothing?

No. She had to trust in her. The pony on the train. Flurry had to believe in her -- believe in something, or what was the point of any of this?

She would be here. She had to be.

A familiar toot sounded, rousing Flurry from her thoughts, and she looked up just in time to see the train pulling into the station. Her heart seemed to thump at a million miles a minute as she strained forward to see, her eyes flickering over each train window in turn as she searched for that one particular face —

— And then, suddenly, she found what she was looking for, and Flurry’s face split into an involuntary, infectious smile.

The carriage doors opened, and one by one, the passengers disembarked. And Flurry Heart, Princess of the Crystal Empire, daughter of the Empress and the High Prince, the champion of champions and the vanquisher of evil, the fifth-most powerful being in existence, waited, her heart beating quicker than a schoolfilly’s and the silliest of grins spreading over her regal countenance. Ready to speak the most inconsequential and the most important words she would ever utter.

“Hey! I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”

Chapter 4: Second Date

The Crystal Faire was beautiful. Cozy Glow didn’t know what she had expected — crystals, probably — but she had never been to the Crystal Empire before, and she could never have predicted just how many crystals there would be.

The buildings were crystal. The roads. The lights. The decorations. Even the ponies themselves. Everything was multifaceted and perfectly carved, and glowed with that subtle, unearthly light that spoke of a special kind of magic — one that was not really magic at all, not in the hated Equestrian sense.

In fact, nothing was like Equestria at all, and that was wonderful. No parochial Canterlot streets. No dour white buildings with staid purple rooves. Just — crystal, in every hue imaginable. A profusion of colour. And — it took her longer to notice this one — nopony was staring. Not one pony gave her a second glance. They didn’t look, or linger, or mutter to their companions about her. Nopony pointed! She supposed she was less notorious all the way up here. Or that ponies simply cared less. Her crimes had not been against the crystal ponies, after all.

Just all the rest of them.

Whatever the reason, it felt amazing — and the company didn’t hurt either.

Flurry Heart strode along at her side, beaming. Not a prim princess smile, but a real, genuine grin. The kind that said this is fun, and it’s fun because of you.

That smile made Cozy’s heart do backflips.

Flurry Heart noticed her looking, and the smile somehow grew impossibly wider. “Come on! I want to show you the bandstand; the music is incredible!”

The room was impossibly empty, with all of Cozy’s things packed away in boxes. The blue crystal of the walls glittered in the sunlight just as prettily as it always did, but Flurry couldn’t see the beauty in it today.

She wished she had somepony to talk about it with. She wished Cozy would talk about it with her. But Cozy Glow, for all her bravado, seemed to harbour an utter horror for being vulnerable with somepony. As soon as the topic of emotions was raised, she clammed up tighter than a Manehattan oyster.

Flurry had tried to find someone else to talk it through with her. Cadence, sensing everything Flurry felt through the tumultuous year she had spent with Cozy, was positively gagging for a frank mother-daughter discussion. The idea of discussing her love life with her mother — of being reduced to one of the little love problems that Cadence solved all day, every day — was horrifying.

So no — Cadence was not an option. Shining was little better. They were basically the same two-headed creature; ‘no secrets’ was one of the core tenets of their marriage, as a younger Flurry had learned the hard way. Secret ice cream with Mommy was not a good way to break Daddy’s guard training regiment diet rules, because it never stayed a secret for long.

Auntie Tia was the obvious secondary choice, but Flurry knew that because of the whole matchmaking thing, the family involvement — anything she told Celestia would find its way into one of those pink letters with the flowery perfume and the ridiculously long signature: Princess Celestia, Ruler of the Day, Diarch of Equestria, Princeps Solaris, Sol Invictus, The Sun Eternal, etc, etc.

Celestia was out. Luna, too. There was a family rumour that she’d had a husband, once. A child, maybe, a millennium ago. But only once. And their loss had supposedly been what began the chain of events culminating in Nightmare Moon.

Flurry Heart shuddered at just the thought of it. Auntie Lu was not a good person to talk relationships with.

That left Auntie Twily, but — given how many of the nightmares Cozy never liked to talk about seemed to feature her — it didn’t seem like a good idea either. Since Cozy moved in, Flurry had heard the words Twilight Sparkle spoken in accents of utter loathing by her sleeping girlfriend far too often for comfort.

The final option, then, was her cousin. She had stolen away from Cozy’s flat in Canterlot, disguised as she always was for their visits — a princess was expected to stay in the castle — to visit the little bakery where Lustre lived with her wife.

Unfortunately, her cousin had been little use. Lustre was simple, straightforward. Sweet. Hers had been an uncomplicated love story. Auntie Tia had thrust Little Cheese into her path and the two of them had taken one look and fallen head-over-tail for each other. In their case, the road to true love had run very smooth indeed.

It wasn’t that easy for Flurry, and Lustre hadn’t seemed to grasp that.

“Can’t you just…talk to her about the way you’re both feeling?” she had said, from over the top of a book on some obscure magical arcana.

“No,” Flurry had snapped. When one’s girlfriend was as prickly as a porcupine — with more baggage than the luggage car of the Canterlot express — it wasn’t as easy as just talking about your feelings. Not to mention that Cozy was also one of the best lawyers in the nation and impossible to pin down in an argument.

Lustre was not so easily cowed. “But have you tried?”

“Yes!” Flurry snarled, stomping her hoof so hard the marble tiles of Lustre’s study splintered into a powdery crater.

There was a pause while they both examined the damage.

“Everything okay?” Little Cheese stuck her head through the door, hooves still dusted with flour from the bakery downstairs. “I heard a bang.”

“We’re fine,” said Lustre Dawn at the same time as Flurry flushed and mumbled an apology.

She ought to have better control over all three of her magics by now. She wasn’t a teenager any more. There was no longer any excuse. But every time, her emotions just got away with her —

—Which was exactly the problem. Flurry Heart had emotions coming out of her ears, and Cozy Glow sometimes seemed to have none at all. For all their similarities in personality and life experience, in emotional terms they were worlds apart.

So much so that sometimes they just seemed worlds apart full stop.

“I’ll pay for the damage,” promised Flurry, already turning to flee past Little Cheese, her face puce. “I’ll send a stonemason, a really good one.”

“Flurry, wait; we weren’t done talking abou—”

But Flurry was already gone.

Cozy Glow laughed, the noise of it rising like music over the instruments of the band, and she felt the hooves of her partner warm in her own. The two of them spun like leaves in a stream, whirling around and away — but always, always coming back together.

“I knew those all dance lessons would come in handy!” Flurry quipped in one brief, frenetic interchange before the other dancers whipped them away from each other once more.

Cozy docey-doed with her new partner, and the next, and the next — one more loop and she was at the head of the row again, nose to nose with Flurry once more.

“Princess training was good for something after all, huh?”

“Oh, no!” giggled Flurry. “All I learned in Princess training was Canterlot court dances!”

Then she was gone again, and Cozy had to wait for the next pass to hear the rest of the sentence, tripping over her own hooves and those of the strangers she was partnering with equal frequency.

“My dance lessons didn’t cover ceilidh dancing! This was all picked up from Uncle Sunburst!”

Cozy Glow looked into those big aquamarine eyes, and not even the mention of the stallion married to her worst enemy was enough to ruin her mood.

She grinned. “Well, he did a good job!”

Finally, abruptly, the dance ended, all of the dancers halting at once without any signal that Cozy could see. The music continued unabated, and Flurry and Cozy stumbled on a few steps more before collapsing in a heap of laughter.

The next dance began just as abruptly, and they had to scramble to avoid the tromping hooves. Apparently not even being royalty was enough to warrant a moment’s halt to the festivities on the day of the Crystal Faire.

That was not to say that the two of them were blending in. Ponies were staring; had stared the whole way through the dance. But the stares weren’t the sort Cozy was used to. Instead of recognition followed by fear or hatred, there was no recognition here. Just awe, that the Princess had brought a date.

By Luna’s tail-hair, anonymity was great.

“Let’s go!” Flurry’s earth pony stamina was on full display as she hopped back up, ready to go again. “Next stop, the crystal ewes! You’ll love them!”

“I think I’ve got everything.” Cozy’s voice was flat. Emotionless. The voice she used when she was feeling the most — not that she ever shared what those emotions might be.

Not with Flurry.

“Right,” Flurry said, her voice wobbling. What she wouldn’t give for that cool tone Cozy had. For the detachment. But while she could don her princess face for the public, pretend that all was well when the people needed her — when it was just the two of them, pretending she felt nothing was about as effective as if she were to try and raise the sun.

“If that’s all, then…” Cozy turned toward the balcony, and Flurry Heart felt the world quake beneath her hooves.

She had known it was coming, she had instigated it, but now it was here — oh, Faust, she thought she might die.

Ask her not to go, that small, insistent voice at the back of her mind screamed. Beg her not to leave us. Make her stay. Tell her, tell her you lo—

No.

That path was closed to them now. It would remain closed, until Cozy wanted to change. Begging and pleading would not change that.

But why, then, did Flurry’s heart feel like it might shatter into a thousand pieces?

Cozy spread her wings in readiness, and the staccato rhythm of Flurry’s heart spiked and faltered. No, no, please don’t go, it can’t end like this! Her eyes were filling with tears and her mouth opened, despite her pride, despite her resolve, ready to say —

“Oh. Look at that.” Cozy swung away from the open balcony doors, toward the bookshelf. “I forgot about my treatises on the Ecklihoof case.”

The world, which had been spinning wildly around Flurry Heart, abruptly stabilised. A stay of execution. A reprieve.

A few more precious minutes.

“You can take the volumes on Empire Law, too,” she offered, her voice cracking slightly on the final word. The leather-bound set had been a birthday gift from one lover to another, eight short months ago. It seemed like a lifetime now.

A snort of laughter, the face unreadable. “I shan’t need them. After all, I’m never coming back here, am I?”

Her tone was light, careless. And it ripped out Flurry’s heart all over again.

She sniffed hard, and then a sudden pounding on the door made them both jump.

“W-what is it?” Flurry stammered, ears pinned back as she watched Cozy take a leisurely trot towards the antechamber, where she would not be visible from the door.

Just as she had every time someone came for Flurry over the past twelve months. She was a secret. Flurry’s little secret. Nopony knew that they were together, knew anything beyond that single date arranged under the auspices of Auntie Tia. Flurry supposed that people must have guessed — at any rate, her mother must be able to feel the emotions she was emitting. But her parents had never spoken of it to her, and she had never raised the subject either.

She was too afraid of what they would think of Cozy when they met her properly. Or worse, what Cozy would think of them.

She didn’t know how Cozy felt about being a secret. She had no idea. Cozy never answered when she asked. And that was the entire problem, really. Cozy never answered when she asked.

“Princess?” A voice called, muffled by the closed door.

Cozy Glow stood at the edge of the pen, the exhilaration of the dance and a second heart beating against her own slowly fading away. In the pen’s centre, Flurry Heart sat surrounded by a heaving, bleating heap of tiny crystalline sheep, each baaing plaintively for her attention.

Fondling the little pink one currently cradled against her chest, Flurry looked up, eyes bright. “Aren’t they the cutest?”

With a little start, Cozy gave her a reflexive nod. The lamb was cute. It was small and soft and pink, and its eyes were a rich liquid brown.

Funny. Cozy had almost expected those eyes to be red.

"Oh, Alphie, look at those eyes! Isn’t she the cutest?”

“Well, hello there, you little scamp. Where’d Audie pick you up?”

“I found her hiding round the back of the woodshed. Can you believe it?”

"I sure can’t! What’re you doing all the way out here, kiddo? Where’re your parents?”

“Golly, mister, I…I don’t know. I’m lost, you see.”

“Oh, sweetheart! You poor little lamb.”

“Not to worry, angel. Audie and me’ll help you find your folks. Where did you see them last?”

“I…I…they’re gone, mister.”

“Oh, sweetheart, no, don’t cry! Oh, you poor thing. Come here, that’s right. Alphie, you don’t think she means they’re—?”

“Are your parents…are they dead, angel?”

“Mmhm. Yeah. I’m…I’m all on my own.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. It’s — it’s alright. It will get better. You can stay with us. For as long as you like. How about that?”

“Really? Golly, missus! I’d — I’d like that more than anything.”

Audie and Alphie. Two unicorns, just like her parents. One pink-furred, one blue. Both of them oozing with all that hated magic that Cozy herself would never possess. Just like her parents. Cozy had chosen them carefully. Had watched them for weeks. And not long after that first meeting, they were, just like her parents, dead.

Their blood had been as red as her eyes.

“Cozy?”

She looked up sharply.

Flurry was holding the odious little pink sheep out to her, smiling hopefully.

You poor little lamb.

“Don’t you want to hold one?”

Cozy looked down at it. Cute. As simple as that. Not weaponised like her own cuteness had been. This creature was all but brainless. There was nothing hiding behind its blank brown eyes.

“I promise she won’t bite!”

Cozy shoved the bile of her past back down where it belonged and forced a smile onto her face. Just like Doctor Healing Word said. I make my own fate — I am not controlled by hate.

She took the repulsive animal in her hooves and held it gingerly. Kept the mask in place, kept the smile on, and tried not to think about how easy it would be to break that fragile little neck. How good it would feel, to perform the simple action of pushing those vertebrae just a little further than they would naturally go. The relief that would provide, after decades of denial.

“Aw! She matches your fur!” Flurry clopped her hooves together in delight. “Let’s take a photo!”

“Princess!” The call came again, insistent.

A sigh, and then Flurry lit her horn to wrench the door open. “Now’s not a good time, Lamplight.”

The blue-armoured guard gave her an apologetic dip of the head. “It’s just — are you feeling alright, Princess?”

Flurry Heart narrowed her eyes at him. Had he been eavesdropping? Surely not. Nopony would dare.

“What do you mean?”

He flushed. “It’s the Crystal Heart, your Highness.”

At those words, Flurry’s blood turned to ice. “What?”

He took a step closer, just over the boundary of her room, and lowered his voice, even though there was nopony around. “It’s just — well, you know the shakes over the last few months? The glitches?”

Compressing her lips, Flurry gave him a tight nod.

How could she forget? The last five months had been among the worst of her life. Not just because of the problems with Cozy — but also because of the issues the Heart had experienced. Shivering in place, its natural levitation faltering, its magical output lessening, sometimes even stopping, seemingly at random; it was all a recipe for disaster for the Empire. This had been the worst year in living memory for their territory. The snows had claimed back almost a full ninety feet from where the boundary had been last year.

And Flurry knew exactly whose fault it was. Exactly where the blame lay. Not with the crystal ponies. Nor even with Cadence. They were all as content as ever. As loving.

Ever since Flurry Heart turned twelve and got her (worryingly late) cutie mark, the Heart had been tied closer to her than to her mother. She was its Princess. Sunburst thought that in a sense it had even created her, its enormous magical output granting her alicornhood ascension while still in the womb. For reasons known only to itself, the Heart had tied their fortunes together, bound itself to her.

And now she was failing it. Because of Cozy, she was jeopardising everything. That was why she was trying — trying to break it off. Before things got even worse. Before it was too late.

“What is it, Lamplight?” she asked again, her voice quavery with fear. “What’s happened?”

He leaned in even closer, and his voice was a terrified whisper. “Princess, there’s…there’s a crack.”

“Here it is. The Crystal Heart.”

It thrummed as they approach, pulsing brighter and brighter the closer Flurry got. Cozy could feel the raw magical energy, the power of it, rolling off in waves. Once she would have looked at an object like that and viewed it only as potential. Potential for destruction, for dominion, for unleashing some of the agony she felt on the world outside her aching skull. But now — now she still saw all that, of course. Doctor Healing Word was a therapist, not a miracle-worker. She saw all that potential, but she also saw other things. The way the heart warmed the Crystal Empire, helped the crops to grow. The way it improved life for the faceless masses. And most importantly, the way it made Flurry Heart smile.

“Does it do that for everyone?”

Flurry glanced over at her, and smiled. “No. Not even my mom. Just me.” She shook out her long curls and reached out a hoof for the Heart. “And that’s not all. Watch this.”

As she neared it, the Heart began to hum audibly. Cozy’s fur stood on end as she felt the magic emanating off the thing ramp up. If it were fire it would be burning white-hot, and even a pegasus could feel it. You didn’t need a horn to recognise an artefact powerful enough to change the fabric of the world.

As Flurry’s skin brushed against the Heart, it began to sing. A high, thready warble, not quite a voice and not quite music — but sweetly and achingly beautiful. A song just for the princess.

Cozy Glow thought she understood, then, why Flurry Heart was not princess ‘of’ anything. Love, Friendship, Sun, Moon. Her title was simpler; Princess of the Crystal Empire. Because that’s exactly what she was.

She watched as the Crystal Heart sang for this beautiful girl, this ineffable creature with her razor-sharp intelligence and almost cruel sense of humour — this girl had somehow fallen for Cozy, of all people, and she thought that she could see a future with her.

A beautiful future, full of hope as radiant as a summer sunrise.

And for once, when Cozy Glow smiled, it was real.

Flurry Heart stood beside the open Prench windows, the wind ruffling her mane. Cozy Glow stalked toward her from the bedchamber, the last pair of saddlebags slung haphazardly over her back. She smiled, and it was mocking. Hollow. Her eyes were empty.

“Is this the end, then?”

Lowering her eyelids so that Cozy would not be able to read the pain there, Flurry nodded. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

Cozy Glow bowed, low and servile, with a smile as sharp as a razor blade. “Then I suppose this is goodbye, Princess.”

What Flurry wouldn’t give to see that smile wiped away — to see its softer counterpart, the genuine one. The one that lit up those hard red eyes, like chips of ruby, that melted the anger there.

In her mind’s eye she saw again the Cozy of yesterday — on their first date, startled by their genuine connection, shocked to be put into check after so long unbeaten in chess. On their second date, with the sun on her mane and a shimmering little sheep in her forelegs. A reluctant smile that became a real one. On their third date, their fifth and their twentieth — on the morning after she first slept over, all rumpled ringlets and sheepish grin.

Cozy Glow, the mare who Flurry loved. Cozy Glow, the mare who was sometimes so far away she might as well be on the moon. Cozy Glow, who had — once or twice — hinted at the demons she struggled with, the impulses she tried to keep in check. Cozy Glow, who had drained her mother of magic, who her parents would hate.

Cozy Glow, who drew back so far into her shell at the first sign of rejection that she would likely never come back out again.

Cozy Glow.

The mare had many faces, many masks. And she wore them so well, with such practised ease, that sometimes Flurry feared she would never find the real face beneath.

But she loved her.

She was jerked back into the present — to the Cozy Glow before her now — as the other mare brushed past, spreading her wings as she neared the balcony’s edge.

“Wait,” Flurry said, hardly knowing what she was doing.

Instantly, like a timberwolf scenting blood, Cozy swung back. Red eyes gleaming as she waited to hear what Flurry would say next.

Irrational, stupid hope surged in Flurry’s heart and she reached out a hoof.

“Maybe — maybe it’s not the end,” she whispered, and Cozy took a step forward.

“No?” The word was careful. Cautious. Even now, she wore her indifference like armour.

The little spark that had kindled in Flurry’s breast began to flicker and die. How could she ever trust Cozy? How could she ever build a future with her? If she wouldn’t open up, not even to Flurry, then what hope was there?

But even though she had never spoken the words aloud, though Cozy had never so much as hinted at the possibility that it was returned, Flurry Heart loved her. She loved her fierce, spiky, sharp-edged little Cozy, and she would not shut that door forever. Not yet.

“I — maybe it doesn’t have to be the end,” she whispered again.

Cozy Glow took another pace forward, her shoulderblades moving fluidly beneath the dusky apricot of her coat, and now she resembled nothing so much as a tiger stalking its prey. “Then what is it, Princess?” She wielded the word like a weapon. Like an insult.

Flurry Heart fell back a step. She had heard Princess said in that tone before. Dripping with derision. Princess Twilight Sparkle. ‘Princess’. As though no one could be less deserving than the aunt who Flurry sometimes thought she loved more than her own parents. The aunt whom she had not seen in eleven months, because of the way Flurry’s shields snapped down whenever her name came up in conversation — the memory of those fifteen years encased in stone as fresh as if they were yesterday.

If she made her relationship with Cozy public, she would likely never see her Aunt Twily again.

In the face of those staring red eyes, her willpower ebbed away. The words that finally dripped off her tongue were slow. Hesitant. “Maybe…maybe this could just be…a break.”

Any remnants of mercy, of hope, evaporated from Cozy’s expression in an instant. The shutters slammed closed, and she was once more the merciless creature Flurry had met that first day in the chess club. She looked at that cold, icy mare, and she could almost see in her the child that had toppled a kingdom.

“A break?”

Her heart beating far too hard, Flurry began to stammer. “I-I— I just thought that maybe we could—”

“Don’t bother,” Cozy spat. “I know exactly what you mean.”

The vitriol there was enough to make Flurry rear back a little, but Cozy pressed on, implacable.

“You don’t have the courage to break up with me properly so you’re dialling it back. You just want a break — right? I thought you were a lot of things, Flurry, but I didn’t think you were a coward.”

Coward. Coward? That did it. That was — that was the last straw. Flurry Heart spread her wings and drew herself up to her full height to look down her nose at the little pegasus. If this was how Cozy wanted them to part, so be it. If there was anyone here who was a coward, it wasn’t Flurry.

“I just wanted space! You’re the one who’s running from your feelings.”

Cozy scoffed. “Oh excuse me, Princess Cadence, I think I mistook you for your daughter there.”

“It’s healthy to talk to your partner about your feelings, Cozy!”

“Like I said, Princess Cadence.”

“It’s been a year! Why won’t you let me in?”

For a moment real pain flashed in Cozy’s eyes, real vulnerability — and if she had cried then, if she had apologised or smiled or said anything even halfway real, Flurry would have forgiven her everything. She would have fallen back into Cozy’s embrace and never sought again to extricate herself.

But Cozy Glow did none of those things.

Instead, she sneered. She sneered and she closed back up, and despite their height difference and the crown Flurry wore, she somehow managed to make Flurry feel like the smallest pony in the world.

“Because I don’t want to.”

Flurry Heart gasped with the hurt of it, her wings flying up to cover her mouth, stumbling backward. Because that was the crux of it all, wasn’t it? Cozy Glow did nothing she didn’t want to do. And fundamentally, she did not want to share herself with Flurry. Not enough to keep her.

With a dismissive flip of her own wing, Cozy Glow turned away and leapt to the balcony’s edge. “If you’ve ever had enough space, you know where to find me.”

She smirked down at Flurry, crumpled on the floor, and then she simply spread her wings and let the breeze take her.

Once that little pink speck in the sky had dwindled to nothing, Flurry Heart finally began to cry. Cozy Glow had been drifting away for a long time; always just out of reach. And now she was finally gone.

Light as a dandelion seed, she floated out of Flurry Heart’s life.

Chapter 5: Epistolary Evidence

Excerpt 14990 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Letter from Princess Twilight Sparkle to Rarity, early 1025 CE.

Rarity!

You’ll never guess what Spike and I have found! We’ve been finishing our cataloguing of the palace library vaults — poor Spike has had to transition to a nocturnal schedule to match the only free time I seem to have — and anyway, Vault 128 was where we found it. Just lying on a shelf, like it was rubbish!

It’s an unpublished treatise on the life of Clover the Clever, written by a contemporary source and —this is the bit you’ll love — there’s a chapter on fashion in the High Celestial era! There are some sketches, and even to my eye the clothes look beautiful. I’m so excited to see what you think of them!

Can you come to Canterlot on Friday? Well, I know you can. I already checked your schedule with Coco Pommel and she says you’re scheduled to look at the new spring collection in the afternoon. So I’ve cleared my schedule for the evening — not without difficulty! — and I thought we could spend some time looking at the drawings together. Maybe you’ll even find something there to inspire your summer collection.

Books and fashion — could there be a better recipe for a date?

From your faithful friend (or should I stop saying friend, now? I’m so used to signing our letters that way it’s hard to stop!)
Twilight Sparkle

P.S. Sweetie Belle popped into the palace to say hi yesterday, and she sends her love! You’ll also probably get it in her letter to you, as well. I told her you’re always complaining of her neglect. She said it was — and I quote — ‘the usual Rarity dramatics’ — but I told her that it was a royal command that she write to you more. Studying at the Royal Conservatory of Voice and Woodwind is no excuse for slovenly correspondence, right? So hopefully you’ll see some results on that front. Never let it be said that Princess Twilight Sparkle doesn’t look out for her marefriend’s interests.

Excerpt from All She Had to Give: The Unauthorised Tell-All Biography of Lady Rarity, Element of Generosity, published in Canterlot by Shimmersong Press, 1040 CE.

“Please, Cozy.” Rarity’s voice trembled, and her shimmering blue eyes filled with compassionate tears. “Put the crystal down.”

The filly stared back at her, red eyes wide and pupils dilated, her gaze blank. The energy crystal she held in both hooves trembled, but only slightly.

“Please,” whispered Rarity. “I only want to talk.”

The villain Cozy Glow took a half-step backward, her hoof skittering without purchase against the mound of rubble and broken marble on which she stood. She sucked in a breath and righted herself, and then shut her eyes for a moment.

Without those hellish red eyes gazing back at her, the monster vanished, and for a second Rarity could see only a frightened little foal. But then Cozy released the breath she held, and the gleaming red orbs of her irises stared out again at the beautiful Rarity.

“Why should I?” she asked, and her voice was utterly empty. Devoid of emotion; more like a ghost than a child.

Rarity waited until she had eye contact, and then smiled a small, tremulous smile. “Because I want to help you, darling. I just want to help.”

These lines are just an imagining of the way that fateful day in the bank might have played out, but one thing is for certain. It was pure luck that Lady Rarity was there that afternoon, and pure luck that the hardened child criminal Cozy Glow happened to listen to her. It is all but certain that she would have simply killed anyone else. And, this author asks, what might have become of Equestria if Lady Rarity had not intervened? Might we not all now be bowing down before the throne of Empress Cozy Glow?

Excerpt 23001 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Journal entry by Cozy Glow during her internment in the dungeons of Canterlot Palace, 1020 CE.

A journal. A feelings journal. Can you imagine anything more inane? Anything soppier, more useless, more Twilight Sparkle?

Well, alright, Princess. You asked for it. You gave me a journal, and here are my feelings.

I hate you.

I hate you so much I could scream with it. I hate you hotter than fire, colder than ice, I hate you so much that I think I hate you even more than my parents — and if you had ever met them you would know how much hate for you I must have boiling in my veins for that to even be possible.

I loathe you no matter which of my prisons I am in. The one with the bars and the locked door where I pace around and around, or the vault with Tirek and Chrysalis where I cannot move at all.

Every time you catch me, every time you give up and light your horn to freeze me anew, every time I look into your big purple eyes like floating pools of purple shit, I hate you more. Every time I think surely, surely I have reached the point of maximum saturation, that there can be no more hate my body can hold, you do something new that proves me wrong.

Every time I hear that fizz of magic when you come down to my basement and break the stone shell again, my eyes open a little slower. Every time, the granite takes a little longer to crack. My limbs are a little stiffer, my hooves a little heavier. Like the stone is permeating deeper and deeper, and one day not even you will be able to unfreeze me.

And every time, you flinch away when you look into my eyes. Just like my parents did, the first time they looked into those big red blobs. The colour of blood, they used to tell me. The colour of sin. Of failure. Of no magic.

What is it with ponies and red?

And then you open with whatever banality you spent the past god-knows-how-many months cooking up, the latest magic solution to cure my big bad evilness, and it all begins all over again. Another day. Another night. Who can tell how much time has passed, down in the vaults beneath Canterlot Castle? The only pony I see is you, and you never age.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. You’re sloppy and you’re stupid, and no matter how much you tighten your security system there’s always some hole left ripe for exploitation by an enterprising little foal with a burning hatred for your company and boundless time on her hooves. So yeah, I’ve escaped plenty of times. And the world outside changes, so I know time is passing. Every time the streets of Canterlot are a little less familiar to me.

But your tracker spell is the one thing I’ve never managed to rid myself of, and so it’s only ever a matter of time before you show up with that miserable look on your face and freeze me again.

I fucking hate you, Twilight Sparkle. If emotions could kill — if hate was as powerful as your shitty friendship laser — you’d be dead thirty thousand times over. I wish Chrysalis and Tirek and I had a magical death rainbow like you. I wish I’d stabbed myself in the throat before I let myself get captured. I wish you’d just put me out of my misery and kill me, instead of keeping me lingering in this shitty half-life purgatory. I wish a lot of things.

So there you go, Twilight, bestie, princess-turned-therapist. There’s a lot of feelings for you to read over and try to figure out. Enjoy this first entry in Cozy Glow’s feelings journal, because there will never be another. I know exactly what’s going to happen next. I’m going to pass you this book, and you’re going to dash right off to your library to read and annotate and sweat about it. And by the time you’re back, I’ll be gone. That’s right, Twilight, I cracked it again. Turns out even the most sophisticated spell matrix isn’t much good if you only slap it over the door, and not the sewage pipe. Golly, who would have guessed?

Ta-ta now.

Excerpt from the Canterlot Courier, CHAOS IN CANTERLOT: COZY GLOW ESCAPES AND HERO BEARER RARITY SAVES THE DAY, Friday 18th March, 1025 CE.

Citizens visiting the Canterlot Building Society this morning were in for the shock of their lives when faced with the dastardly villain Cozy Glow, who has once again slipped the bonds of her captivity and burst out into the streets of our fair capitol.

Wielding a magical gemfire crystal stolen from the Royal Armouries, the pint-sized murderer burst into the Canterlot Building Society, firing wildly with her stolen weapon. She lost no time in terrorising the bank tellers and their customers, all unarmed innocents, and even the Building Society’s dedicated security mare was not enough to stop her. Less than ten minutes after entering the building, Cozy Glow had fifteen hostages and was overseeing the emptying of the vault full of golden bits into her saddlebags.

As concerned passersby watched the flashes of gemfire through the windows, alarm grew. The Royal Guard were summoned, and, of course, the word spread. Our very own Fresh Scoop was first on the scene.

Captain Whitehoof stated that she had: “No comment, Scoop, let me do my damn job.”

But Private Little Vineyard had another tale to tell. “This is the second time this year. This b****y maniac needs to be locked up for good and the key thrown away. Princess Twilight is keen on rehabbing them but some villains are just bad to the bone.”

You heard it here first, readers. Cozy Glow: bad to the bone, the official view of the Royal Guards.

But the terror was not yet over for those inside. When the brave Captain Whitehoof led a charge toward the doors, the reprehensible filly put the gun to the head of local resident Ol’ Timbo, who had been visiting the Building Society to withdraw his weekly pension. After she threatened to murder the ninety-six-year-old Mr. Ol’ Timbo in cold blood, Captain Whitehoof had no choice but to back off.

“Blood-chillin’ it were,” the brave Mr. Timbo told our reporter Fresh Scoop. “This sweet lil’ filly, younger than me great-granddaughter, all cutesy and tiny — she puts a gun to me head and says you’d better back off, or golly, I think me hoof might just slip and his brains would make a big mess on the floor. Blood-chillin’ to hear a child talkin’ like that, it were. I’ve had a long life and it’ll be no surprise to me when my time comes, Celestia knows, but even so, all I could think were I don’t want to meet me end just yet, not like this. And thank Princess Luna I didn’t that’s all I can say, because it were a gosh-darned close call.”

The situation was growing more dire. The guards were facing off with a megalomaniac, and she had innocent ponies at her mercy. Onlookers began to fear the worst. Witnesses say that Captain Whitehoof sent messengers to the palace calling the Elements of Harmony to assemble, ready to re-imprison Cozy Glow in stone. But as luck would have it, the impasse ended when one of Equestria’s greatest heroes happened upon the scene herself.

Hope dawned, and hope had a glorious purple mane and its name was Lady Rarity.

The Bearers of the Elements of Generosity was en route for a luxurious meal at Chez Magnifique with her dear friend Princess Twilight Sparkle, but when she saw the emergency unfolding, she lost no time in taking the reins.

With no regard for her own safety, the heroic Lady Rarity burst through the double doors of the bank, ready to tackle the vile Cozy Glow with no weapon but her own hooves.

“I definitely feared the worst,” said eyewitness Donut Joe. “I mean, we all did. Lady Rarity going in there alone and facing down that awful little sh*t? We thought Cozy Glow might kill her, and then where would we all be? Equestria would be down the pan without the Elements.”

Imagine the surprise of humble Mr. Donut, then, when the doors opened to reveal all fifteen of the hostages — every one unharmed. Lady Rarity had sacrificed herself to save them all. She had traded herself in to the villainous child in order to save the people of Canterlot.

A Code Rainbow was announced, and the city went into lockdown. Civilians were ordered to take shelter at home, and it was only through raw courage and a cunning disguise as a trash can that Fresh Scoop was able to remain on the scene.

Before long Princess Twilight Sparkle and the other Bearers arrived — Lady Fluttershy, Lady Rainbow Dash, Lady Applejack and Lady Pinkie Pie. They carried with them the Elements, but without Lady Rarity there to wield the sixth no action could be taken.

What followed was a tense seventy-minute standoff between the heroes of Equestria and the scoundrel Cozy Glow. From his vantage point in a nearby bin Fresh Scoop’s keen ears struggled to make out what was being said, but he observed Princess Twilight Sparkle pacing back and forth, growing more and more agitated. His own fear grew in direct proportion — something that can frighten an alicorn must be enough to terrify the rest of Equestria. What must Poor Lady Rarity have experienced in there? What terrible battle must have elapsed?

Until the fair unicorn chooses to break her silence, we may never know, but one thing is certain.

Before the seventieth minute since Lady Rarity’s entrance had elapsed, she emerged from the Canterlot Building Society. In her magic, she carried the gemfire crystal, wrested from Cozy Glow in the course of their fight. But remarkably, she was unharmed, her white fur unblemished. And more shockingly still, beside her, without chains or restraints, walked the demon foal, the creature of nightmares, the murderer Cozy Glow.

A few words were exchanged with the Princess, with the guards, and then, after the discussion ended, Lady Rarity simply walked away, the deadly child padding at her side as tame as any dog.

What feats of magic or persuasion must Lady Rarity be capable of, to master this creature? Lady Fluttershy may have faced down dragons, but between the two of them, the Canterlot Courier would place its bits on Lady Rarity to vanquish the more dangerous beast.

Fresh Scoop unfortunately became stuck in the trash can that had so recently sheltered him, and lost the trail, but reports suggest that Lady Rarity boarded a train with Cozy Glow and travelled north to destinations unknown. Where are they going? What comes next for this ill-matched pair when they reach their destination? And most importantly of all, what happened in the Canterlot Building Society?

Rest assured, the Canterlot Courier will be the first newspaper to get the scoop. Read the full interviews with eyewitnesses Ol’ Timbo and Donut Joe on page six.

From the private records of Lady Rarity, entitled Letter 3 from Cozy Glow, roughly 1025 CE.

To Rarity,

Doctor Healing Word says writing out my feelings will…help, somehow. But I can’t even look at a journal without being eleven again, back in that dungeon beneath Canterlot castle. Write down your feelings, Cozy Glow, she says, lavender and pink and sugary goodness. Write down your feelings and we can talk about them. Conversation is the first step to friendship.

If there’s one thing Twilight Sparkle taught me, it’s that friendship does not come easily to a prisoner and her jailor.

But then again, for me, friendship does not come at all.

So — journals are a no. I’m sure you understand. But I suppose a letter to you couldn’t hurt. It’s not like you don’t know all this anyway. I’m pretty sure the doc tells you everything I say in there. You’re the one signing his cheques, so it makes sense.

I don’t hate therapy. Therapy is safe. I understand it. The doc is there to listen, and he’s paid to do it. There’s no false expectations, no ambiguity. We all get something out of it. He’s not pretending to listen, with some bizarre ulterior motive behind the kindness.

Not like her.

She only wanted me to reform so I would fit in her round hole, smooth out my awkward square edges. My sharp bits and my inconvenient parts. Just like my parents, really. Mashing a pegasus-shaped block at the unicorn-shaped hole, over and over and over, just in case it would fit this time around.

So my feelings. My feelings, generally, are shit. I feel like shit, I make others feel like shit. Or when I’m not feeling like shit, I’m feeling empty. There’s bad and there’s less bad. That’s all. When I hit things, when I cut things, I feel less empty, less shit. I miss cutting things. Would it be so bad, to let me have a knife? I wouldn’t use it on you. I pinkie promise.

Maybe on the doc. Maybe. Next time he asks me to share my nonexistent feelings and wants me to elaborate on shit or empty, whichever one of the two it is.

But probably not. He wouldn’t come again if I did, no matter how much you paid him, and who then would I be able to try and push to their limit. You’re no fun to do that with, you see. When I say something crass or cruel, you don’t look frightened or shocked. You just look…sad. And that doesn’t make me feel less empty. Doesn’t make me laugh. Just pushes me all the way back down into the deepest recesses of shit.

So I guess I won’t cut anypony, anymore. Out of the two ponies here in this mountain wasteland, there’s nopony I find expendable.

What does that say about me now? Am I changing, the way you say I am?

Every day you shine a little brighter, darling.

I suppose I certainly never found anypony not expendable, before.

Excerpt 16453 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Letter from Lady Rarity to Princess Twilight Sparkle, late 1025 CE.

Hello, Twilight, darling.

First of all, before anything else, I want to thank you for your patience. It can’t have been easy, the last few months. You’ve been so marvellously patient. If I had been in your horseshoes — waiting for you with no clear end in sight for a reason I didn’t quite understand — I would have been half mad with anxiety by now.

But then again, patience has never been my strong suit. Do you recall when you were writing that paper on those funny moths that fly toward the moon? You had invited me for an afternoon of quiet reading and somehow I thought that you meant…well, that we’d begin with reading and then segue into other, ahem, activities. I was quite, quite wrong.

The thing is, Twilight…

Gosh, I’ve never been any good at this part. The painful part.

The thing is — it’s been a marvellous little exploration, darling, but I’m afraid I can’t go on with it any longer. Cozy Glow….well, she has to be my first priority now. I know you’re trying, I know you are, but I still see you…tense up whenever I mention her.

You’re the Princess of Friendship, but not even you can forgive everything. And you shouldn’t have to force yourself.

I think it will be better this way. We always worked better as friends, didn’t we?

I’ll miss you, truly I will. It hurts me more than you know to break this wonderful little piece of happiness off. This little patch of sunlight in my life.

But this is what I have to do. It’s the right thing to do. And I know that with time, you’ll agree.

I think I’m the first good thing that has happened to this poor foal in a long time. Years and years. This is something only I can do for her. A gift only I can give her.

A second chance.

I’m the Element of Generosity, and I think that perhaps this was the reason Harmony chose me all along.

I’ll…I’ll be skipping the next few Council of Friendship meetings. I think it will be better for us both.

Regretfully,
Rarity.

Excerpt 16454 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Letter from Princess Twilight Sparkle to Lady Rarity, late 1025 CE.

Please, Rarity, don’t do this. The only reason I’m not there right now breaking down your door is because you said space and solitude are part of Cozy Glow’s therapeutic process, and I’m — I’m trying to respect that.

I can learn to get along with her. I can. You’ve managed it — somehow! — and I am the Princess of friendship. I can do it. Please, have a little faith in me.

I’ve written dozens of drafts of this letter, but no matter how many times I rework them they all come out the same. Please don’t give up on us. Please give me a chance. I can be better. I will be better. To keep you, I would do anything. I wasted too many years thinking of you as my friend Rarity, without ever really seeing what we could be. I wish that I had done things differently. Seen it all clearer.

Don’t leave me, Rarity. I think I might love you. I cant lose you. Not yet.

From your faithful marefriend,
Twilight Sparkle.

Excerpt 16454 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Letter from Lady Rarity to Princess Twilight Sparkle, late 1025 CE.

Dear Twilight,

Thank you for your letter, darling. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t shed a few tears over it. More than once.

I appreciate you not coming in person. I think that would be very painful for all of us. You see, believe it or not, the last letter — it was me trying to be…gentle. To spare you a few of the harder truths about how things have changed for me the last few months.

But in truth, there’s more than just the issue of your feelings for Cozy. There’s also her feelings about you to take into account. And they…they aren’t good.

I never fully realised the extent of what you were doing with her. I thought she was stone most of the time — that the breakouts were freak accidents. But…she tells me that you kept her down there for weeks at a time. Doing experiments, she says. You were trying to…to help her, I suppose. I’m sure your intentions were good — they must have been — but she views you as a jailor, Twilight. A monster.

And to be honest with you, after hearing the things she has told me, I’m not sure I can entirely blame her. She was conscious, the whole time. Even in the stone. Especially in the stone. Knowing that you did that…that you resealed her, knowing that she would be alert…Twilight, I don’t think what we had can really come back from that; do you?

That’s not to say that we can’t still be friends. I know you were doing it for the good of Equestria — that it was what you had to do. But more than that?

I don’t think I have it in me.

So…let’s have some perspective, dear. It was only five months. The last six, when I’ve been up here in the mountains — I don’t think they truly count. So it was only five months, really. And we’ve been friends for fourteen years. We can weather this storm. With time, Cozy will learn to forgive you, at least a little, and then things can go back to the way they have always been. The six of us, all equal, all closer than sisters. One big family.

I’m sorry I can’t give you more.

Rarity.

Excerpt 16454 from the private archives of Princess Twilight Sparkle, titled Letter from Princess Twilight Sparkle to Lady Rarity, late 1025 CE.

Dear Rarity,

I would try to justify my actions. To tell you that I spent those fifteen years genuinely, truly trying to save her. To rehabilitate her. But it wouldn’t be true. I had so many crises that demanded my attention — you were there for many of them, as Generosity — to say nothing of the actual demands of ruling a kingdom. It wasn’t possible to devote as much time to my reformation work as I would have liked.

But my methods did work. I unfroze Chrysalis, and I talked to her. I worked with her. She responded, Rarity. So did Tirek. It took subjective months — years for me — but I made it happen. I got through to them. I became, after a fashion, their friend.

Cozy Glow never opened up. She never even tried.

I am…I am sorry, if her claims of being conscious were actually true. She started telling me that around the seventh year, but given that I had worked on and off with Tirek and Chrysalis for four years and they’d never mentioned anything along those lines, I thought it was just another lie.

She lies a lot, your new daughter. It comes to her as naturally as breathing.

I wonder how much time I spent with her, unfrozen. Perhaps longer even than the six months you’ve had with her. It must say something about me, that you have succeeded where I have failed.

But then again, you always were the better mare.

But you are right. Of course, you’re right. You’re a mother now. She must come first, no matter what I think. No matter what I want — oh please, Rarity, don’t do this— She must come first, and I must respect your choice. I will lay Rarity, my girlfriend, to rest, and I will I look forward to greeting you again as Rarity, my friend.

But I will say this last thing to you as the mare who was once your…your partner. It has been a privilege to love you to know this side of you. I will never forget our time together, our five months of spring. I will never forget what we had.

From your faithful friend,
Twilight Sparkle.

From the private records of Lady Rarity, excerpt from Journal 38, roughly 1025 CE.

Sometimes I wonder if I am doing the right thing. I wake up in the night, gasping, reaching for — for somepony who is no longer there. Is it Sweetie, is it Opalescence? Is it Twilight? I don’t know.

Our time together was so brief, but at the time…I was so happy. She used to leave me waiting outside her library, she used to leave me waiting outside her court, she used to leave me waiting for hours at restaurants before she turned up, pencils in her mane and ink smudges on her nose, apologising in that sweet, breathless way of hers.

I was her friend for years, and her lover for only five months, but now that it’s gone…I don’t know. Will I ever be able to look at her as I once did, without pain?

And then there is the third layer that covers her in my view, now. The way Cozy views her.

A tormentor, a captor. A monster.

I have not seen Twilight since our Canterlot in summer, the day before I was walking to meet her at our favourite restaurant and happened to take the route that leads past Canterlot Building Society. If I hadn’t heard the shots fired. If I hadn’t ventured inside and seen those eyes.

Big and crimson and furious and terrified. The same eyes that watch me now when I wake in the night, gasping and reaching for the ghost of a future that can never be. Circled by shadows, never sleeping. Those same eyes, angry and frightened all at once.

I ask her why she struggles to sleep. The answer is chilling in its simplicity.

“Because when I wake up, I might be stone again.”

I ask her about her life before. About her parents.

Those answers are not simple, but they are no less chilling. This foal has suffered more than anyone knows. The pain in those crimson eyes is real, no matter what Twilight thinks.

I look into those eyes, at that child, and certainty comes. It was worth it, to sacrifice that tiny, precious part of my own life. I am doing the right thing. I am saving a life.

I am the only one who can.

From the private records of Lady Rarity, Letter to Princess Mi Amore Cadenza from Lady Rarity, Hearths Warming 1025 CE.

To Cadence —

Happy Hearthswarming, darling, and give my love to dear Shining Armour and that precious little angel of yours. It’s been almost three years since I last saw Flurry, and she must be — hmm, fourteen now? My goodness, how time flies. It’s been far too long, and we must remedy that one of these days. I expect that sweet Flurry is no longer as small as she was when I last saw her, but no less sweet.

I wanted to thank you for the loan of your mountain cottage. I can see why you and Shining Armour spent your honeymoon here — and why the honeymoon was so long! It’s cold up here, and when the sun does come out it’s frightfully humid — does nothing for my mane, I can tell you — but good heavens, it is beautiful.

That little project of mine is still ongoing, and it’s progressing…well. Yes. Quite well. I know a little something of what it is to be a parent, now, and I must say, I don’t know how you and Shining Armour have managed as well as you have. Teenagers are…well, they are difficult. This one perhaps a little more than usual, granted, but still, I finally understand what all my poor friends who welcomed their bundles of joy years ago are talking about.

That isn’t the reason I’m writing, though I am very grateful for the advice you gave me in your last letter. The conversation about her birth family was…harrowing, to say the least, and I appreciated the pointers. And recommending Doctor Healing Word was a stroke of genius. He’s worked wonders, I swear.

Anyway.

The real reason I am writing is dear Twilight. I’m not sure if she has written to you or Shining Armour lately, but you may have picked up that she is dealing with a…with rather disappointing news of a personal nature. I…I truly hate to see my friends suffering, and I think that you might be able to ease her spirits.

Sunburst, Flurry’s godfather. He and Twilight got on rather wonderfully when I saw them together in Ponyville a few years ago. They both adore reading, and science, and magic, and then of course there is the love of darling Flurry as a common subject too. I’d bet they will be able to talk for hours on the subject of obscure magical arcana. Twilight…she needs somepony like that in her life right now. A — a little distraction, if you catch my drift.

I wonder if you might pass on the invitation to the Sparkle family Hearthswarming that you so kindly sent me to Sunburst instead? Perhaps you could seat him next to Twilight at dinner?

Thank you for your help, Cadence darling. It truly does mean the world to me.

A very merry Hearthswarming to you and your family. Give Flurry a kiss from her Auntie Rarity for me.

Love,
Rarity

P. S. Please do ignore the watermarks on this paper. And the mascara. I was…it was raining while I was writing it. And it made a terrible mess of my makeup. Got it all over the paper. Terribly silly of me. Terribly silly.

Chapter 7: Reunion

Dear Cozy,

It’s been six months, just like we said. Six months of space, of thinking time. I’ve thought a lot, and — and I can’t see any way around it.

So this is me promising that this time, it won’t end. I’m ready now, to commit — and to introduce you to my parents. Heck, you can be crowned Princess Consort next week if you want to. Okay, that might be rushing it a bit, but you see my point, right?

I want to try again. How about a game of chess, to talk it over? Just like old times.

Stars, I hope you’re not away on one of those mountain retreats or anything. I — this was a difficult letter to draft. I think this might be like the eighth, actually? Anyway — can you write back?

I can’t wait to hear from you.

Yours hopefully,
Flurry.

~~Flurry —~~

~~Have you any idea how long you’ve kept me waiting? How long I — how many letters I wrote you? I mean sure, I burned them all, but shouldn’t you have known? What good is being a demi-goddess if you can’t read my mind once in a while?~~

~~I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much.~~

~~I’ll meet you anywhere you want. I’ll play chess, I’ll play anything you like. I’ll let you win. I won’t even put up a fight.~~

~~I’ll face Cadenza for you. Shining Armour. Celestia, Luna, the whole Sun and Night Courts at once, if that’s what it takes. Maybe…maybe even Twilight Sparkle. Maybe not. But when I think about the possibility of getting you back it makes me feel pretty damn brave.~~

~~I’ve missed you.~~

~~—Cozy.~~

To the Princess —

Your proposal is amenable. The old spot? Friday.

—Cozy.

As she watched the train with her daughter pulling away, Cadence’s lips thinned to a narrow line. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it. There must be another way to heal the Heart.”

“There isn’t, Cady.” From his customary place beside her, Shining Armour shook his head. “We’ve tried everything. The heart wants what the heart wants — and our Flurry is in love. She can’t help that.”

“But to gamble the Empire on it—!”

“It’s not about the Empire. This is about Flurry. What she needs.”

Cadence’s eyes still followed the train, fright oozing from her every pore. “But if she gets this wrong, if it gets worse, it could mean—”

“—It might not get worse,” he interrupted, still gentle. “We need to trust our daughter, Cady. She’s a grown mare, and she’s been frightened away from relationships her whole adult life, for the sake of the Heart. This is the first time she’s ever even come close, and we have to encourage it.”

At the sound of that name, Cadence let out a soft moan. “But why did it have to be her? Of all the ponies in Equestria.”

Shining Armour worked his jaw. “I don’t like it either, but for whatever reason, Cozy Glow is the first pony that has broken through those walls. It’s either encourage Flurry to mend things with her, or we watch the Heart crack in two. Watch our daughter crack in two.”

“I know, I know,” Cadence said impatiently, turning to look him in the eyes for the first time. “What do you think I’ve been feeling from her for the past six months? I know exactly how much this is hurting her. But perhaps with time — she might have healed.”

Shining shook his head. His daughter was like him. She loved hard — and she would love but once. Once her heart was lost, there was no going back.

Exactly like it had been with him and Cady, all those years ago.

“She wouldn’t have healed. Nor would the Heart. If it hadn’t broken, it would have withered and died either way. Just slower.”

Cadence lowered her gaze, defeated. “And the Empire with it.”

“And the Empire with it.” He nodded.

They both knew what was on the line here.

“This is our only option.”

Flurry gazed into the eyes of the mare she loved, and she felt the cracks in her heart healing just as surely as the cracks in the Crystal Heart must be healing too.

“I love you,” she whispered, and this time there was no hesitation.

Chapter 8: The Perfect Team

The windigo screamed, and Flurry pumped her wings frantically as she ramped up to meet it. One heartbeat, two, then one final frantic flap and she collided with its face, slamming both her forehooves into it and looping away with another bone-crunching kick from her hind legs. The windigo might not have bone, but it could certainly feel pain, and the high-pitched scream that summoned the storm took on a new pitch of pain.

It lashed out with a gout of frostbreath, and Flurry Heart ducked and wove through the sky, a crazy pattern of spirals to evade it. The windigo followed, screeching in fury, fixated on her. And Cozy Glow, spear at the ready, saw her chance and took it.

She dove at the windigo, blade outstretched, and the enchanted blade pierced the ethereal skin. Raw, elemental force rushed out, a blast of freezing air so cold it froze her hair in place, but she kept her wings beating even as ice crystals sheared and fell from them with every flap.

The windigo screamed anew and wheeled on her, and Cozy disengaged and dove away. The icy fangs snapped shut on empty air, and then she was looping around to join up with Flurry.

With the ease of long practice, the two of them moved almost as one, soaring through two counterpoints of a complex swirling manoeuvre, working their pegasi skill to turn the windigo’s own storm against it. It squalled and thrashed, teeth coming within inches of them — but alternating jabs from Flurry’s sword and Cozy’s spear kept it turning in midair, impotent and enraged.

As she looked through the windigo’s semi-transparent body at her marefriend, Cozy Glow felt a surge of fierce pride. Of possessiveness. Look at this mare, this beautiful mare. She’s strong and fierce and beautiful, and she wants to be with me. Me.

“Now, Cozy!” Flurry swooped in close and dealt the beast a sky-shattering punch that split the air like a thunderbolt.

Cozy felt another pulse of — of affection, of love, maybe — and she obeyed, swooping in to deliver the final blow. Flurry was…she was incredible. She had to know all sorts of crazy fire spells that would solve this particular problem, but she was sticking to just her flight and super-strength. Perhaps she had noticed that when she wielded her more powerful magic, Cozy became twitchier. Edgier. A little closer to…to something. Powerful magic users and Cozy Glow did not mesh well, and Flurry Heart was kind enough to adapt.

Was it possible to be grateful for something and resent it at the same time?

The windigo was reeling and Cozy was swooping in to finish it off. This monster had all but wiped out one of the Crystal Empire’s outlying villages. Destroyed their crops, killed two ponies. It was a monster, and it would not change its ways.

It was, as Flurry had suggested, the perfect outlet. A way to work off some steam.

A way to use those violent urges, as she had said, productively.

Cozy Glow had cleared it with Doctor Healing Word. Everyone agreed. It might help her, to find a way to release her pent-up aggression. And it would be productive. Only Rarity had hesitated, but when pressed, even she had agreed that it was, without a doubt, productive.

The mission statement was clear. Drive the monster away. And if you can’t….well.

But when the moment came — when she hovered there, her spear poised above its eye, Cozy Glow faltered. She had not taken a life in twenty years. Not since she was thirteen years old.

She looked into the snow-swirl eye of the monster that thrashed beneath her, and she found that she could not cross that line again. No matter how healthy it might be. How productive it was. If she did it again, there would be no going back.

The windigo lashed its long, sinuous neck, and Cozy was thrown loose. For one terrible, endless second she plummeted, end over end — and then the windigo was upon her, sharp fangs fastening on her leg, shaking her like a dog shakes a rabbit —

— And then Flurry Heart lit her horn at last, and the world flared into golden light.

The windigo shrilled out one final, desperate scream, but the golden light pierced it and punctured it, and the storm and the windigo that made it were blasted from existence in one single, horrifying surge of raw magic.

That same light caught her, and then lowered her gently to the floor. Winked out of existence as soon as the task was accomplished. Flurry knew she would not like to be held in a magical grip a moment longer than necessary. Cozy had not told her about precisely the disciplinary methods her parents used to use on her, but she thought Flurry might have grasped some of it, nonetheless.

Cozy Glow lay on the snow, and tried to understand what she had just seen.

Flurry Heart had killed. Flurry Heart had killed a living being right in front of her, as though it was nothing. Cozy Glow remembered how it felt. The look on her father’s face. The light as it left her mother’s eyes. She remembered, and she rolled sideways and vomited a mess of steaming green vegetable matter into the snow.

Still shaking, she looked at Flurry, so effortlessly graceful as she alighted beside her. “You — you killed that thing like you’ve done it before.”

Flurry Heart lifted one wing and let it fall again. Careless. Casual. “I have.”

She opened her mouth, and closed it again. She tried once more; no sound came out. On the third try, when her voice finally came, it sounded very small and far away. “What do you mean?”

“There’s a reason I suggested this as a way to work out some of our tension.” Flurry attempted a smile, but it was an abortive effort. “I’ve done it before.”

Her heart thundering in her chest, Cozy Glow struggled to her hooves. “You said — you said we were going to drive it off — you said a healthy outlet, not — not—”

More vomit. Her breakfast spewed onto the ground alongside her lunch.

Didn’t Flurry know her at all? Who she was? What she had done? Didn’t she understand that — that she couldn’t — that she mustn’t —

“I need to go home,” she whispered, and her mouth tasted of bile. “I need to see Doctor Healing Word.”

She hunched over in the snow, trying to drive the images from her mind. The smell. The blood. The flash of a blade, and the sweet cleansing touch of the flames.

No. No. I’m not that pony any more. I’m better. I’m recovered. Just like Doctor Healing Word says. I make my own fate — I am not controlled by hate. I’m better. I am.

“I’ll teleport us home in — in a minute, Cozy.” Flurry Heart was venturing a little closer, and Cozy reared back, hoof outstretched to ward her off.

Don’t come near me. I — I’m a — I was a monster. I might — I don’t know what I might do. Even though I’m better now. I am.

“But I wanted to show you this…so you could understand.”

“Understand what?” Cozy choked out. “You did this — for me? You’ve been out here k-ki-killing monsters to — to prove some sick point?”

“No!” Flurry said, eyes widening. “No — to show you who I was.”

“Who you were?”

She had gone insane. The princess had gone insane. She had gone to the very brink of sanity, and she was pulling Cozy there too. The smell, the blood, the blade, the fire — no, no, no. I’m better I’m better I’m better.

“You asked me, on our first date, about the Sombrites.”

Finally, the flashing images in Cozy’s head stuttered. The screams faded — just for a second — into the background, and her ears pricked up.

She remembered that conversation. I know what it’s like to be the smartest pony in the room. In every room. She remembered the way the firelight danced on Flurry Heart’s shining curls, burnishing them. Turning them golden and red, like fire themselves.

She remembered that first checkmate.

Flurry took her by the hoof and drew her away from the mess she had made on the pristine white snow. Seated herself on the ground at a safe distance. Helplessly, Cozy let herself be pulled along.

“When I was twelve, I was…going through some stuff. Puberty, especially alicorn puberty, is no joke. All those uncontrollable bursts of magic that I’d work so hard to control were back, and worse than ever. I’d break a throne by sitting down, I’d make a jungle sprout in the middle of the castle when I sneezed…I once turned half the court into crystal ewes by accident.”

Flurry Heart looked miserable, but Cozy smiled. The image of all those stuffy ponies turned into little fluffy sheep, Cadence and Shining Armour totally out of their depth as their court baa-ed and bleated around them.

“And the Crystal Heart was just making everything worse. Amplifying it. My mom was at her wits end. She tried to tell me to study, to feel, to talk it out with a therapist, but it wasn’t working. I just felt…stifled. Lost. Angry.”

Her voice was cold on that last word, and Cozy’s smile faded.

“And then the Sombrites happen. I say that like they came out of nowhere, but it wasn’t like that. They were…our ponies. My people. And they were saying all this…crazy stuff. That Sombra hadn’t been evil. That we’d unjustly exiled him. That my mom and Aunt Twilight were wrong.” She ran a hoof through her dishevelled mane. “And they were gathering support. People who were dissatisfied with the way things were, who wanted power, wanted the land reclamation to go faster, wanted to shake things up — they were all suddenly congregating under one banner.” Another pause. “The Sombrites.”

Though she rolled onto her side to face Flurry more fully, Cozy kept her lips sealed. She hadn’t heard Flurry talk this way in a long time, and she wanted to hear her out.

Flurry’s eyes were very far away. “And then they started using mind control magic.”

“They had this leader — his name was Shadowhame, or that was what he was calling himself. Nopony’s actually born with a name like that, are they?” A hollow little laugh. “Shadowhame claimed to be Sombra’s son, or something. Whoever he really was, he had some of Sombra’s spells. He knew the magic. And he used his supporters to round people up, and then he’d cast Sombra’s spell on them. Hundreds of obedient servants, out of nowhere. Hundreds of soldiers.”

“My parents were talking about a battle, maybe calling in Aunt Twi and Auntie Tia. But I didn’t want to wait. Didn’t want to let more people get caught by him. So I snuck out at night. Went to find him.” She gave a heavy sigh. “I wanted to fight him. Duel him, like Aunt Twilight duelled Tirek. I wanted…I wanted to be a hero. Can you believe that?”

Cozy Glow imagined a tiny little Flurry Heart, earnest and desperate, wings spread as she pled for peace. So different from the twelve-year-old she had been.“Yeah, I can believe that.”

“I was pretty good at invisibility spells, and for once, my magic was working the way I wanted. No misfires, no malfunctions. Just…I’d want it, and it’d be done. I could feel the power of the Heart, pumping into me. The hope of the crystal ponies that we’d save them and this would be over.”

“I found him, in the end. In the middle of another mind control spell on a bunch of innocent ponies. They were terrified.”

Cozy Glow scooted a little closer. The official version of the story that she had read before had been…very different to this. No mind control. No pre-teen princess single-hoofedly trying to save the world.

“What happened?”

Another shrug. “We fought. I’d thought it would be easy — emotions were running so high in the Empire, and I was so pumped up on power I didn’t see how I could lose.”

“I know how that feels.” Cozy thought of the rush of stolen magic, the way the horn had felt on her forehead. The way she could see the leylines all around her, see just how to pull and pinch and make the world fall into place.

“But it wasn’t like duelling with my tutors or my dad. He was…Shadowhame was…vicious. He didn’t hold back, so nor did I.” She looked at her hooves, and her voice grew very quiet. “I thought if I killed him the others would be freed.”

Cozy Glow sucked in a breath. A killer. Flurry Heart was a killer. Just like me.

“I was wrong.” In those three words was all the agony of a lifetime, and Cozy finally reached out to press a hoof to that of her marefriend.

“There was a reason Auntie Tia chose you for me. And it wasn’t just the…the cleverness stuff. It was…this, too.”

Her mouth dry, Cozy nodded. She would have given her life rather than interrupt the story now.

“So I…I killed him. Shadowhame. I blasted him out of existence, just like I did that windigo. And when it didn’t work, when I couldn’t free the enslaved and Shadowhame’s lieutenants were stepping in to continue the mind control spell he’d been performing when I interrupted…” she shook her head. “I banished them. I had…the haziest image in my head of this spell I’d read about in Aunt Twilight’s library. Starswirl’s shadow realm spell. She praised me when she found me reading it. Said I was like her when she was a foal.”

Cozy jerked her head from left to right in a silent denial. She could imagine no one less like Princess Twilight Sparkle than the mare before her. Twilight Sparkle was a liar. A jailor. Flurry Heart was…real and raw and kind. In a way the Princess of Canterlot would never understand.

“Anyway, I pictured this spell. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it worked. It sent them all away. All of them. Shadowhame’s body, his followers…and the mind-controlled ponies. Even the victims that they were still in the process of converting.” She looked down. “All of them. A thousand years, gone.”

Very slowly, Cozy Glow let out a breath. “I’m…sorry, Flurry. I didn’t know.”

Her lips compressing, Flurry Heart swallowed. “No one does. No one knows it happened…like that. About Shadowhame, or that I did it on my own. Mom told everyone she had given me her blessing, showed me the spell.”

“They’re all—” liars, she had been about to say. All the princesses are liars. But this was Flurry’s mother, and Flurry was a princess, too. “They’re all the same,” she finished, a little lamely.

“Maybe.” Flurry shrugged. She lowered her eyes again. “After that, I got…worse, if anything. My mom could feel all these emotions roiling in me, all this guilt and pain and hate, and she just…she didn’t know what to do. So she pointed me at her problems, and let me vent.”

“Vent?”

“I hunted the windigos almost to extinction. Just like this one here. Fought them one by one until the few that were left stopped coming back. After that it was rogue dragons, the chimaeras, the cerberi, the wights, the basilisks…everything that moved, that bothered the Crystal Empire, I fought. I killed them and I hunted them and chased them out of our borders.”

Cozy Glow pressed her hoof against Flurry’s foreleg.

And Flurry looked at the ground, and whispered the last of her sins as though it was the greatest of them all. "I killed the last six kelpies in the world.”

“Kelpies?” Cozy shook her head. “I thought they were a myth.”

“They are now. Aunt Luna hunted most of them down a few thousand years ago, but there were…well, there were six of them left. Aunt Twilight sent me there. She had spared them, but…they were taking foals from a town down south, and they weren’t receptive to her friendship ambassadors. So she sent me in to solve the problem.”

Lives, snuffed out by the hoof that Cozy now held. Lives, snuffed out by her own. They were no different, and that was…something. But she had looked up to Flurry. She had believed her to be better. She had wanted to be better for her.

All of the rage and pain that boiled inside her, and she had kept it in — because Flurry was better, and she would be horrified if she saw the monstrous mess that was the true Cozy.

But all along, Flurry had been doing exactly the same thing.

Helplessly, Cozy Glow clutched her marefriend’s hoof. She wanted her mother. She wanted her doctor. She wanted Flurry.

“What’s…what’s your point here?”

If Flurry thought that opening up would persuade Cozy to do the same, she would be disappointed.

“My point is…” Flurry sighed. “How many lives have you taken, Cozy?”

Cozy Glow’s blood ran cold. How many lives have you taken? How many ponies have you killed? How many times had she been asked that question, by hungry reporters or high-society Canterlot ponies desperate for a thrill?

Their eyes all lit with the same dark hunger. Waiting for her to name a number, so they could gasp and ride the delicious thrill of being terrified. Being in the same room as a monster. What a story to tell their friends, their grandfoals.

“Why?” Her voice was bitter. She knew exactly why she was being asked.

“How many?”

She looked up into Flurry’s eyes, ready to see that same hunger, and she found only sadness.

“Seven.” The number was pulled out of her before she could stop it.

Seven ponies.

“Exactly.” Flurry Heart could not see the faces, could not hear the litany of the dead. “My point is, Cozy, that I’ve taken…a lot more lives than you have. I’ve ended species. I stopped keeping a toll of individuals a long time ago. I try to be better now, but — when a problem comes, my first instinct is to use violence to solve it.”

“It was different. Those weren’t…”

They weren’t ponies.

“Is it not murder, just because it’s not a pony? They were still sentient, most of them. And I still did it.”

“Why?” Cozy asked again, but this time it was not an accusation. This time it was the same question ponies had hurled at her all of her life. Why did you do it?

A shrug that was horribly, achingly familiar. She had seen that emptiness before. Seen it in the mirror. “Because I was angry. I was angry and out of control, and it seemed like a problem I could solve. Why did you do it?”

A familiar phrase. And for the first time in her life, Cozy answered that question honestly. No deflection, no dissimulation. “Because I was…angry. It seemed…it was the only way I could fix it. The only way to feel better.”

“And since then?”

“I…try…to be better.”

“Do you see?” Flurry asked, and Cozy began to think that she did. “We’re not so different, you and I.”

Chapter 9: Fractured

“Are you sure about this?”

Flurry gave Cozy a rather tight smile. “As sure as I’ll ever be.”

A lie, of course. An obvious one, that Cozy would no doubt see through. But it hardly mattered. Flurry would never be sure about introducing her marefriend to her parents. She would never be ready. But they had broken up once already because she had been afraid to commit — because Cozy had been afraid to be open — and she was not going to let them make that same mistake twice.

So she squared her shoulders and adjusted the neckline of Cozy’s dress — with her hoof, never with her magic. Cozy’s wings came up to embrace her, and just for a second, she let herself bask in that feathery embrace. And then, side by side, they marched towards the double doors that the guards swung open for them.

Marched in to meet their fate.

“Ah.” Her father’s voice, measured and steady as always. “Here they are, Cady.”

The Princess of the Crystal Empire turned her head, her carefully coiled mane spilling across her shoulders. Her mouth turned up at one corner — she was making an effort, just as she had promised — and she stood to greet them.

“Hello, sweetheart.” Her gaze moved from one mare to the other and the warmth in her gaze cooled. “Welcome to our home, Cozy Glow.”

“Hello,” said Cozy Glow, in her lawyer voice. Perfectly neutral. Entirely unobjectionable. “Thank you for inviting me.”

Shining Armour gestured to the table, impeccably laid out and set for four, and they all trooped towards it. Flurry Heart took her seat, trying to control the pounding of her heart, and to quiet the little voice that kept whispering over and over — how the hell am I going to get through tonight?

There had been a letter from Auntie Tia, of course. There were always letters from Auntie Tia. She seemed to think that just because she had introduced two ponies, it gave them a right to interfere for the rest of their lives. And beyond. Flurry had heard that some of her clients were sixth-generation — including both sets of her own grandparents. Twilight and Cadence, two unicorns powerful enough to live through the ascension spell, both born within a decade of Luna’s predicted return: there was no way that wasn’t deliberate. Flurry herself was probably the product of Celestia only knew how many centuries of plotting.

The thought of it made her shiver.

But on this occasion, she had at least read the letter to its end. Facing this, she felt she needed all the advice she could get.

To my favourite grand-niece,

I hear from your mother that certain plans are afoot. A dinner is planned.

The initial merging of the families is a terribly important occasion in any relationship, and an excellent indicator of future gatherings. Usually I would advise that it take place much sooner in a relationship’s timeline, possibly even at my offices, but I know that you and Cozy Glow wanted to take things at your own pace. And a meeting with Cadence and myself at the same time might prove too much for Cozy Glow’s particular antipathy towards royalty.

That said, I think (and have advised Cadence as such) that it’s better that Rarity not attend this particular dinner. She and Cozy Glow are naturally very close, but it can tend to make them a little overprotective of one another. I think it’s best to get Cozy Glow herself a little more comfortable with your parents before we bring Rarity into the mix. I was very glad to hear that your own formal introduction to Rarity at her home in Canterlot went well.

For this meeting I would advise you to stay calm and ensure the others do too. Cadence, naturally, will read your feelings and follow your lead, and Shining Armour will do the same. Keep conversation light and inconsequential. Avoid topics you know will be controversial. This should simply be the groundwork for a deeper connection going forward.

Best of luck, Flurry dear. I know you have the skills to make today go smoothly.

All my love,
Auntie Tia (Princess Celestia, Ruler of the Day, etc)

Flurry had read the letter so many times that the folds had deepened into crevices and the ink had begun to fade, but the contents were no more revelatory than they had been the first time. Keep things calm was one of those things that was terribly easy to say and almost impossible to do.

Chairs screeched as the underbutlers helped tuck them in. Flurry moved naturally, accustomed to the ceremony, but she saw Cozy flinch at the near-silent appearance of a stallion behind her and cursed her own failure to forewarn her marefriend.

“Red or white wine?” the butler asked, her voice obsequiously lowered.

Flurry saw the look in Cozy Glow’s eyes as she looked at the clear crystal jug of dark red liquid and hastily interposed. “We’ll both have white, thank you, Elderflower.”

Shining Armour coughed politely. “So…tell us about your work, Cozy Glow.”

Cozy swallowed, her throat bobbing, and took a large gulp of white wine. “Well. I’m a lawyer.”

A small laugh. “Yes, Flurry mentioned it.”

“I saw one of your cases in the Canterlot paper last week,” Shining said. “The Vanderhoof divorce?”

“Oh, that.” Cozy straightened in her chair, suddenly confident again, and waved a hoof. “Foal’s play. They’re both idiots with more money than sense.”

Shining’s smile wilted. “Horseshoe Vanderhoof is a close friend, actually.”

Cozy Glow all but put her muzzle into her glass. Then finally offered a strained smile. “Right. Like I said.”

His expression morphing into a frown, Shining exchanged a glance with Cadence.

Flurry leapt in with some preprepared pleasantries about the weather, and the conversation limped onwards. Cozy kept lifting the glass of white wine to her lips, sipping whenever there was a pause.

“And what about your work, Mom?” Flurry said at last, a little desperately. “Solved any big relationship problems lately?”

Cadence shot her a look, almost as though to say, none as big as this, but Flurry resolutely ignored whatever hidden message that glance contained. Cozy was the mare she had chosen, for better or for worse, and Cadence would just have to get used to it.

“Well, yes, actually,” conceded Cadence at last. “There was a really funny one last week.”

“Tell us,” Flurry enthused, and Shining murmured agreement.

“I was flying over the north end last week when I felt this absolute tumult of emotion. I landed, and I find a wedding party in the park, in absolute chaosbecause both grooms are missing.”

“Both grooms?” laughed Flurry Heart. “Did they both get cold hooves?”

“That’s what I wondered,” Cadence smiled. “So I went looking for them. It took half an hour, a scroll to Twilight and finally a casting of Clover the Clever’s finding spell, but eventually I found one of them wandering around by the fountains, and the other halfway down mane street.”

“Were they running away?” Cozy asked, her voice dry.

Her eyes flicking from her daughter to the mare at her side, Cadence seemed to make an effort not to flinch. Like she’d forgotten it wasn’t just her and Flurry. “N-no. They were actually both looking for the other, under the impression the other had run away.” Her delivery was muted, flat, the humour gone.

“How funny,” said Cozy Glow, unsmiling.

Flurry Heart felt her stomach begin to roil. Either the cabbage soup was disagreeing with her, or things were going really wrong.

Cadence was making her discomfort too obvious, and Cozy was reacting to it with her usual defence — spiky edges and pointed barbs.

“It is!” she said brightly, her voice too high. “It’s really funny, Mom.”

She glared at Cadence, and tried to channel her thoughts into emotions that her empath mother would be able to read. I really want you two to get on. Be nice to her. But translating that to an emotion was harder than she had expected, and the best she could manage was a sort of anxious yearning. She was so used to trying to tamp down her emotions so they wouldn’t be read that doing the opposite felt unnatural.

“Actually,” Cozy Glow said, her voice filling the sudden silence as a casual smirk spread across her muzzle, “We’ve been thinking of doing that.”

Cadence paused, the flow of her story forgotten. “Doing what?”

“Getting married.”

Cadence turned pale, and Cozy Glow’s smile took on a tinge of satisfaction. Shining Armour looked at Flurry, eyes wide, and though she and Cozy had never discussed this before, had never broached the topic, Flurry felt her traitorous heart skip a beat or two.

Married.

She imagined Cozy Glow in white, a real smile on her face, that rarest and most precious of moments, and something inside her thrummed.

Wouldn’t that be something?

“Well,” said Cadence stiffly. “Maybe that’s something to discuss another time.”

With a smile that showed her dimples, Cozy took a huge gulp of wine.

“T-tell us more about work, Mom?” Flurry managed to squeak, wishing Cozy’s chair was close enough for her to physically touch her marefriend.

“Oh yes,” said Cozy Glow at once. “It’s a fascinating world you inhabit, Princess.”

Oh no. That title was always a weapon on her tongue.

“Luckily for me, I don’t do it alone. Being a crystal princess is a difficult job.” Cadence spoke sharply, but then softened her expression to smile at Flurry. “But we’re all very proud of Flurry.”

Another sip of her wine and a toss of her mane, and Cozy affected a careless laugh. “When I’m a crystal princess—”

It was too much. Too far. Cadence’s hoof came down on the table with an impact like a cannonshot. “—You will never marry my daughter.”

For one long second, Cozy Glow stared at her. Then her eyelids lowered, hooding her gaze, and she smiled. A dangerous smile. “Ah. There it is.”

“Mom,” hissed Flurry.

“It’s okay, Flurry,” chuckled Cozy, in that horrible empty voice. “It’s good to get all our feelings out in the open, right?”

“Feelings,” spat Cadence. “As though you know the meaning of the word, you — you husk—”

“—Mom!” cried Flurry. It was all going wrong. “You promised!”

“But I can feel her, Flurry Heart,” Cadence said, and there were tears in her eyes. “And she’s so empty. Everything good, everything normal is so muted I can hardly hear it, and all that’s left is…is…possessiveness, and pride, and fear—”

“—Shut up!” snarled Cozy Glow, all traces of laughter gone. “Shut up, Princess, if you know what’s good for you—”

“—And hate!” cried Cadence. “She hates me, can’t you feel it? She hates Twilight! She hates all of us!”

“Cady, wait,” tried Shining Armour, but it was far too late.

Cozy Glow was on her feet, wings spread wide, head lowered like a wild animal at bay. “I do hate you. I do. What is there to love, about you jumped-up magic junkies? Sticking a crown on your head doesn’t make you good or moral or right but you’re all convinced—”

“—She’s a monster, Flurry! You can’t marry her—!”

“—Cozy, stop it! Mom! Stop it!”

“—Look, we all need to just take a breather here—”

“—That the sun shines out of your stupid royal asses! But you’re all twisted freaks who can get away with anything because ponies are morons who think magical power equals goodness and you’re too powerful to say no to!”

Cozy Glow’s torrent of vitriol ran on longer than all the other voices, her face transformed into a mask of hatred. When she finally stopped, her flanks were heaving, and Flurry Heart’s cheeks were wet with tears. All of her worst nightmares had come true. Everything had gone wrong.

Finally, Cozy Glow looked into Flurry’s eyes, and whatever she saw there was enough to send her running from the room at a full gallop.

Author's Note

Look who's back!

Progress on this longfic has been halting, but there is a full plan for it. I hope some still remain faithful and are waiting for it to come out.

Chapter 10: Broken

The drumming of hooves behind her. Shouts. “Cozy, wait!”

Cozy spread her wings and snapped them down, exploding up from the earth in a burst of feathers and violence. Empty. Let them enjoy her empty seat instead. Let them have exactly what they wanted: her, gone.

“Cozy!”

Wide wings beating hard in pursuit. Fury that buzzed in her ears like wasps. Princesses, princesses, princesses. A plague of princesses, battering at the edges of her life since the day Rarity saved her. What a mistake it had been to let one in. To care.

With a furious twist of her wings, straining the muscles, Cozy tried to imagine Flurry Heart as a pegasus. The same girl without any of the baggage. It hurt almost as much as Princess Cadence’s hysteria — which is to say, it didn’t hurt at all. Cozy, after all, was empty. She didn’t feel a single thing.

“Cozy, please stop,” panted Flurry Heart. “I know it was awful, but we need to — whew — talk. We can’t run away from this.”

“Can’t we?” muttered Cozy, curving in the air like an arrow and scanning the crystal city below. There had to be something down there to offer an escape. A distraction. She’d never felt further from Doctor Healing Word and his advice. Never felt less like Rarity’s daughter, and more like the monster ponies said she was.

Flurry’s hoof reached for her. Came within touching distance of the tip of Cozy’s tail. “Cozy, my mother is crazy! You can’t listen to her. Feelings aren’t everything, but she forgets that being an empath doesn’t mean she’s a telepath.”

Halting as abruptly as she’d fled, Cozy whirled on Flurry quickly enough that she flinched. “Say that again.”

For a second they hovered there, matching wingbeat for wingbeat.

“My mother is crazy,” Flurry repeated slowly.

“But you believed her,” Cozy countered, calm and cold. “You didn’t say she’s wrong. Just that she’s crazy. You believe that I’m empty.”

“No I don’t!” flared Flurry. “This isn’t court, Cozy. Stop looking for loopholes. Let’s just…calm down. Let’s go for a fly in the snow.”

“No,” said Cozy, looking into her marefriend’s pretty blue eyes and knowing, deep in her soul, that she was lying. Empty. Empty. Empty. Everything she and Flurry had ever built together shivered on its foundations. Cracked. Crumbled. Flurry had seen inside her, and had decided what it meant. There was no going back. “No, I don’t think I will.”

After that everything faded away.

“Stop it, Cozy,” Flurry panted.

Cozy looked down at the stallion she held pinned beneath her hoof. This, this right here, was the point of no return. She had not hurt a living being in decades. She had not even wanted to. The dreams where she did left her frozen and furious with an icy anger.

But this, right here, was what it came down to. No one believed in her. Not even Flurry. Perhaps not even Rarity, for all her love and fine words.

If no one would ever believe her, what was Cozy fighting for? What was left?

With a cruel, detached precision that had never left her, Cozy snapped the guard’s tibia. Somepony screamed. Maybe it was Flurry. Maybe it was Cozy.

One little threat in a bar and the Princess of the Crystal Empire will hear about it. One little threat — get out of my way — and the guards arrive. And not even her daughter can hold them back.

“Stop it, stop it,” Flurry was sobbing, held back by another four guards who shout things about her mother’s orders and her safety — as though Cozy would ever hurt Flurry. But Cozy knew how strong alicorns were. Four measly little stallions could not hold an alicorn back, unless she was afraid of hurting them. Unless she cared more about them than the mare she claimed to love. “Cozy, don’t hurt Crumpet. He’s a good pony. You don’t want to hurt him.”

Don’t hurt Crumpet? Cozy looked down at the stallion again, his face distorted with pain. The world is full of Crumpets. Lazy, stupid little potato ponies. Don’t hurt Crumpet. What if Crumpet hurt me?

The words wouldn’t come out. They stuck in her throat, thick and horrible. All she could manage was a strangled, wordless growl.

She needed to go. She knew that. She needed her doctor, and her mother, and to be away from this hellscape. But it was all snowballing too quickly, and she couldn’t…she couldn’t do it anymore.

She looked at Crumpet, and Flurry finally shook off the guards restraining her. “Stop it,” she whispered, and Cozy knew with bone-deep certainty she was finally seeing the monster beneath the mask. Finally acknowledging the truth.

There was no Cozy Glow. There was only empty.

The Princess took a step forward.

Cozy opened her jaws, bared her teeth — lowered her face until it was directly over the guard’s jugular. “Stop right there."

Flurry froze.

Cozy smiled. Ponies always got so predictable when you threatened violence. There was something remarkably reassuring about it. Something safe.

“This is...hmm, let's see...this is Crumpet, right? Thick little buttery Crumpet. And all I have to end Crumpet's meaningless little life is apply three pounds of pressure right here and bite. Even pegasus teeth have enough strength to do that.”

Flurry shook her head. “Cozy, you wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn't I?” Cozy smiled, and it was the smile of a shark, all teeth and gleaming white. “It strikes me, Princess, that you don't know what the tartarus you're talking about.”

There was something dark in Flurry’s eyes, something twisted and frightened. And then the Princess of the Crystal Empire was gone again, a coward like all Princesses, running away, and Cozy Glow was alone with poor little Crumpet again. The ragged sound of his breathing the only way to mark the passing of time.

“Do you think she’ll come back?” she whispered into his ear. “I miss her, Crumpet, don’t you?”

He let out a pained hiss of air, and Cozy Glow watched the door as he watched her. Both of them frightened. Both of them unsure.

“I hope she comes back, Crumpet,” Cozy breathed, and the joy was gone from her voice. “I hope she comes back.”

Hours passed, and the bar emptied. One by one, ponies backed out of the room, whispering urgently to each other. Cozy Glow, indulgent to the last, let them leave. Let them live. She was okay with her and Crumpet. They were getting to be friends now. Cozy liked him better when he slept, pale and uneasy, breath hitching with pain every time the broken bone hurt him.

She was waiting. Through the haze of unreality, she was sure of just one thing: Flurry would come back.

But it was not Flurry that next showed herself in that pathetic little pub. It was another face: paler, scored deep with lines and framed by hair turned grey too soon.

Cozy Glow, still scrambling to her hooves from where she sprawled beside Crumpet, turned ashen when she saw who was walking through the door.

“Mama.”

Rarity took in the scene before her, the mess, the blood, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Cozy…”

A muscle in Cozy Glow’s jaw spasmed, and she fought to control it. “Go away, Mama.” I don’t want you to see me like this.

"You've not had a lapse like this in fifteen years, darling. Please, you must stop this."

Rage bubbled, so hot and so easy, and Cozy stamped down on the pegasus' wing. It broke again: a dry crackle, like a twig. Always so easy to snap, pegasus bones.

Rarity flinched.

"It could easily have been his neck," Cozy said calmly, offering her mother a sweet smile, the same smile she used to use when bringing her a cup of tea. Waiting for her to turn away, like they all did. To leave her. To run.

A deep breath. A slightly watery smile. “Then thank you for being restrained, Cozy.”

“Thank you?” Laughter. Strangely echoey. Why did everything feel so unreal? “You're thanking me for this?”

“You're very upset. You've had...you're hurt. I understand how that feels.”

Cozy looked at the bloodied and bleeding ponies around her. “You understand me?” The yawning, carvernous hollowness within her. The great void that craved for something to fill it, anything to make her feel. To hurt and wound other ponies until they felt as empty as she did. “You understand this?”

She took a step forward, and despite herself, despite the love in her eyes, Rarity cringed back.

Another laugh, but this one sounded more like a sob. “That's what I thought.”

“You're my daughter, and I will always love you. Always.”

There was a pause, and then Rarity began that slow, cautious progress towards her again. One careful hoofstep at a time.

“I’ve had my heart broken too, Cozy.”

Cozy scoffed. “That's what you think this is?”

“I heard about the dinner.”

“You don't know anything about what happened. You don't know anything about me.”

“I know how it feels to be rejected.”

“You're always holding me back. Chains of guilt and chains of love." Scorn dripped from the word.

"Whatever that is."

“You're a good pony, Cozy.”

Cozy Glow’s voice rang out like a whipcrack. “I am NOT. And I am sick of you treating me like I am. I am sick of your expectations.”

She raised her hoof and looked into her mother's blue eyes. Everything was broken. Fifteen years of careful structure, never setting a hoof wrong. All broken down in an afternoon by emotion, by princesses, by love. She saw the pain in her mother’s face, the sorrow. The hope. It was a cage. Flurry Heart was a prison, and Rarity was a cage. The bars were soft ones, that bent just enough to feel like they were not truly imprisoning her — but they were bars nevertheless. And Rarity had done it deliberately. She had taken a wild thing, and she had fashioned herself into the only thing that could contain it.

And Cozy could break out. She could. It would be easy. All she needed to do was stamp down, at just the right place on the vertebrae, and end a life. She had not killed anyone in fifteen years. Not since she was twelve. And to do so now would...it would be a point of no return. It would end things. End this charade of family and redemption. Rarity would never forgive her.

Cozy would finally be free.

Flurry Heart was already lost. She would never return to Cozy after this spectacle, the unveiling of the beast inside. What was the point of staying, when Flurry was gone?

She looked again at the older mare and saw the sorrow on her face. The lines etched deep into her face. The grey streaks cutting deep swathes into that proud purple mane. A life of care and worry for a child not even her own. When...when had Rarity gotten so old? Cozy's red eyes, the same shade as the blood that flecked her pale coat, met her mother's deep blue eyes, and a breath shuddered out between flaring nostrils.

Her raised hoof thudded to the floor.

It was over.

She could not do it to Rarity.

Hope flared in the older mare's eyes, and Cozy Glow offered a weak smile."I'm done, Mama."

A sob of relief burst from Rarity's throat and she rushed forward, stumbling over injured and unconscious ponies to reach her daughter.

Chapter 11: Sundered

And so Cozy Glow found her reluctant hooves once more placed upon the long walk to redemption. And one weary step at a time, she had to walk it again.

Rarity had tried her best to hush it up, but ponies talked. Word spread. And soon Cozy was once more a social leper, not even treated with the bare modicum of respect she had previously been awarded as daughter of a Bearer.

Cozy let herself slip into comfortable numbness. Work, when ponies would give her cases. Work, chanting out mantras and reforging the chains she’d broken. Work, when Rarity was there, projecting just enough happiness that her mother would be satisfied.

So when Flurry came crawling back, etching herself a little crack in the statue that encased Cozy Glow, Cozy thought why not? Why not keep up the charade a little longer, let it run a little deeper? It wasn’t as though anything else could go wrong.

There were no more dinners, no more trips north. Just a weekly chess game in Canterlot, nice and simple. A little hoof-holding, a kiss or two. Nothing that would risk worming through the stone to the shrivelled mare within. And little by little, Flurry Heart grew colder and stonier too. Every week the chess table stretched a little wider, until it was like a chasm between them.

So Cozy couldn’t blame Flurry for prioritising her duties. A Princess had so many demands on her time. She shouldn’t have been surprised when Flurry was late for the first time. But did it have to be on the day Cozy failed her only client in months? Soapsuds was only a colt. Only thirteen years old. He’d been failed by his family, by the state, by the princesses. By everypony who was supposed to care. And he’d done the only thing he could. The only thing that made sense. And they crushed him for it.

I can’t say I think taking this case on is wise, Cozy Glow, Doctor Healing Word warned.

Cozy had scoffed. What am I supposed to do, Doc? Nopony else will hire me.

But he knew it was more than that. So did she. Soapsuds was like she was, exactly like she was, and Cozy wanted to do for him what no one had done for her.

But she had misstepped, and he was gone. Jailed for thirty years without possibility of parole. Her only shred of victory was keeping him out of Tartarus. Out of stone.

Lost in her own head, Cozy didn’t look up until a soft pink form settled into the chair opposite her.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“It’s fine,” Cozy lied. It wasn’t fine. One hour a week was all they had left, and Flurry couldn’t even prioritise.

“I heard about…about the sentence.”

Soapsuds’ name had never even crossed Cozy’s lips in this room. But Flurry spied, of course. She would.

Cozy shoved a pegasus knight across the board. “Your move.”

“Are you…feeling okay?” Ever since that terrible day in the Crystal Empire, Flurry treated Cozy’s feelings as though they were made of glass. As though they might shatter and cut her pretty hooves.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t want to guess. That’s why I’m asking.”

“I’d rather hear what you think.”

“I think…I think it’s a shame you took that case. There has to be ponies out there who need your help more.”

Despite herself, Cozy’s eyes widened. “More than that little kid?”

“Innocent ponies,” Flurry said, her tone turning careful. “Ones who are failed by the system, like…like you were.”

And that was when Cozy realised. After all this time, after all they had shared, Flurry still had no idea of who she had once been. What she had once done.

“Soapsuds was failed by everypony at every turn.”

“I…I thought you took the case because nopony else would.”

The chess board was forgotten now. Cozy Glow’s head was a stormcloud, thunder building as weeks of helpless anger finally coalesced. “I took the case because he deserved somepony who would try.”

“You see yourself in him, don’t you?” Flurry said with horrified realisation. “Cozy, you never did that.”

“I did exactly that.”

“Premeditated murder is different."

Cozy scowled. “Explain how.”

Flurry shuddered. “I just…it’s so cold, so calculating. To plot the death of another pony like that. Weeks in advance. To buy the weapons, like you’d buy cake ingredients.”

Cozy stared at her, utterly blank. “Cold, calculating. Interesting. And what would you say I am?”

For the first time in weeks, they were talking instead of just speaking. And all at once Cozy wanted more than anything to know why. Why did Flurry keep coming back? Why did she put up with this? Why did she care?

“You’re…detached, maybe,” Flurry said, shifting in her seat. “You think about things logically, rationally — almost to a fault. But you are an emotional creature.”

A trace of amusement ghosted over Cozy’s face.“Oh?”

“You’re fiercely loyal,” said Flurry, leaning forward now. “You love just as hard as you hate. You protect the ponies you love. Look at the way you are with Rarity. You’d do anything for her.”

It hung in the air between them, that unspoken Look at the way you are with me.

Flurry tapped her hoof on the table with an air of finality. “No, you’re a very different pony than Soapsuds.”

With a heavy sigh, Cozy sat back. “I wasn’t always that way.”

“What way?”

“If you think of me as detached now, you wouldn’t have liked me as a foal.” Cozy met Flurry’s gaze, and she could see Flurry having to fight the instinct to look away, dip her ears. There was none of that cold amusement now. No drive to shock or startle as there sometimes was. There was only a deep, strange sadness.

“I would have.” The response was automatic, almost brusque. As though there was no possible universe in which Flurry Heart would not like Cozy Glow.

“You don’t know everything I did.”

“I do.”

“Tell me, then. Tell me what you know.”

Flurry peered closer into those opaque red eyes, but there was no trace of subterfuge there. No trap. It was an honest request. She shut her eyes for a moment, trying to call the relevant portions of her history textbooks to mind. “You infiltrated Aunt Twilight’s school. You…you used Grogar’s bell. You stole the magic, from…well, everypony.” She still remembered the trauma on Auntie Tia’s face as she had told that story. The deep-seated fear. To be stripped of one’s magic was to be stripped of one’s soul. A sensation she had never experienced and hoped she never would — but a sensation that the mare opposite her had inflicted on almost everyone in Equestria.

Cozy’s face was smooth, that hated mask back in place. “And?” Her tone was almost bored.

“You worked with Tirek and Chrysalis. You turned the tribes against one another.”

“And?”

Wrinkling her brow, Flurry tried to remember. “Wasn’t that most of them?”

A laugh, cold and hollow. “Unfortunately not.”

“What else, then?”

Cozy Glow’s voice slipped into its oldest mode. A flat, empty monotone. “I killed people. Before I ever arrived at Twilight Sparkle’s school. Ponies who reminded me of my parents.” She paused. “Ponies who reminded me of me.” Another pause, longer. “And before that, my parents.”

“Your…your parents?” Flurry stared.

Cozy sat back. Smiled a very small smile. As though satisfied at having finally elicited a reaction.

There was silence for a long time. Flurry tried to speak, to say anything, but each time the words died on her tongue.

At last, Cozy Glow climbed to her hooves. “A good game,” she said calmly. “I assume that’s it, then?”

There was something so final in her tone that Flurry found her voice at last. “W-what do you mean?”

“It’s over. Our little scraps are finished, and you’ll be staying in the Crystal Empire next week.”

“No," Flurry said, and almost to her suprise, she meant it. She repeated the word, stronger this time. “No. I love you. I still love you. You’re different now. A different pony.”

“What if I’m not?”

“You are.”

“I try to be better. I try. It’s been years since I lapsed — it had been years. But I still get the urges, the thoughts, every single day. Every day, Flurry. It would be so easy to stop trying, to go back to being the pony I am underneath, the same pony as I was — and nothing would have changed. It would all be like it hadn’t happened, like I had never tried at all.”

“You are different. The thoughts — they aren’t you. They’re not. Everypony has dark impulses. It’s when you fight them that you know that’s you.”

"What if I’m not strong enough? What if I lapse?”

“Then I’ll get you back. No matter how deep the hole is, I’ll get you out.”

Cozy looked deep into Flurry’s eyes, and her lips parted. Flurry knew she was about to say — to say something, something that would change their lives forever. I will keep trying, she’d promise. Or I know. Maybe even I love you too.

But the snap of teleportation magic cut off whatever embryonic words were taking form, and suddenly Auntie Twilight was there, her mane flowing like a river through the room, cutting Flurry off from the mare she loved, sending Cozy spiralling back down into herself.

There was nothing but fear in her eyes now. The hate of a hunted animal for its pursuers. “What are you doing here?”

Twilight’s face was ashen. “It’s Rarity. She asked — all she wanted was for me to fetch you.”

Flurry looked at Cozy, who was suddenly bloodless. “What — what is it? What’s happened to her?”

“I think it’s best we just go, if you’re ready.”

Cozy Glow stood up so suddenly that she overturned the board, scattering pieces everywhere.
“Let’s go.”

She strode across the room to stand beside her worst enemy, the mare she woke shuddering from nightmares of, without even hesitating, and took her hoof.

Chapter 12: Gone

It was a slow death. Cancer. Creeping through the body inch by inch, stealing the vitality and the life. Blue eyes grew dull, purple hair turned brittle. White fur turned greyer, and skin hung slack on a wasted frame. Rarity was dying, and Cozy Glow was dying with her.

“Heal her.” The savings of a lifetime thrown down in the dirt before doctors, healers, magic-weavers of every kind. Every treatment, every thread of hope, Cozy clung to until it snapped. “Heal her.”

“Let me help, Cozy.” The desperate plea of a mare still in love.

“Leave us alone, Flurry.” The cold, cancerous retort of a mare with no love left to give.

“If you would just let me be there for you—”

“I don’t need your help.” It slipped out before she could stop it. The old walls, the old anger. Just me and Mama, Mama and me. Don’t need anyone else. Just us.

The sorrowful drooping wings of a princess defeated. The flapping of wings that faded into the empty sky around the mountain cabin where Rarity began her life with Cozy Glow. Where she would end it.

Cozy went back inside, shutting the door firmly behind her. Waited one long second for the tears to stop stinging her eyes. Two. Three. But every second felt like a betrayal, a second she should be spending with the one person who truly understood.

She returned to the emaciated figure in the bed. “I’m back, Mama.”

The weak stirring of fading breath. “My darling.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Who was that?”

“No one, Mama. No one important.”

The blue eyes wander, losing their focus. “Always…always remember, my darling, no matter what other ponies think of you…or what you think they think…you are better.”

“I know I’m better,” said Cozy, with a horrible little attempt at a laugh. “Isn’t that part of the problem? I’m pretty sure egomania is one of the many things mixed into my cocktail of diagnoses.”

Rarity smiled weakly at the joke. She always understood Cozy’s humour. “That’s my…funny girl.”

Her eyes slipped shut — sleep, or the end, Cozy was always afraid to guess. Instead of trying, she leaned forward and nestled her head into Rarity’s shoulder, careful not to jostle her.

They slept.

“Cozy Glow, let us pass.”

Twilight Sparkle's imperious tone set Cozy's teeth on edge as much as it always had. One word from her and Cozy was thirteen again, freshly unfrozen and locked in a cell, getting another sanctimonious sermon on friendship and its virtues drummed into her, with the knowledge that once she refused to listen she would be refrozen for another year.

She stood in the doorway of their little cottage like she owned it. Like she owned all Equestria and everypony in it.

“You are not coming anywhere near my mother,” Cozy said flatly.

“I have a cure.”

“You do not.”

“The next best thing, then.” Twilight Sparkle paused. Pulled in a breath. As though she knew exactly how her proposal was about to be received. “We want to turn her to stone.”

Cozy Glow stood rigid, feeling again the wait of the silica on her flesh, the crystals in her lungs. The immobility that crept up on you until it weighed you down, until you were frozen, your eyes seeing but unseeing, your limbs traitors, your mind the only frenzied thing left.

“It buys us time,” Twilight Sparkle said, her four sycophants ranged behind her. “Time to find a cure. Sunburst is pursuing several avenues of research but he needs more time.”

Finally, Cozy’s voice returned to her. “Are you joking?” Cozy snarled. “You did that to me. I’ve told you I was conscious every minute of every day. And you want to do that to her? You're even more of a monster than I thought.”

Twilight Sparkle paled, just a little. “I think I have a new addition to the spell that will fix that.”

“And did you test it? Or is my mother your guinea pig?”

“I — there was nopony we could test it on.” Twilight sounded defensive now. “And there’s no time. We have to act now.”

She was right about one thing. Cozy had to act now, before this demon could take even the dignity of a peaceful death from her mother.

With a feeling of delicious release, Cozy launched herself at her oldest enemy. And without even a flick of her horn, Twilight Sparkle cast a spell and locked Cozy in place mid-leap. Hooves outstretched, teeth bared, ears flattened - caught in a glowing field of pink magic and utterly immobilised.

“Don't...don't hurt her…” Rarity said from inside. Weakly raising a hoof as though she could protect her daughter. As though any mortal could do anything when a princess took it into her head to alter the course of their lives.

“I won’t," Twilight said shortly. “But we're here for you, Rarity.”

Her magic reached out, cradling Cozy’s mother. No, no, Cozy screamed, but it was only inside her head. Like always, all her screams were locked inside. They vanished, and Cozy collapsed. All her training, all her years of work and toil and sacrifice - and she was once again reduced to nothing by a single spark from a unicorn's horn.

Magic. Magic. Friendship and magic. The twin curses of Cozy Glow's life.

Chapter 13: An Ending

Dear Cozy Glow,

I miss you. I miss our chess games. I miss your smile. I miss the little barbs about my stupid family. I miss your smell; apple and some sort of spice. Maybe cinnamon. I don’t know. I’ve never been any good at identifying smells, but it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m getting sidetracked.

Six months, Cozy. How long can you expect us to go without seeing each other? Without you seeing anyone at all? Your therapist wrote to me. After I wrote to him eight times, but still. He’s worried. And I am too.

Something weird’s going on here in the Empire, Cozy. The Crystal Heart is flickering. One night it almost went out. I need you here. Come and help me solve the mystery. You need to leave that little mountain hut, and I know you hate Canterlot. Come here, instead. Come and be with me. I swear my mother won’t bother us. I’ll get us a flat on the edges of the city. I’ll come home to you every night after court. You can spend as much time as you want out in the snow by yourself. I know you need your space.

Please, Cozy. Come home to me. I want us to start again.

Flurry.

Cozy Glow tossed the unopened scroll into the fire and watched it burn. Sometimes she wrote letters back. Letters saying crazy things like I miss you too or Help me break my mother out of the palace’s statue vault. Help me let her die. She wanted to die.

She burned those, too.

She was better off here. Alone. Safe. No one to hurt and nothing to be hurt by. Just quiet. Stasis, like Rarity. A semblance of peace.

Cozy Glow watched the sun set and the moon rise from her lonely mountaintop eyrie, and she remembered those first days after the bank heist, when Rarity brought her home. When, little by little, she wormed her way into Cozy’s heart. One cup of hot cocoa at a time.

Was it, somehow, Cozy’s fault? Could she have done more? Could she have defended her mother better? When Twilight Sparkle burst in, spellfire blazing in the air around her, what other options did she have? The right arrangement of words to sway a tyrant. The exact combination of swiftness and violence to topple a god. How many tries would it have taken to get it right? She’d only had one, and she’d blown it.

Or perhaps if she had been there for her mother more in the last few years. If she’d spent less time up north, breaking up and reuniting with Flurry. If she’d been more focused. Maybe then Rarity wouldn’t have shared her diagnosis with the mare who claimed to be her friend. Maybe then she would have had the final rest she’d wanted.

Cozy Glow spent time sketching out what she remembered of the catacombs beneath the palace in Canterlot. Her memories of that time in her life were fragmented, like mirror shards. Terror and fury pervaded everything, tinting those years an ugly red. Doctor Healing Word would say it was unhealthy to dwell so much on the past, that it was better to focus on the present, but Cozy didn’t care. She needed those maps, if she was going to find Rarity and escape.

She tried not to consider what came next. How could she unfreeze a statue without command of the Elements? How could she bear seeing her mother like that, locked into her own body like she had been? And if you smashed a statue, would its suffering end? She didn’t know.

Cozy no longer knew much of anything.

Dear Cozy,

What about correspondence chess? Somepony told me about it the other day, and I thought you might like to try it. You sketch out a board and label each square, and you can just write your moves to one another. It would take a lot longer than our usual games, but I thought it could be fun. Or if not fun, exactly, a way to keep our hooves in. Of course, correspondence chess would require you to actually write back to me.

The Heart went out again yesterday. Everypony rallied together and sang, but it took three hours to come back on. And an old stallion in the northern quarter, who couldn’t make it to the community firepit…he died, Cozy. I feel like I’m failing. As a princess, and as a…whatever we are now. Another life lost. Another day I don’t hear back from you.

I miss Rarity too, you know. She meant so much to so many ponies. She touched a lot of lives. You’re not alone in your grief. If you let other ponies in, let them share some stories about her, you might feel better. You’d have new memories of her, at least.

Mother is…she’s being Mother. She introduced me to a mare last night. A lawyer. And her fur is pink. Can you believe it? You’d have been furious, once upon a time, if I told you that. I might have hidden it from you to spare you. Now I think I’d like to see you angry. It would almost be fun if you turned up here spitting fury at Mother, because at least you’d be doing something. At this point these letters to you are starting to feel more like a diary.

Come back to life, Cozy. Rarity wouldn’t want you to die just because she has.

Write back, at least.

Flurry.

Flurry —

She isn’t dead. That’s the whole problem.

A knock at the door, that most alien of sounds. Cozy drifted towards it half-automatically, wondering if the wind could somehow have knocked a pinecone into her door. There was nopony out here to knock. The mailmare only came once a month, and she never knocked. She knew better.

But the pony behind the door, breathing heavily from her long flight, carried no letters. Just a head of wind-tossed pink curls and a crown that hung askew. As Cozy’s eyes slid up to it she snatched it off her head and shoved it guiltily into a saddlebag.

“Cozy,” she said.

“Flurry,” Cozy returned. Her tongue felt heavy and numb in her mouth. When was the last time she had spoken aloud?

“It’s been a year, Cozy. How much longer can you hide here?”

Cozy stared blankly at the mare she had once felt such a tangle of emotions for. Since Rarity was stolen, it was a struggle to feel anything at all.

Flurry was breathing hard. Feelings were obviously not something she was struggling to generate.“I can’t watch you do this anymore. You’re not yourself. Either you come with me right now, or—”

“—Or?” snarled Cozy. Deep in her belly, anger stirred. Old and familiar.

She should have expected this. An ultimatum. For all Flurry’s high-flung protestations of affection, for all her nobility, this was what it came down to. Control. How very trite. How pedestrian.

Princess Flurry Heart should have learned her lesson by now. Nopony controlled Cozy Glow.

Flurry seemed to find her courage. “Or we’re through.”

“And where will we go, if I come with you?”

“The…the Palace.”

"And where in the Palace?”

The Princess was losing steam. “My room.”

“You think your mother will be happy with me in your room, Flurry? With me living with you, one big happy family?”

“N-no, but I can talk her round. You’ll be under my jurisdiction.”

“Flurry, you’re delusional. There’s no way this ends with me anywhere but in the dungeons. Your mother—”

“—No,” Flurry said desperately. “Even if it got — bad — again, she wouldn’t. Only until you calmed down. Until you felt better.”

“And there it is.” Cozy Glow realised that deep down, she had been expecting this. “You’re asking me to voluntarily follow you into jail.”

The door would close behind her, and Cadence and Twilight Sparkle would never let her out again. Flurry Heart might try to save her, but it wouldn’t work.

Being with Flurry would always be a cage.

And Cozy would never be good enough.

But Flurry was still trying. Desperate. Hungry as Cozy herself had once been. “We can…we can go somewhere else, just us. I could stay here with you. I can stay here as long as you need.”

Cozy shook her head. She was through. Rarity was gone, and she had taken everything with her. She had tried to stay alone in the ruins of their home and the life they had shared, but Flurry wouldn’t let her be.

It was time to try somewhere new.

Author's Note

Despite the chapter title, this is not the ending, I promise.

Chapter 14: Advice

“I’m so…I’m so worried, Auntie Tia.” Flurry’s voice cracked on the final word. “But I don’t know how to keep chasing somepony who doesn’t want to be chased.”

Princess Celestia smiled gently, the perfect archetype of a mother. What Cadence could be in her softer moments, when she stopped trying to fix Flurry up with anyone, anyone but the one mare she wanted.

“Sometimes, little one,” she said softly, “You have to learn to put yourself first. You can’t set yourself on fire to keep everypony else warm.”

Flurry Heart’s gut twisted. If she were a better pony, that is exactly what she would have done. If she were a better princess, she would have known that the Heart was about to glitch. She would have used her magic to prepare fires across the city, and she would have made sure everyone was gathered. Everyone. The hours she had spent searching had all been for nothing, because she’d made a mistake, and old Malachite Mandrake was dead. He would never attend his grandson’s cuteceneara, and even the presence of the Princess could not make up for his absence.

“I don’t think it’s even about putting her first,” she whispered, head hanging. “I…it’s me, Auntie Tia. I need her. Since she left, I’ve just felt…”

There were so many words, but none that quite encompassed it. Lost. Empty. Purposeless. Alone.

“I’ve felt wrong,” she finished.

Auntie Tia’s pink eyes widened and she wrapped a wing around Flurry’s shoulders. “Sometimes, Flurry, ponies make mistakes. They think somepony is something they’re not, or that they’re ready for something they aren’t ready for.”

Flurry blinked. “I don’t…”

“I’m talking about me,” Auntie Tia said quickly, her eyes tight. “I wasn’t sure about Cozy Glow when I took her on as a client, and with hindsight I can see I let Rarity sway my judgement. They both led me to believe that she was…healed…from her youth. That she was a different pony. The events of the last few years — your relationship with her — has shown me that I was wrong to believe them. Cozy Glow adjusted to society, to an extent. But Rarity was compensating for her. Helping her to mask.”

“That’s normal,” Flurry protested weakly, driven to defend the mare she still thought of, in her heart, as her marefriend. “They were a family.”

Auntie Tia shook her head, a calm rejection. “Cozy Glow is still deeply damaged, and since Rarity’s departure it’s become too obvious to ignore.”

Carefully, Flurry backed out of the embrace. “We’re all damaged.”

“Cozy Glow is a manipulator, Flurry. She’s always been a manipulator. If you’re feeling this way, like you need her, then there’s a chance that she’s done something deliberate to build these feelings in you.”

No. Flurry felt anger rising inside her chest, hot and steely. “No. That isn’t true."

There was a delicate cough, and Flurry turned to see Raven Inkwell, Celestia’s ancient seneschal-turned-secretary, trundling in with a tea-trolley.

“Don’t start, Raven,” Auntie Tia said grumpily. “I won’t have this argument again. I was wrong to take her on as a client, not wrong in my handling of her. Maybe I am being unfair — slightly — but that doesn’t change the fundamental truth that she wasn’t ready. For marriage or anything else.”

“She’s not a manipulator,” Flurry said, her voice shaking. At least, not to me. She never did that to me.

“Actually, Princess,” Raven Inkwell said, earning herself a glare for the usage of the old title. “I was going to tell you that Princess Twilight sent a scroll. Cozy Glow’s in the catacombs, and Princess Twilight isn’t happy.”

Flurry Heart shot to her hooves, overturning the teacup Raven was offering to her. “In the catacombs?” That was where she’d been kept as a child. That was where she’d been frozen. That was where, Flurry was certain, the nightmares used to take her, back when she’d wake trembling and Flurry would soothe her back to sleep.

“Yes,” Raven Inkwell said placidly. “And it seems she's trying to rob them.”

Chapter 15: Canterlot

“She is not yours to take,” Twilight Sparkle said, firmly.

“She isn't yours to keep!”

“She is my best friend,” Twilight Sparkle answered. “And she’s too young to go. I will find a cure for her, and the six of us will live out the last years of our lives like we were always supposed to. Together.”

“Who do you think she loved more?” asked Cozy, the words calculated to wound. “The friend she left behind, or the daughter she chose?”

The Princess’ face was impassive. “I know exactly who she loved more. It’s irrelevant.”

It wasn’t worth trying to detangle that answer. “She was ready to die, Princess. She wanted rest.”

“Equestria isn’t ready to lose her,” answered Twilight Sparkle, and Cozy knew that by Equestria she meant I. Selfish as only an alicorn could be. “There’s so much more we need her for.”

“Hasn’t she blasted enough of your enemies into rainbows?” Cozy asked, extending a feather again to sizzle and fry in the shield that separated her from the stone form of her mother. “How much more can you ask of her?”

The Princess hesitated, and Cozy almost wished that she had slipped into the treasury when she’d passed it and taken one of the magical gewgaws she’d spurned. I don’t need magic, she’d thought. But then the Princess’ tracking spells found her, and oh, how sweet it would have been to blast the smug superiority off her face with the power of the alicorn amulet.

“Cozy!” The door flew open, and then there was Flurry, flanked by the doddering old fools who pretended to be citizens instead of royalty.

“Cozy Glow, you must stop this madness,” said the one that pretended to be everypony’s Auntie, but Cozy knew better and when she bared her teeth the white alicorn flinched, and her mask of strength crumbled away. All that was left underneath was a worm. Pale and disgusting and ready to be crushed.

“Four alicorns to stop a single unarmed pegasus,” Cozy commented drily. “You must be losing your touch, Twilight.”

“Listen to us,” Auntie Tia tried again, her voice even once more. “Twilight only wants to help Rarity. This is not the way forward.”

Cozy Glow snorted, doing her best not to look at the smallest alicorn, half-hidden by her gargantuan relations. “What do you know about the way forward? You’re stuck five thousand years in the past.”

A shake of Celestia’s head. “This is what Rarity wanted. We spoke about it. She told us she wanted to be there for you.” A significant look at Flurry. “For your wedding.”

“Liar,” snapped Cozy Glow.

I’m ready, Cozy. I’m ready to sleep.

“Breaking into Twilight’s palace isn’t necessary,” Celestia soothed. “All you had to do was ask to see her.”

Ask. Ask her worst enemy if she could visit the parent she held hostage. Cozy Glow laughed, and it was the first time she’d found anything really, honestly funny since Rarity was kidnapped.

“Stand down, child,” Luna cautioned. “Ready thyself for a peaceful, reasoned discussion, or we shall take measures.”

“Auntie Luna, don’t,” said Flurry desperately.

Cozy Glow laughed louder. “Oh yes. I know all about the measures alicorns take. Tartarus. Statues. Obliteration. No, thank you, Luna. I don’t think I will stand down.”

“Cozy, let me just—”

Cozy Glow didn’t wait to see what the youngest princess was about to say. She flared her wings, dropping the smoke bombs held beneath the feathers. They coughed and started slashing about with their magic, great clumsy sweeps of it, as likely to take down a palace wall as to fan away the smoke. Cozy Glow laughed as she smashed the stained glass out of a window that showed Twilight Sparkle ascending to godhood. She didn’t need alicorn magic to get away. She didn’t need magic, and she didn’t need anyone to help.

Getting her mother back from those monsters was a question of power, and power was one thing Cozy Glow knew all about.

Chapter 16: The Thread Snaps

“Welcome, daughter.” The smile on the insect’s face was repulsive. Ranged around on every side, her children chittered in an uncanny echo. Daughter, daughter, daughter.

“Mother,” Cozy Glow said, the word like ash against her tongue. Rarity’s name, Rarity’s role, perverted and corrupted into this monstrous shape.

Chrysalis.

Half of Cozy’s first pseudo-family, and someone whom she had once hoped never to see again. Old associations are bad for your recovery, said Doctor Healing Word, and true enough, Cozy did not feel particularly recovered.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this little reunion?” hissed Chrysalis, her forked tongue flickering on every sibilant syllable.

Behind her, a drone carried away the most freshly laid egg. According to Twilight Sparkle’s mode of justice, Chrysalis was supposed to be living alone, penitent and dethroned. But the love was flowing thick and green in this new hive, and Cozy was not surprised in the least to find it so.

“I’ll be blunt, Mother dearest,” she said, slipping back so easily into her old saccharine tones. “I need an army, and it looks like you have a couple to spare.”

Chrysalis laughed. “Oh, Cozy. I’ve missed you. Such refreshing wit.”

Cozy Glow giggled, carefree and hollow. “Is that a no, then?”

Chrysalis smiled. “If an army of unreformed changelings turns up in Equestria, where do you think the pony princesses will check first?”

“Unreformed, Mother?” chirped up one of the blank-eyed drones. “But we can all change our forms! What does reforming mean, if not transformation magic?”

Casually, Chrysalis reached out with her vomit-green magic and slammed the drone into the wall. The others stepped calmly out of the way as he slumped to the ground.

“Don’t ask questions, Antennae,” Chrysalis said calmly. “I’ve told you before.”

Antennae did not respond, and one of his nameless brethren dragged him away into a side tunnel.

“No, Cozy dear,” Chrysalis went on. “My drones only go out a few at a time. I have no soldiers to lend out, even to old friends. But you’re welcome to stay a while. Pincer will show you to a room.”

“Thank you,” said Cozy Glow sweetly, simmering with hate.

“But as a lesson from a queen to a little pony who once wanted to be one, let me tell you one thing. Armies are best when you build them yourself.”

A knock on the door. How she was growing to hate those.

“Come in.”

The shuffle of chitinous hooves. The soft swish of changeling magic, resettling flesh. Cozy turned, and the air left her lungs as though she’d been punched.

Flurry Heart, beautiful as always, hair curling softly across her pink throat. Here in a changeling hive.

The irrational, beautiful spike of hope — she’s come to save me from this — died before it was fully formed. Cozy’s eyes were flat and dead. “Get out.”

“Mother said you’d like this form best,” the drone said nervously in Flurry’s voice. “I can do something else? But Mother said you might like to s-share a little love with us.”

“Get out!” Cozy screamed, and as soon as the illusion of Flurry flickered away she bucked him in the face as hard as she could. He gasped and crumpled just like a pony, and Flurry felt again the sick joy of how good it felt to hurt another creature. To externalise the pain instead of internalise.

Cozy Glow paced the length of her lonely room. Back and forth she stalked, back and forth, like a caged tiger. Like an animal stripped of its glorious strength and its native land, penned up in a tiny enclosure for mindless hicks to gawp at.

Her hooves thudded against the green resin floor, every step full of barely-restrained fury.

Flurry Heart.

The name was a constant whisper in the back of her mind. A terrible nagging feeling. It was one Cozy was not used to; the sensation of having failed. She gritted her teeth. How had it happened? She still struggled to wrap her head around it.

All her life, Cozy had wielded her intellect like a weapon. Used it to cudgel and quell and manipulate others into submission. Twisted their minds with it until they gave her what she really wanted.

Since she was a foal, Cozy had been able to manage and change the ponies around her. She could cajole and wheedle and whisper suggestions, and eventually they always worked. Those things were blasé. She hardly remembered a time when they hadn’t come as easily as breathing.

What Cozy wanted — what she had always wanted — was the other sort of power. The one that mattered more than little whispers and nudges ever could. The power that made ponies shudder when you spoke. Avert their gaze from yours. Jump to obey your every command.

The power of fear.

After Cozy Glow’s final defeat, over twenty years ago, she resigned herself to the fact that the power of fear was not one she would ever possess. She had been mighty — she had been an Empress — but all the power she had wielded had still not been enough to help her face up to the alicorns and their raw magical force. She had been forced to content herself with the prospect of a lifetime of the other, softer sort of power; and then once Mama’s lessons began to stick, even that possibility had been surrendered. Cozy had spent her time taking pills, reciting mantras, attending therapy sessions, and trying to quell the monster inside into submission. She had focused on controlling only herself, instead of others — and it had been the most difficult thing she had ever attempted.

Twenty years of brutal, unremitting struggle. Unceasing self-flagellation and eyes full of Mama’s soft disappointment, a thousand times worse than a knife to the back. A subtle stabbing pain in her heart every time she slipped up.

Twenty years of sacrifice. Of pushing her true self into a tiny cell and bracing herself against the door.

And what had she got to show for it?

Nothing. Nothing. A body twitching with repressed urges, a head full of memories so bitter that they hurt, and — and a broken heart. Can’t forget that one.

Cozy stalked the length of her room once more, shaking her head from side to side. Thinking of the way Chrysalis hurled the drone in the throne room out of her way. The thrill it had sparked in her. The way the second drone’s skull had crunched beneath her hooves. It was the first time since Mama — since Mama had — since then that she had felt anything at all.

Yes, there was a lot to be said for the way Chrysalis ruled. A refreshing change from the way the insipid pastel alicorns ruled. Friendship and frippery could only get you so far. None of the ponies leapt to obey the alicorns in the way that Chrysalis’ spawn did.

Ruling generally was a concept Cozy had not given thought to in many years. She had given it up. Thought it was long behind her.

But…why should it be?

Armies are best when you build them yourself.

Really, why should it be? Cozy would be a good ruler — or rather, she would be good at ruling. She would not be good to her subjects. But she would do a better job of the whole thing than Chrysalis, who lived in a damp hole with her innumerable children, insulating the raw stone with their own spittle. No, Cozy would rule with style.

And what was reason was there not to? What reason was there to hold back any longer? Mama was…Rarity was gone. And with her, the Elements of Harmony. A major blow to Princess Twilight. True, the stone spell could be performed by Twilight alone, but she was busy in Canterlot. Go far enough north, and the ponies of Equestria would never even hear about her, let alone want to come and stop her.

Yes, that was an idea. Continue north. Leave Equestria and the Crystal Empire in the dust. Leave the memories of Rarity and alicorn-kind in all its varied and cursed forms far, far behind. Find a few ponies, persuade them to put her in charge, and boom — instant army. And with an army she could conquer. And when Cozy Glow began to conquer, who would be able to stop her?

She would be no Princess, nor even a Queen. She would be an Empress. And why should it not work?

After all, she was not twelve any more.

Chapter 17: A Broken Heart

Flurry found the mountain hut empty on the third week after the debacle in the palace. She’d been trying to give Cozy space, but as soon as she arrived she realised she should have come sooner.

She stayed there another three weeks. Another two beyond that, until the second panicked missive from her mother arrived.

The Heart is flickering again, Flurry! Come home. No one else has your connection to it, and we need you here.

Guilty and frightened, Flurry returned. But she stationed a guard permanently in a little camp across the valley from Cozy’s mountain home. He was her swiftest pegasus, and he swore he would fly straight to her the second anyone came or went from the hut.

It was something, but it wasn’t enough.

Months passed. A year. The Heart beat unsteadily, and Flurry Heart sickened alongside it. Doctors and mages alike could not help either of them, and Flurry could not find the will to forget the mare she loved. Could not, as Cadence asked, cut her out of her heart.

“The auras are so tangled up I don’t know if it’s her making the Heart sick, or the Heart making her sick,” Cadence said, her voice edged with terror. “Shiny, I can’t tell.”

Cozy was dead. She had to be dead, because if she were not nothing could keep them apart. They were two halves of a whole. Two sides of the same coin.

Cozy would never willingly leave her. There was something granite about her. A bone-deep loyalty that ran true through love, through hatred, through every emotion. No matter what Cozy felt, she would never stop needing Flurry. That was one thing that Flurry believed with her whole heart.

The fifth time the Crystal Heart went out for more than three days, a foal died. Frozen to death. Her little limbs as cold as Flurry felt when she went to give the royal regrets to the parents. It was a thousand times worse than the occasional old pony too weak to climb down all the stairs, though Flurry had once thought that was the lowest she could ever sink.

There was only one path of action left, and Flurry took it.

The Heart glowed dully, a mere wisp of its former radiance. The cold pulled at the edges of Flurry’s perception, there but not quite there.

It had worked.

The Heart was cut off from her, but its connection to Cadence and the Crystal Ponies remained. They could fuel it — enough. They could provide what she no longer could. The Empire would live a half-life, a shadow life, but it would live. It would survive. That was all that mattered.

It's Princess, though? That was another story.

Flurry looked inside herself, and found only cold. True cold, icy cold, empty cold — far more vast and far more frightening that ever the cold of the glaciers outside the Heart’s protective bubble could be.

Flurry looked at the wasteland that had once been her heart, and she wondered. Was this what Cozy Glow had felt like, all of her life?

Chapter 18: The Empress

Cozy Glow wandered. She headed north, into Stalliongrad, into Yakyakistan. Stealing and terrorising, and killing — yes, killing, at long last — those who reminded her of the ponies she hated. Unicorn couples, rich and well-to-do. Lilac-furred mares with coloured streaks in their manes.

Cozy Glow killed, and with every death, with every speck of blood marring her fur, she was herself again; her real, true self.

It ought to have felt wonderful, to become again the pony she was always meant to be. To cease the endless struggle against the terrible urges she had fought for years. It ought to have been sublime.

Why, then, did she feel so…heartsick? So empty?

Cozy Glow tried to make herself feel better. She did it in the only way she knew how, her very earliest method.

The very thing she had done to her parents, after…after what they did to her.

She found a small village in the barren tundra beyond Yakyakistan. The Unknown, the Equestrian maps called it. Cozy Glow settled herself in that village, and she placed a crown of rusted wire onto her head, and proclaimed herself Empress. The title she had wanted since she was a foal was finally hers, and here in this wasteland, there was no one to take it from her.

There was only a crowd of frightened villagers, and Empress Cozy Glow did with her subjects what Empresses do. She slaughtered them. One at a time, a few all at once, what did it matter?One pony fell, then another, one two three, down like skittles. Even the foals. Oh, she was sure to make it fast for them. She wasn't a monster. But she did kill them. Why should they get the childhood she was denied? Why should they get to grow up safe and sound with mothers that loved them?

And Cozy knew, she knew, that Rarity would hate it. Would gasp and cry out with every thrust of the knife. Would volunteer to die herself than let even a single innocent pay the ultimate price.

Cozy saw her mother's reproachful eyes watching her through every step of every hellish day. Saw the horror on Rarity's face.

And she did it anyway.

She killed those she came across, mare and stallion and child alike, until she grew tired of killing. Until she had slaked her grief so thoroughly in blood that it washed away anything but the old empty numbness. Until there was nothing but the familiar void. And Cozy Glow floated there in her void, blood running over her hooves, irremovable evidence of her thousands of crimes. And voices echoed in her ears.

You're better than this, Cozy.

“I'm not, Mama.”

I wish you’d talk to me.

“Leave me alone, Flurry.”

If you would just apply yourself, you could make all the friends you wanted. Nopony has to be alone. You have to choose it.

That one didn’t even warrant a response. Twilight Sparkle was more of a monster than Cozy Glow would ever be.

And when she tired of killing ponies, she found that those left alive were more than willing to serve in exchange for their lives. For the lives of their children. The ice dragons that threatened them were a delightful little challenge, and their blood flowed just as red as any pony’s. If you slit their throats just right, their death throes would pump out a veritable shower of the stuff, and then her mane and her feathers and her fur would all be as red as her eyes were.

Red red red, slick and shiny, the Empress of Nowhere stood tall. She had no dead mother. She had no broken heart. Just enemies to kill, and blood to spill.

Chapter 19: Regrets

The tales that reached Equestria and the Crystal Empire came slowly. Fragmented. Fractured. Tales of a monster that bathed in blood, who slaughtered dissenters and crushed any that would threaten her newfound throne.

A monster who would skip into each new settlement or camp she conquered giggling like a little filly, and ask “Who wants to be my friend?”

And it was in those half-legends that Flurry Heart found again the love that she had thought was lost.

“It must be exaggerated,” she said, for the thousandth time. “There’s no way she’d do that. She wouldn’t.”

“You have no idea what she’s capable of,” Cadence replied, her voice terse from the throne beside her. “Now could we please get back to the matter at hoof? The Neighpalese ambassadors are going to be here any minute and we need to be ready.”

“She made a promise. To Rarity.” Cozy Glow did not break her promises. And she especially did not break promises to her mother.

“And Rarity died.” Cadence was capable of being merciless, when she had to be. “I felt that girl’s emotions, Flurry, and the ones for her mother were such a twisted, mangled mess of…horror that losing her could have made her do anything at all.”

As she had so often before, Flurry quashed the instinct to ask what Cozy’s emotions for her had been, all that time ago. That way lay only pain.

“But we have to do something,” she said. “If it is her, if it’s not — either way we can’t leave the ponies of the northern wastes without any help at all.”

Cadence looked harried. “I don’t know what we can do. Twilight asked me to handle it, but she asks me to handle everything north of Manehattan, and I can’t go off wandering the wilderness for months at a time.”

“Aunt Twilight asked you because she knows you have a spare.”

Her mother pursed her lips. “If it comes to that, she has two. Auntie Tia and Luna don’t seem to do anything anymore outside of their little hobbies. Gardening and matchmaking — as if I’m not managing Equestria’s romantic needs, on top of everything else.”

“Auntie Tia isn’t trying to step on your horseshoes, Mum.” Another well-trodden discussion.

“Either way, you’re not going.” Cadence shook her head in flat refusal. “It's too dangerous.”

“She’s…she’s my problem. I…made her like this. I helped to do it.”

“Flurry, no. You cannot blame yourself for the actions of a…a monster like her.”

“She’s not a monster, Mum.”

The doors opened, and two serene-looking donkeys in the orange robes of the Neigpalese court approached. Cadence sat up straighter, pasting a smile of welcome onto her face, and Flurry leaned in close to get in the last word.

“I’ll be picking my soldiers tonight.”

Chapter 20: The Emptiest Place

Author's Note

TRIGGER WARNING: Onscreen dead bodies. Details. This is the crescendo and the low point for these two, and things will get better from here.

Chapter 20: The Emptiest Place

“Captain? Captain Risewing?” The voice ringing out across the battlefield held an air of command, a tone of imperiousness — but in that vast empty snowplain it suddenly seemed very small indeed.

The land stretched flat and featureless and white to the horizon and beyond. The sky arced equally vast and blank overhead; a perfect mirror for the empty snow beneath. Little puffs of powder-snow scudded over the wind-scoured plains.

A lone shape, a hopeful spark of pale pink in the endless white. Her blue and fuschia mane tossed by the same wind that toyed with the snow as she alighted. The frozen crust broke beneath her hooves with an audible crunch, and she stood knee-deep in the snow and looked around her.

“Risewing?” she called again, eyes huge in her gaunt face.

There was no answer. Only the soft hiss of the wind, sending ice skittering over ice.

Princess Flu— no, General Flurry Heart — stood ramrod-straight and scanned the ground before her. Snow, uniform and unbroken. Flawlessly smooth as it rose over the little hummocks on the ground, like a tablecloth on the state table.

Flurry Heart’s eyes skimmed over the snow before catching on one of those hummocks. Her face stilled, and her lower lip trembled for a moment. She glanced at the ground beyond the little cluster of hummocks where she stood — utterly flat. Scoured smooth by centuries of wind and snow. Tears filled her eyes. When one crept out over the peach fur of her cheeks it froze almost instantly.

Moving slowly towards the nearest lump, Flurry reached out a gentle hoof and brushed the snow from one end. Beneath the white lay an orange snow jacket. And below that fluffy grey fur. A cutie mark. A spear and an arrow, side by side.

Flurry Heart let her hoof fall, eyes fluttering shut and jaw tensing. She pulled in a deep breath, the freezing air searing her throat. Another. Another. It was Keen Edge. Edge, Risewing’s second-in-command. Carrot Bran, loyal soldier and brave mare. Edge, the strongest soldier in the whole patrol. Edge, who left behind three motherless fillies in the Crystal Empire.

More frozen tears joined the first on Flurry Heart’s soft fur.

She stood as though frozen herself for a long time before she found the strength to continue. And then slowly, mechanically, she pushed the snow away from her old comrade and wrapped her in a glow of gentle yellow magic, pulling her free from her chilly resting place.

Keen Edge hung in the air before Flurry Heart, her throat a bloodied mess, the gore frozen in place for all eternity. Flurry Heart choked down a sob and moved on to the next lump. Lapis Lazulittle, the diminutive blue war-mage. She wore a blue scarf the exact same colour as her solidified, staring eyes. And the next, Roughshod, with his big green snow-boots. Not even his thick fur had been enough to save him. When Flurry had met him, she had thought him the hairiest pony she had ever seen. It hadn’t been enough.

The next one was even worse. Scrawny little Skydance, the youngest in the battalion. Barely seventeen. Just a kid. Flurry Heart held him in her magic beside his comrades and tried to imagine what she was going to say to Skydance’s mother. I’m sorry. I couldn’t keep him safe. I failed him.

She couldn’t even close his eyes. Just like all the rest, they were frozen open.

Flurry Heart pressed a hoof to her mouth, trying to stifle her sobs.

That was how they found her. A sharp retort rang out — the unmistakable signal of a teleport — and then Flurry felt eyes raking across her back, her wings, her tail. And she was no longer alone.

Raising her head slowly, no longer caring about the mess of solid tears on her face, Flurry stared into the red eyes of the Empress. The icy wastes north of Yakyakistan were populated only by a few shaggy tribesponies scattered across the white expanse — or they had been, until this mare had united them under her reign.

The Empress stared Flurry Heart right in the eyes, and smiled wider than pony mouths should stretch. “Princess!” The voice lashed out like a whip, cracking sharper even than the teleport had. “You found me!”

Flurry Heart did her best not to flinch. “I see you’re travelling with a mage now.”

The Empress waved an airy hoof. “Everypony does. Can’t get anything done without them.” Her eyes narrowed, though that eerie smile stayed fixed in place. “He’s very good at invisibility spells, before you get any ideas. You won’t find him.”

Flurry Heart shrugged. “You know I wouldn’t kill him either way.”

A smirk in response. “That’s what makes you so shockingly easy to beat, Flurry dear.”

Flurry Heart shrugged again. She didn’t have the energy for Cozy’s toxic brand of repartee. Not with her soldiers floating frozen behind her and lying dead beneath the snow on every side. She cut to the chase. “Monster.”

Cozy Glow smiled, showing clean white teeth — and on her face it looked more like a snarl. “Yes.”

“Magic, though? The mare I knew never would have done that. She thought magic was unnecessary. A cheat code.”

“The mare you knew was a shadow,” came the rejoinder.

“A shadow of what?”

“Of me, of course,” said Empress Cozy Glow brightly. “And now here I am, living up to my full potential.”

“Here you are,” echoed Flurry Heart flatly.

“And here you are,” smiled Cozy. “After all this time, it’s good to finally see you again, Flurry — do you mind if I call you Flurry? You haven’t changed at all, you know. Like you haven’t aged a day.”

Flurry studied her in silence. Cozy Glow, in contrast, had aged in the years since she had last seen her. The years in the snow had not been kind to her. Wrinkles scarred her beautiful face, her immaculate fur and feathers patchy from years of frostbite. Her primaries were gone entirely, replaced by a line of shining steel knives, only nominally styled to resemble feathers. Her mane was no longer as bright, the sunny round ringlets replaced by a greying, wind-tossed mass of tangles. The same white ribbon bound it back, but even the ends of that were frayed. Only her eyes were unchanged. The same fearsome, fixating, blazing red. Burning into Flurry as she stared — like Flurry was the only thing worth seeing in the world, like she would never look away.

Yes, her eyes were just the same as they had always been.

“You’ve missed me, haven’t you, darling?” The words fell from Cozy’s tongue lightly. The endearment sounded natural. Like it belonged there.

Like the last few years had never happened at all.

“Darling?” Despite herself, that word pulled a humourless laugh from Flurry Heart. “That was her word, wasn’t it? A bit out of place here.”

That struck a nerve. Cozy’s eye twitched and for the first time her smile faltered. Funny. Flurry had long stopped believing Cozy had any feelings left to wound.

“Don’t talk about her.” The statement was delivered flat, emotionless. No trace of the previous playfulness.

Flurry wasn’t about to let it go that easily. Not now that a knife to cut the uncuttable had been delivered into her hooves. “You think she’d be proud of you, Cozy?”

Cozy Glow pulled in a breath, and her pupils shrank to pinpricks. Flurry tensed, ready to throw up a shield if Cozy launched herself, blades drawn — or if the unseen mage launched his own attack.

But Cozy did nothing. Just stared, eyes empty and hungry, and then she finally began to laugh. The sound was thin and reedy in the vast white expanse, pitched too high and too loud — altogether wrong. The sound of a filly emanating from a mare ravaged by the years and the snow alike.

A shaky breath rushed from Flurry’s lungs as Cozy finally finished her fit of giggles. She had forgotten just how unsettling that laugh could be. But then it was designed to be. Everything about Cozy was calculated to unsettle. Everything she said, everything she did; it was all a weapon.

Just like old times.

“You’re just as good as I remember, Flurry Heart,” Cozy smiled, looking once more like she was delighted to be reunited with her old friend. “You always know just what to say to hurt me.”

Flurry shook her head. “You’ve hurt yourself enough for both of us.” You’ve hurt yourself. You’ve hurt me. My friends, my soldiers. Along with hundreds of foals, stallions and mares. Civilians. Innocents.

“And thousands of others, right?” Cozy intuited. “That’s what you’re thinking. You’ve gotten easier to read, Princess. It might as well be written on your forehead. You used to be a bit more of a challenge.”

Flurry jerked her head up, her jaw trembling. “I’m sorry I’m not at my best while I gather my dead.”

“I’ll bear that in mind for our next meeting.” Cozy gave her a crooked little smile. The same smile she used to offer up alongside croissants, or roses, or a kiss in the morning. A mockery of what they had once had.

Her chest suddenly tight again, Flurry Heart dragged her gaze away and back to her soldiers. Living ponies, beautiful souls, with homes and families and husbands. Reduced to so much frozen meat — at Cozy Glow’s hooves. Nothing more now than lumps beneath the snow.

She reached for the next of them and began the agonising process of pulling the snow away until she recognised him. Purple feathers edged with white. Risewing. The captain.

Be careful, she had said to him that morning. To all of them. A multi-pronged approach is our best bet. I can’t be with all of you at once, but the Empress’ forces should be spread thin. We should have a good chance of getting through to the foals.

“I’ve been busy since we last met,” Cozy said, in the tone of a child brightly chattering about its day. “Aren’t you impressed?”

Flurry pulled Risewing from the snow and let him join his fellows in the air above her. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. This would be his very last flight.

When she didn’t answer, Cozy began to move closer, like a panther stalking its prey. “Well, of course you are. You came all this way to see me, after all. To chase after big, bad Cozy Glow, ready to rescue all those poor unfortunates I have with me. Or maybe it was for me. Did you come to save me, Flurry? To preach friendship just like Twilight Sparkle taught you, to warm the cockles of my villainous heart till I see the light once more?”

Flurry went on with her task, letting the vitriol wash over her as she gathered up her fallen comrades, one after another.

“I think that’s it,” hissed Cozy, low and dangerous. “I think you missed me. I certainly missed you. Nopony here in this shithole is any good at chess at all.”

She paused and studied her hooves as Flurry unearthed the next of her soldiers. Grassgreen. He had been going to propose to Daisy May next week.

Shining Armour always said it was important to know your soldiers, to know who you were sending into battle for you. But all it seemed to do for Flurry was to make it hurt more when they fell.

And far too many of them had fallen since Flurry Heart marched them north.

“I’ll tell you what they are good at, though. Fighting. Following. Obeying. It’s shockingly easy to build an army. Especially when you have years before anyone notices your frequent and blatant violations of the Gen-neigh-va Convention. Do you feel guilty about that, you and your mother? That it took you so long to notice ponies were dying up here in the north?”

And there was Sandy. He made pancakes every morning in base camp. Who would make the pancakes now?

“All you need is a few of them to follow you. You wouldn’t believe how flexible ponies can be once you have a gang of armed thugs behind you. Or once you have their foals penned up nice and tight. With that magic ingredient, you’ve got an instant army — and a future one, being trained up safely away from their parents — on your side. It’s a good tactic. You ought to try it. Easier than digging up ponies from the snow.” Cozy Glow sniggered; an ugly sound.

Pulling back the snow from another face, too familiar, Flurry Heart’s patience finally fluttered and expired. No more friends left waiting beneath the snow. Her horn flared, and as one, all the lumps quivered and rose. Snow sloughed from the fur of the dead. Stiff manes hung in the air, looking almost like they might be blowing in the wind. Sightless eyes stared down at the two mares as they faced each other down.

“Surely you’re not going to teleport all of those back to your base camp with you?”

“Numbers aren’t an issue for me.”

“Then you’ve improved since I last saw you.”

Flurry Heart almost laughed. It caught in her throat. “A lot has changed since then.”

“But not that much, right?” Cozy Glow pushed. “You’re not going to use your godly powers to call down a thunderbolt on me, are you?” She grinned, spreading her hooves. “You’re not going to smite me?”

For a moment, Flurry Heart allowed herself to imagine it. Setting aside her past with Cozy Glow — how she had once felt about the beautiful pegasus who had allowed herself to warp into the ruin facing her now — setting aside her personal feelings, could she do it? Could she just…annihilate a pony? An enemy.

If she did it — if she could — she would free those foals. The Empress’ entire army. Those who served under sufferance of the threat against their children and relatives, all of them freed in one fell swoop.

But she still didn’t know where the foals were kept. And if Cozy took the secret with her —

And on thinking that name, she looked back into those red eyes and memories flooded through her. Looking into them, soft with love, seeing her own eyes reflected back. Laughter, rooks and pawns, a thousand battles over the chessboard. Fires crackling and mulled wine and gentle kisses in the candlelight.

She could no more send the light from those eyes than she could her own.

“Come on,” spat Cozy, suddenly a little desperately. “Don’t go. End this. Smite me. Hurt me. I know you want to. I know you think I deserve it.”

Watching her, Flurry Heart shook her head. “Do you think you deserve it?”

Her flanks heaving, Cozy Glow stared into Flurry’s eyes. There was madness there, but there was something else too. An expression Flurry had seen, sometimes, when her lover would wake panting in the night, eyes wide and frightened — Cozy, what is it, what’s wrong? — I-I’m afraid it’ll happen again. That I’ll do it again.

That was an expression that Flurry knew well. An expression she had not seen in years.

Pain.

Cozy Glow said nothing, for once in her life. Just looked into the eyes of the mare whose heart she had broken.

And Flurry Heart stared into the ghost of the pony she had loved, watched by the ghosts of the ponies her love had slaughtered like animals, and was suddenly exhausted beyond words. “Where are the children, Cozy?”

The spell was broken, and Cozy laughed, her equilibrium suddenly and jarringly restored. “Somewhere nopony will ever find them — and nicely spelled to blow sky-high when I give the word, before you get any ideas.”

Shaking her head, Flurry turned to leave, carrying her corpses with her. “Goodbye, Cozy.”

Cozy Glow laughed again. “We really must stop meeting like this, Princess. If you want to ask me out on another date, just ask!”

Her laughter climbed, higher and higher, breathless and desperate, almost like sobbing, as Flurry Heart gathered her magic and her dead soldiers and pulled in the vast magical energies required for a jump with over twenty bodies in tow.

CRACK!

The shockwaves faded as the echoes did, and when the earth stabilised again, the small mare with the red eyes of a love long dead and the despairing, maniacal laughter of a foal — she lay alone in a crater of ice and laughed and laughed and laughed.

Chapter 21: Crystalline

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Chapter 22: Prisoners of War

One hoofstep at a time, Flurry inched forward. From the cover of one snowdrift to the next. Sandy Shore and Daisy May swooped overhead, hollering war cries, and a hail of arrows followed them. Boots pounded in the snow and a gaggle of thick-furred northern ponies galloped past only inches from the edge of Flurry’s hasty teleportation spell.

Flurry used the lull after they thundered by to flap up from the snow, skim the top of the wall, and drop into the gardens of the shambling icy mess the Empress called a palace. The guards on the wall were aiming their arrows at her pegasi. For the first time, Flurry’s soldiers wore no paint, and the reveal of the half-crystal ponies was causing shock and confusion on every side.

All according to plan, so far.

There were lumps of ice dotted around that could have been attempts at sculptures or topiary, and Flurry landed behind one. She peered carefully around and, seeing nopony, darted across to the next jagged shape.

For all her hatred of the royals, Cozy had certainly modelled her new life on them. She was an Empress, ruling her kingdom of ice from a lumpen snowfort version of the palace in Canterlot. Flurry wondered grimly if she had a matching statuary in the basement, filled with ice sculptures of Aunt Twilight.

On to the next statue, channelling more focus into her camouflage spell the closer she got to the palace. One more, and then—

“This way!”

Suddenly the Empress was there, a grin on her face like a jack-o-lantern, like a skull.

Flurry skidded to a halt and deepened her camouflage again. No matter how draining it was, she couldn’t be found. Not yet.

It had to feel real.

Flurry watched the mare she’d once loved, back when that was still possible. Before she cut herself off from the Heart and her family and everything that had once mattered to her.

Cozy Glow was breathing heavily, her muzzle flecked with frost, her curls wild and matted. She lived for these moments, as far as Flurry could tell. When her spies could get close enough to watch the Empress, they reported a listless, dull mare prone to fits of pettish anger and violence against her subjects. To her, these brief battles were like sparks in the night. A chance to match wits like they had so long ago. Flurry gritted her teeth and took another step. She preferred it when the pawns they played with were chessmen instead of living ponies.

“Friends!” Cozy shrieked, as a platoon of particularly powerful soldiers bounded into formation behind her. “Find the Princess’ soldiers and kill them! Every last one!”

“For the Empress!” the soldiers boomed, and Flurry wondered if every one of them had a foal or a friend held hostage in Cozy’s dungeons, or if any of them believed in her. Some of them must, or it would have all fallen down years ago. But who could believe in this?

The soldiers galloped away, one of them passing only inches away and throwing up enough powder that Flurry had to hastily shake it off in case anypony noticed the floating snow where only sky should be. Cozy was standing still, and there was one more pony beside her. A skinny unicorn stallion, his long horn sharpened to a wicked point.

Flurry Heart felt a chill when she saw Cozy so close to the race she hated the most. In all her endless campaign against the Empress, she had never seen a unicorn fighting for her. She didn’t know what Cozy had done to the northern ponies’ unicorns, and she didn’t know why this one had been spared.

“Best Friend,” Cozy said to the unicorn beside her. “I trust you. You know you’re my very best friend.”

He nodded fervently, but said nothing.

“Find the Princess,” she said. “We’ll both look for her. It’ll be our little game. The winner gets…mmm, I don’t know…to choose where we build our next snowpony, okay? Won’t that be fun, Best Friend?”

The unicorn nodded so hard Flurry wondered how he wasn’t straining his neck. He looked pained. Desperate. What had Cozy done to him?

Flurry Heart steeled herself and darted into the shadow of the palace. The door to the barracks had been left ajar. It was a rookie error, and it showed how angry Cozy Glow had become that it had escaped her once-razor focus. Or perhaps how disloyal her guards truly were.

Once she was inside it was easier. With the thick snowy walls to block the noise, she could blast her way through locked doors and the weak wardings Cozy had in place.

It was only a matter of time till she found them. Twenty-three hungry-looking children, from the ages of two to sixteen. Huddled together inside two gender-segregated cells with a few educational posters slapped onto the icy walls.

“Are you an alicorn?” one of them asked, something kindling in his dull eyes. “Are you the Princess?”

“She hates the Princess, Snowball,” one of the others warned him. “You’d better not talk to her. The Empress’ll be mad.”

The bars of the cell were chained and spelled, but the enchantments were as weak as the wards had been. Possibly cast by Best Friend, if he was the only unicorn that served Cozy.

“Come here, little ones, come here.” Flurry gathered them towards herself, ignoring any weak protests. They had been fed propaganda, but it would be undone. Their loyalty to Cozy was only skin-deep, fuelled by fear. “There’s going to be two jumps, but I’m taking you somewhere safe, okay? It’s all okay now.”

“I want my da—” began one of the colts, but his words were lost in the snap of the first teleport.

The air on the tallest tower of Cozy’s palace bit cold and deep.

“I have the children!” Flurry screamed, in her best Royal Canterlot Voice. The words boomed across the palace and the battlefield beyond. “Your children are safe! Go south to meet them!”

Far below her, she could see Cozy Glow, stark and pink against the white. Her mouth was open; she was shouting something Flurry could not hear. It didn’t matter. The battle was over.

Flurry sucked in power from the snow, from the cold, from the ambient magic produced by every flap of a pegasus wing and every thud of an earth pony hoof. She drew on everything she had, she gathered every foal in the field of her magic, pictured the coordinates and the snow-covered plateau in her mind, and with a crack that shook the earth, she sent them two hundred miles south to the rendezvous point. Lapis Lazulittle would be waiting there, ready with Flurry’s best teleporters to carry them all further south until they could link up with the chain of mages Cadence had sent out. Before twenty-four hours were up all of those foals would be safe inside the shield of the Crystal Heart, untouchable by anypony who meant them harm.

Now all she had to do was get her soldiers out, and she could move on to—

Another snap of teleportation magic, and Cozy Glow winked into being above her, Best Friend clamped between her hooves and something tangled and black dangling beneath them. Flurry spread her wings and leapt into a teleport of her own, but before the spell was complete the net Best Friend carried slammed down onto her.

It was heavy, too heavy, and the weight of it broke her concentration and knocked her back to the floor.

Flurry tried again to teleport, and again — but the net sucked up her magic like it wasn’t there. Every drop she put out it drank in, and she was helpless as a foal. Even her earth pony strength had left her, and she lay crumpled on the ground beneath the weight of the steel cables.

There was something woven into the net, digging painfully into her flank. When she twisted to look at it she saw a gleaming black stone, obsidian perhaps — and beyond it, a smiling face.

“Flurry! What a surprise! This was intended for your aunt in case she ever showed up, but it’s good to have confirmation it works.” Cozy Glow — no, the Empress — was grinning as she approached. Her voice was hitching; she seemed only inches away from devolving into that unhinged laughter Flurry had heard once too often. “Look at you, all trussed up like a little songbird in a cage. I think I’ll keep you! Won’t it be nice, Princess? We’re going to be roommates again.”

Against that malicious smile, far too wide for the once-pretty face it was on, Flurry could only bow her head. Somewhere inside there, her Cozy was still alive. She had to be.

Chapter 23: Captive

Flurry Heart looked around her at the beautiful trappings of her prison. A shelf heaving with all her favourite books. A little potted garden with all the prettiest of the few plants that would grow up here. Heaps of fur and yak-woven blankets, enough to keep out the cold even on the harshest nights. And — Cozy trembled with delight at this, her favourite part — a chess board on a table set for two.

Apart from the bars on the window, it could have been a room in the crystal palace itself.

With the magic limiter detached from the net and welded safely into place on her horn, Flurry was as harmless as a kitten. A captive princess of her very own, just like in a fairytale. Her little songbird with wings clipped and safely caged up. Back where she belonged.

At long last, both of them were home.

“Do you like it?” she asked, wanting to hear Flurry’s voice again. “I’ve had it ready for years. For if I ever caught you.”

There were deep, bruise-like shadows beneath Flurry’s eyes. “All this?”

“The trap, the tower. Everything. Just in case you ever came.”

“How did you catch me?”

"A piece of Chrysalis' old throne,” Cozy said easily. Content in the aftermath to reveal her own cleverness, to revel in it. Flurry loved her for her brain, sharp as a razor. “And before you get any big ideas about smashing that off against the wall, think about all my other hostages.”

Flurry went white.

“You don’t think I kept all the peasants’ foals together, did you, Flurry?” Cozy let herself enjoy a little giggle at her lover’s expense. “Gosh, I’m not an amateur. That was only a third of my little collection.”

Flurry stared at her, and Cozy thought there was something like hate in those eyes. It hurt to see that, and the hurt felt wonderful. Like a knife gliding across your skin, cold and clean and deadly.

“How did you persuade Chrysalis to help you?” Flurry asked wearily. “She had to know giving you something like that was an act of war against the Empire. Aunt Twilight will put her back into prison for this.”

“Prison,” hissed Cozy, rage flaring up as it always did when that name dared to crawl its weaselling way into her ears. “This is prison, Flurry. And a very nice one too, thanks to me. What your precious aunt uses is torture. And Chryssie didn’t need any persuading. She loves me. She was my mother just as much as...the other one was. Wasn't hard to persuade her to lend little old me a hoof.”

“Your mother's name was Rarity.”

“Don't say her name.”

“It was Rarity.”

“I said don't say her name!”

Cozy slammed the door behind her and leaned against it, breathing hard. Then, with a little giggle, she turned and locked it. Three feet of solid ice with real steel mesh inside. More steel on the windows. Walls eight foot deep on every side. Alicorn or not, no magic-sapped pony was going to be getting through that.

She’d done her work well. The goal she’d been aiming towards for so long was achieved, and now she had all the time in the world to enjoy it.

Chapter 24: The Princess and the Monster

Time passed. The pile of books on the ‘done’ shelf grew at almost a faster rate than the pile on the ‘read this next’ shelf. The chess set on the table by the window was set up and cleared and set up again. Game after game played as the shadow of the bars passed over the board, square by square.

And little by little, Flurry Heart began to recognise the mare who sat opposite her. The way she would stare into the distance. The way she would dodge a question with her words, while answering it with her eyes. The way she laughed. Not the hard laugh that she could wield like a weapon, aiming to cut. But the real one, that was pulled out of her almost by accident sometimes, at something Flurry said or did.

Certain things were not mentioned, of course.

Like the Empire just beyond this tower, full of ponies that hated their ruler and suffered beneath her hoof. The camp full of foals that she kept to ensure their loyalty. The way she sometimes crept into Flurry’s room in the dead of night, and whispered things, half-audible, broken things, full of regret — almost sane — but only when she was sure Flurry was asleep.

The way the Empress was spending more time here, in her castle, than she was running her Empire.

And the thing that they did not mention most of all — the fact that on the second anniversary of Flurry Heart’s imprisonment, the fragment of changeling queen’s throne had been removed from the metal welded onto Flurry’s horn. Perhaps for use elsewhere, against a different enemy…or perhaps for some other reason. Cozy Glow had to have realised that Flurry would feel its removal. That she would noticethe return of her strength, flight and magic, unfettered by the shard of simple obsidian she now bore.

But Cozy did not mention it, and so in return, Flurry did not mention the fact that she could have levelled the tower and teleported home at any point since then. That she had told her soldiers and her mother that she would not return, that day when she saved the first of the Empire’s children.

They did not talk about it, and they played their chess matches, and they pretended that Flurry Heart was still trapped. And Cozy Glow watched Flurry Heart, and Flurry Heart watched Cozy Glow.

And so, on the third anniversary of Flurry Heart’s imprisonment, when a note was slipped beneath her door, signed with an illegible scrawl instead of a signature, with only the word ‘Guard’ actually readable, Flurry Heart did not question the real origin of the note. Did not question how the note could have come, into a castle where no one came or went but Cozy Glow. How Cozy did not trust ponies enough to have them act as guards in her own home. Even Best Friend slept in a little hut outside the walls of the winter garden.

She had no trusted guards, and yet a guard claimed that he knew the location of the imprisoned foals. There was a map, with details of how to circumvent the explosive spells Best Friend had laid in the wake of the first breakout.

A blueprint of how to save the foals — Cozy's greatest weakness. Without them, she had no hostages, and without hostages, no army.

Flurry Heart could have teleported herself back to the Crystal Empire at that moment, note in tow. But she settled for teleporting the note itself, to the exact coordinates of her mother’s throne. Cadence would find it. She would understand.

Flurry had to follow her heart.

Chapter 25: The Empress and the Monster

When the news came of the breakout at the prison camp, Cozy Glow took it remarkably well. She did not kill anypony — not even the messenger. In fact, it had been over a month since she had killed anypony at all, and rumours were starting to circle.

The Empress was weak.

Even Flurry Heart heard those rumours, high in her tower jail. From the guards who drifted away, one by one, from the barracks at the edge of the winter garden. From the tribute shipments, which came less and less. And from the impassioned groans and gasps of the still-loyal Best Friend, as he had his one-sided arguments with Cozy, his words limited to the scrape of chalk on the blackboard he wore around his neck.

And most of all, from Cozy Glow herself. She turned her back on the Empire she had built from blood and pain, and she lost herself within the limited world of their tower. In chess and reading — in Flurry herself.

And Flurry was happy to let her. The further the Empress strayed, the closer her own Cozy came.

It was in these happy thoughts that Flurry was lost as she drifted off to sleep. Cozy had left her little more than an hour before, and for one halcyon moment Flurry had actually thought she would spend the night, as she had done in their younger years. They had curled up in front of the fire, using the dwindling reserves of firewood, and had talked of times long before. Their first time around. The date at the Crystal Faire. The meddling they had endured from Auntie Tia.

All it needed was for them to spend the night wrapped in one another’s wings, and then…then her Cozy would resurface. Flurry was certain of it.

So when the door creaked open, Flurry thought at first that Cozy had changed her mind. That she had come back. Her marefriend returned from the dead, casting off the shell of the Empress.

That was what she wanted.

But it was not Cozy — or the Empress. The shape that stood over her bed was horned instead of winged, and his mane was matted and filthy.

A soft groan emanated from his lips, and Flurry finally recognised him.

“Best Friend? Is that you?”

He was…he was barely a stallion. What she had taken for emaciation was the skinniness of a colt in his late teens. Not much older than Skydance. And when he opened his mouth, to growl at her, she finally saw the reason for the chalkboard.

He had no tongue.

Only a clumsy stub, hacked off at the base, where the raw muscle still flexed and stretched. Forever trying to speak, and forever silenced.

Stunned, Flurry could only stutter out a few half-questions. “A-are you — did she—?”

And he produced a piece of chalk seemingly from nowhere, and he began to write.

The squeaks and scrape of the chalk on the slate seemed to go on forever, and Flurry sat up in bed, shifting impatiently. What was he doing here? Cozy didn’t allow her underlings into the tower. Or at least, not into Flurry’s room.

He was not even writing like a unicorn normally would. Instead of levitating the objects, he held the board in his hooves and scratched awkwardly away with his mouth.

“What is it?” Flurry asked, impatience finally conquering her shock at his presence and the state of his tongue.

And finally, he turned the board around. The white writing was small, dense, and Flurry had to squint to see it.

Since you came, bad things are happening. I grew up with her. I know her. The word ‘know’ was underlined several times, each line wobblier than the one before. She’s the Empress! Here the scrawl grew frantic; furious. You’re making her weak. It’s your fault.

She finished reading and looked back to his eyes, and once he saw that she was done, he dropped the chalkboard. It hit the end of its string and bounced against his chest.

For a moment, there was silence. Flurry opened her mouth. What could she say, to deescalate the situation? She didn’t want to hurt him, but he was clearly unbalanced. Anyone who grew up in this place — with Cozy in this state — would be.

“Best Friend, I’m…I’m trying to heal her. To fix her. We can fix you too. Make you better.”

But the doubt must have showed on her face because he began to advance on her.

It was only once he was within hoof’s reach that Flurry tried to light her horn. However magically powerful he was, she knew she would be more so. Even with her connection to the Heart choked off, she was an alicorn. She could do anything.

But her horn did nothing. It was a dead lump of bone attached to her skull.

He clambered onto the edge of her bed, and she saw it gleaming there behind the chalkboard. The little fragment of throne, back to haunt her once more.

Flurry spread her wings, tried to flap away from him, only to collapse awkwardly to the floor. Flight was magic too, and it failed her.

Best Friend dove after her, and as Flurry struggled to her hooves, her legs weak and shaky, she finally understood.

He came up here to kill me.

That was her only conscious thought before he landed on top of her, sending her sprawling. His hooves were scrabbling for her throat, and with her magic gone Flurry couldn’t push him away as easily as she might have done. He was bearing down on her, a horrible smile twisting his features, a parody of a smile, modelled on the very worst of Cozy Glow. His tongueless mouth lolled open, teeth bared, and drool dripped onto her face.

“Get off me!” As she spoke, she kicked at his stomach with her hind legs.

Her magic was gone, all of it, even her earth pony strength, so she didn’t hold back.

Celestia help her, she didn’t hold back.

And he was only a colt. Scrawny and small, barely fed a full meal more than once a month in his whole life.

Flurry Heart didn’t hold back, and so when both her hind hooves connected with his stomach, there was a dry snapping sound, and then he went flying across the room. His head connected with the stone wall with a sickening thud. And he fell, limp as a ragdoll, to the ground.

Her heart in her mouth, Flurry struggled to her hooves. Stared at him. Aghast. “No.”

She went to him. Felt for a pulse. Tried to feel the stirring of his breath on her cheek from his horrible tongueless mouth.

“No,” she said again. “No.”

He lay still, his blackboard broken in pieces under his body. That fragment of the changeling throne still held close.

“Wake up, Best Friend,” said Flurry, numbly. “Wake up.”

And he wouldn’t. He didn’t.

“Flurry!” She burst through the door, a hurricane of feathers and fear. “There’s blood on the stairs, are you—” She saw the body, and she stopped short. Her flight stuttered, and she fell more than landed.

Flurry Heart looked down at the boy who lay at the base of the wall, and another tear slid down.

Cozy’s voice was hushed. “You…Best Friend…” She reached out a hoof for him, but stopped short.

“I k-killed him.” Flurry’s voice hitched, but she said it. She said the words that had been beating like a drum in her mind for the last hour. “I didn’t mean to, but…”

But I did. A life ended. She raised her hoof, and breath stopped. Just like with the windigos. With all the monsters she had hunted as a teenager. With the Sombrites. Here in her prison, there was no crystal to patch the holes and undo the damage. There was no way for magic to fix what she had done.

“He was…”

Cozy’s voice tailed off, and Flurry wondered what she would say. He was just a kid. He was my friend. He was like a son to me. Each possibility was worse than the last.

“…He was already dead, Flurry.” Cozy slumped to the floor, her ears pinned back to her skull. Her face was grey with exhaustion. “He was a normal colt, and he died the minute I took him from his parents. The minute I did what I did, and made him into…that.”

She gestured weakly to the creature on the floor, face twisted in a mask of hatred, blackboard shattered beneath its hoof. “His name was…it was…I don’t remember.” She shut her eyes. “It’s awful, that I don’t remember. I used to know all of my victims. I saw their faces, heard their voices. But now they all blend into one.”

“I still didn’t want to kill him.” Flurry swallowed. Remembered the fury she had felt. “Or I didn’t want to want to kill him.”

With a sigh, Cozy sat down. Despite the blood on her coat, Flurry felt the warmth of another body against her own.

“Do you remember that you told me, once, that no matter how deep the hole was…you’d pull me out?”

Her eyes suddenly tight with unshed tears, Flurry Heart nodded. “I remember.”

Pressing her face tight against Flurry’s chest, Cozy Glow sniffled. “Thank you.” It was so quiet it wasn’t even a whisper, but Flurry heard.

She heard.

“Just…just don’t make me do it again,” she managed. Her voice was weak, but she attempted a laugh.

Cozy Glow shuddered, and Flurry felt moisture on her fur. She tightened her hold.

“I’m a monster.”

Once, she would have denied it. No, you aren’t. But too much had been done. Too many had died.

“Yes.” It was a simple statement of fact. “You are.”

Another shudder. “Then…why…?”

Flurry thought of Best Friend’s neck, snapping beneath her hooves. She thought of the mares and stallions she had led from the Crystal Empire, each of them trusting in her to keep them safe before they died and rose and died again. She thought of the windigos, banished from Equestrian shores. Of the Sombrites, sealed up beneath the earth for a thousand years.

“Maybe you’re a monster,” she said at last. “Maybe I’m a monster too.”

Chapter 26: Cessation

Cozy Glow slumped to the ground, her wings dragging in the dirt. “Fine,” she said. “You win. I’m ready.”

“You mean it?” Flurry said, her voice hardly more than a whisper. “You want to go home?”

“I’m ready to…try,” Cozy said weakly, extending her forehooves towards Flurry. “I’m tired. I’m done. You’ve outlasted me, and I can’t do it any more. So…do it. Clap me in irons or whatever you’ve had planned this whole time.”

Flurry gave a disbelieving, horrified little laugh. “You knew I was faking?”

“You didn’t know I was faking?” Cozy asked. “The changeling throne shard was a loan. I sent it back to Chrysalis years ago.”

“Years?” Flurry whispered, appalled.

Miserably, Cozy nodded. “After…after Best Friend. I decided that if you wanted to try again, I’d…well, I’d let you have your magic, that’s all. I didn’t want you to have to fight again, after that.”

There was something in Flurry’s throat. A lump big as an apple. And tears in her eyes. Best Friend had died before the first three years of her imprisonment were over. Almost eight years ago.

Cozy Glow ran a weary hoof over her forehead. “But it’s time to end the charade, isn’t it? I’m done. I’ve not even killed anyone in the last ten years. Not since I caught you. I faked it a couple of times. Had a couple of them shipped to an island and left there. I chased them off till they stopped coming, and now I leave your little goons alone and they leave me alone. They dig a lot of trenches, and my guys shoot some arrows over the top every once in a while to keep up appearances.”

“Why?” Flurry asked, not even knowing what she was referring to. Why any of this.

Cozy stared at her as though the answer should be blindingly obvious. “I had what I wanted.”

“And…what did you want?”

For the first time, a spark kindled in those red eyes. “For everypony to leave me the buck alone. To live without princesses breathing down my neck. To have my own place, where I made the calls. And…” her voice tailed off into a whisper. “…You.”

“You wanted me?”

“Always.” A hoof skimming her jawline. A soft, sad, smile. No longer a mockery, but the real thing. “Right from the start.”

Part of Flurry wanted to ask why again. But she knew why. She knew she would never know why. Perhaps, after all this time, the why of it no longer mattered.

Cozy interpreted her silence differently. “Flurry, I…I’m a mess. I always was, but after Mama…I don’t blame you, if you don’t forgive me. If you put me in the dungeons under the palace. I deserve it. But maybe you could visit me, once in a while. You could have your turn at taunting me, right?” She laughed weakly.

Can you forgive me?

Flurry looked sadly at her hooves. The hooves that had healed and harmed and taken lives, just like Cozy’s. She looked back into those soft red eyes, and she managed half a smile. “Maybe it’s not so much about forgiveness. Maybe it’s about…moving on. Letting go.”

A single, tremulous nod. “I could do that now, I think. I could let go.”

For the first time in what felt like a century, Flurry Heart smiled and meant it. “Me too. So maybe we skip the dungeon for now.”

“Really?” Cozy asked, blinking. “I thought you’d…that was why I held off, the last two or three years. I wanted a bit more time with you before I faced up to it. A couple more chess matches. What about your family?”

Even now, it was family, rather than aunt. The one name that haunted Cozy would remain unspoken.

“Maybe, so far as they know, I get loose. I fight you one last time…and only one of us makes it out.” Flurry kept her eyes on Cozy’s. Watching every minute play of emotion over that face now that the mask was finally down. “And you and me go away somewhere quiet. I know a little shack on a mountain somewhere. It’s nice there. Peaceful.”

“You can do it for real, if you want.” Cozy’s voice was a hoarse undertone. “I won’t fight back.”

“No.” Flurry surged upwards, slamming her hooves down hard enough to splinter stone. Princesses, it felt good to do that again. To know that she could. “Nopony’s dying today. Come on. What do you say, Cozy? Yes or no?”

Slowly, Cozy Glow rose to her hooves. Where Flurry had been full of speed and fire, she moved slowly. A mare emerging at last from her uncanny foalishness. A mortal finally grown old. She raised her hoof, and she placed it gently atop Flurry’s. “Yes,” she said simply, and the world was right once more.

Flurry’s broken heart was pounding. There was a tidal wave inside her, fighting to be set free. She wrapped her forelegs tight around Cozy Glow, and buried her face in those greying curls.

And hundreds of miles away, in the Crystal Empire, Princess Cadence looked up in horror to see light flaring from the Heart’s tower. A teacup trembled in her hoof, fell, and shattered. She leapt from the window and teleported midair, and when she skidded to a halt beside the Heart, she saw the impossible.

The Heart, after years of barely managing to stay lit, was blazing. It was whole. Healthy. The barrier of the shield that kept out the snow was brilliant once more. Even the old crack, the tiny one that had appeared after Flurry’s first stumble.

It was healed. No longer cut off from the alicorn it was linked so closely to.

It was healed.

Chapter 27: Safety

High on a mountain, a stony peak surrounded by others, all dotted with spruce and pine, there was a cabin. Its walls were logs, felled from those same forests, and it perched on a windy outcropping so high that those incapable of flight would never be able to reach it.

It was a home for pegasi, not for unicorns. The only magic that ever lit the walls of their home was a safe, trustworthy gold, and it was never used to damage. Only to stir the soup, or to lift the kettle onto the flame.

There were no princesses, and there was no one around for a hundred miles. No one to hurt, no one to harm.

Nothing to fear.

At long last, Cozy Glow was safe.

Safe among the trees and the stones, too high even for the deer and mountain goats to venture. There was wood to chop, when she needed to do something physical. Boulders to punch until her hooves were bloody, if the thoughts were worse. But that was rare, now.

Here, she was…at peace.

Flurry was absent, sometimes. She had to visit her parents, and though there were no princesses on their mountain, the Crystal Empire still had two. One was just a little less often seen than the other.

But Cozy Glow remained, always safe. Always alone.

Officially, the Empress was dead. Had been dead for nearly eight years now after her final epic battle with Princess Flurry Heart. And the world was glad of it. Cozy was glad of it. The only pony who might have mourned her was right here alongside her.

“I was thinking,” Flurry Heart said, as she leaned over to press a kiss into the soft grey ringlets of her wife’s hair, “I wouldn’t mind getting a table for the garden.”

“For the garden?” Cozy tilted her head to the side.

“Yeah. The summers here are about two weeks long, but they’re beautiful while they last. We could get a table, set it up outside. Eat our dinner while we watch the sunset.” She took a bite of toast. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Cozy replied. “We could make it ourselves. There’s a tree on the west plateau that looks like it might blow down soon. I can speed the process along, dry the wood.”

Flurry nodded, her blue eyes bright. “Or what about making it out of stone?”

“Stone?”

“So it won’t rot. Four-season table! I could do it, or we could get a hammer and chisel from somewhere and do it the old fashioned way. Make a real project out of it.”

Cozy Glow nodded, a smile spreading over her face. “The second option, please.”

“And I was wondering—”

Then there was a crack, like a whip, and Cozy bolted upright. A teleport. But no one knew where they where — no one but Flurry's father, who always wrote in advance when he came, and —

—And her.

She had told Flurry, she had told her this would happen, that Cadence would spill the beans — and that meddling creature would come sooner or later — but Flurry’s family was her weakness, and Cozy had vowed to accept her as she was. Warts and all.

Not that alicorns had warts.

So she had not protested — but now she was here, and there was no time for blame. Without even stopping to think, Cozy Glow snatched up a table leg as a makeshift spear and bolted out of the door, the name like a snarl ready on her lips. “Twilight Sparkle—”

And she saw her there, eyes wide as Cozy bore down on her. Tall and lavender, the regalia of sun and moon and stars scattered across her robes. Without Mama’s good taste to hide behind, she dressed like an ugly old wizard. Her mane flowed in an invisible wind, speckled with stars. Her eyes wide and wondering, as though she were blameless, as though she were not the stuff of nightmares — as though she had a right to be shocked when Cozy Glow levelled her spear and charged.

Though it was still ringed with the afterimage of her teleportation spell, the Princess of Friendship lit her horn again, and Cozy braced herself. She would be seized, then frozen, her autonomy stolen again, her mind trapped in a stony prison from which even Flurry would not be able to save her. Twilight Sparkle had been waiting for years to recapture her, itching for an excuse, and now she was come to deliver her own twisted justice all over again.

But there was one more snap of displaced air, and then the Princess was gone. The monster had come and gone, just like that, and left behind, where she had been, was…somepony.

Somepony who Cozy Glow had never thought she would see again.

The spear fell from her grip, clattered to the floor. Her mouth opened in a sob, and tears crowded into her eyes, fighting to be the first to spill.

“Hello, darling,” said Rarity. “I hear you’ve had…quite a time of it, since I’ve been away.”

The mare who had once been an Empress, whom thousands had dreaded and worshipped in equal measure, stood silent. Weeping helplessly, a foal once more.

Rarity smiled. Soft and gentle, full of forgiveness. Generosity. Just like that first time, in the bank, when she had pried the energy crystal from her grip. Her mane was gray now, her skin looser, her beauty less obvious — but she was still the same.

She had not changed.

“Twilight managed to find a cure after all,” Rarity said, tears in her own eyes. “Who would have thought?”

It was Flurry Heart, stepping out from the cabin, a smile as wide as the sun on her face, who broke the silence. “Rarity! I — I can’t believe…” she looked at her wife, who stood rooted in place. “Would you like to come inside? Both of you. I think…we could all use a cup of tea.”

Epilogue

Dear Auntie Tia,

Thanks for checking in. Things are going well, I think. We’re all okay. Aunt Rarity’s doing great — no after-effects, and Aunt Twilight comes to take her to town once a week, though they meet a little way down the mountain, out of sight. It’s a compromise that works better for everypony.

Cozy and me take it very easy. We knit, we embroider. We do a little woodwork. We tell each other stories, and it doesn’t matter if they’re made up or real. There’s no one here but us and Rarity, and none of us mind. We play a lot of chess, obviously.

We’re…happy. It’s taken a while to find the balance, but yes, I think we’re all happy.

Thank you for thinking of us, and for writing to me at the palace instead of at home. I’ll come and see you next week. I’ll be in Canterlot for the Gala, but I’ll come the night before and spend it at yours, if that’s okay. I can’t wait to catch up. I want to hear everything about how Skydance is doing in the secretary job — and in the big city! I’m so glad you gave him a chance.

See you soon.

Love,
Flurry.

Chapter 6: Alone

Flurry Heart gazed up at the stars, and wondered.

Where is she right now? Is she…is she looking up, too?

Her eyes drifted towards Sirius, the wolf star. The one Cozy Glow had pointed out to her, once.

My dad was an astronomer.

He was? It had been the first detail about her birth parents that Cozy had ever shared.

He used to tell me that if I didn’t watch out, that Sirius would come down and eat me up. Swallow me whole, feathers and all.

Flurry Heart had sat up, eyes wide. That’s — that’s horrible, Cozy.

And Cozy Glow had looked at her, one corner of her mouth quirked in a sardonic smile, and shrugged. Yeah.

And she had never mentioned him again.

What had Cozy gone through, when she was a child? What had she suffered? And why wouldn’t she trust Flurry with it? Why wouldn’t she let her help?

Flurry had stewed on it for months, had tried in a thousand different ways to ask her marefriend; obliquely and otherwise. But Cozy Glow had shrugged and smiled and changed the subject. It was like trying to pin down a cloud. Impossible.

That was the way everything had been, really. She was charming in the day to day, and happy to talk about anything so long as it was in the present. So long as it wasn’t real. Cozy Glow was sharp and fierce and beautiful, and she was the most emotionally distant pony Flurry Heart had ever met.

It was easy, to lie here in the soft grass, her ever-present guards at a discreet distance as she stared up at the stars, and obsess over Cozy Glow’s flaws. She had so many of them.

But that didn’t change the fact that Flurry Heart felt her absence like a physical pain, like a phantom limb. That her ghost was beside her right now, whispering caustic commentary into her ear, jibes and jokes and things that no one but the two of them could ever understand.

Cozy Glow was a canker, a poison, and Flurry Heart missed her with all of her soul.