Letters to the Princess

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.