The Heart of Spring

April’s first sunset fell over the city. Silver skies carried a breeze softly blown in from beyond westerly shores, with fast-dispersing clouds and a starry sky that was quick on daylight’s heels. The fading golden light gave way to an ample dome of dotted gemstones. These glittered faintly behind twilight’s veil.

A pale moon hovered over the Crimson Shore, and through her windowed perch in the heights of her throne room, Belle watched the city don its Springtime dress. Flowers seemed to bloom on every street, and all homes had turned to hills, their rooftops crowned in rainbow gardens. The princess watched a pair of pale-leaf sparrows land on the ledge, just past her open shutters.

“What news do you bring, little ones?” she asked. The birds hopped in place, a gentle flap of their wings, their only answer.

“Ah! So it is,” Belle said. “The roads to the East abound with chariots, carts, and baggage trains... my vassals gather to me from the foot of my palace walls to the banks of the Eastern River... but what of the West? What have you seen on the roads that lead away to the Glittering Straits?”

The sparrows quietly preened themselves on the stone perch and made no sound. Crimson Belle stamped a hoof against the shutters.

“Well? I’m listening!”

The birds scattered and were lost in the evening gloom. Crimson Belle watched them go with no little envy; what she wouldn’t give just for a glimpse beyond the borders of her holdings! To watch that westbound road to the lands her mother had fought to secure... the lands held by that venomous snake... and know fully if war must come.

The invitations had been sent over a week ago—to every corner of her realm, to every vassal sworn to her service and that of her throne—and only one response had not arrived.

“Sapphire Dew...” The name was an ulcer in her mouth.

Belle left her throne room for the darkened hallways of her inner palace, where the walls told of ancient stories and long-dead heroes lost to the passage of time. But it wasn’t the tales of the ancients that concerned her, but something much more recent. The light of her horn took her to the oldest of chambers, where old Mothers and skilled craftsmares worked together to tell the tales of the dead. The royal dead, their lives chiseled into rock and metal, to forever tell of their great successes...

There were eight of them—of these mighty stelae—that told the lives of every ruler of the Crimson Shore. Eight, and three miserable stumps smashed to ruin by the righteous and the worthy.

At the end of the chamber stood the newest of these, and Crimson Belle knew it well. This stela was not a year old, not yet, and the paint was vibrant and clear to the eyes. It was Mother’s.

‘Let it be known that Crimson Belle, Princess of the Crimson Shore, engraves this stone in honor of her mother, Princess Crimson Star, mighty warrior and beloved ruler, whose life was ended in defense of her people and her realm. Her spirit returns to Equestria in glory and with pride.’

There were many more inscriptions. There were images, artful etchings of chisel work, and inlays of precious metals, too. There were embellishments, and there were truths, but most of all there was the truth. Belle’s eyes went to the last few tales told in the stela, where the artists carved the hosts of the Crimson Shore and the Horned Keep united under Mother’s banner. There was the Sapphire Tower, too, and the death of their last chieftess. Then rose Sapphire Dew, the verminous traitor, crowned Princess by Mother’s grace...

“...and subject to her authority...” she said.

‘And ours.’

And ours. The statement boiled the blood and tensed the muscles. Belle thought to the future and knew that a storm was fast-approaching and that when it dawned on them all, they would know she was right from the beginning.

‘There is but one recourse with traitors... there is but one virtue all must learn to respect... and we have it, Belle. It is ours and all will learn it in time. Our vassals are summoned, and none may deny the summons and call themselves true. Come the morrow, the festival, none will be able to look us in the eye and ask for patience if that scum does not show herself.

‘War is here, and come the morrow all shall see.’

The Princess left and made ready for the festival.

It was the day of the festival, a few hours shy of the start of the celebrations, and Pearl watched the temple from a distance with a strange pit at the bottom of her stomach. She couldn't place it, try as she may, but she knew why it had started.

‘The Exalted Mother cannot see you, sister. She’s indisposed.’

That had been March, not long after Saul’s discovery in the temple depths, and Pearl worried.

‘Is she ill? Is there a sister with her? Should I get somepony else, anything at all?’

No, and thank you, yet her concerns were not assuaged. Sunlit hours and deep moonlit darknesses had since passed, and yet nothing was known of the elderly mare. So the little priestess watched the decorations stream in and out of the temple—the food arrive and the ovens blaze—and a myriad ponies canter by in flowing, colorful robes... every color of the rainbow, and a hundred more to challenge the flowery valleys and multicolored birds in the sky... yet that pit in her stomach grew deeper and darker.

She walked away from the temple, ill-at-ease under its shadow perhaps for the first time in her life, and her hoofsteps took her to a different structure. Stone and mortar towered over the city where the inner walls somberly made their watch; a quiet place, perfect for contemplation, though she seldom sought their solace. There was little time in the life of a Sister for quiet moments, but things were a lot slower lately. The stream of summons had slowed, ponies were busy with decorating, and she’d heard nothing from her patients for a while now. Time seemed to have frozen as much as it had sped.

‘At least they are well,’ she thought to herself, unaware that her troubled walking led her up the stairwell to the battlements. A guard should have hailed her, but there were none. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Pearl vaguely remembered that most mares were taken to the gates and main streets. There the throng pressed hardest, and now that the festival was upon them, the entire city prepared for guests. Even now they arrived.

The priestess gazed over the parapets—between merlons dressed in ribbons and through crenels filled with flowers—and looked past the rooftops and the busy streets, on and on until her eyes were fixed on a long snake beyond the gleaming outline of the southern gate. The snake was silver and brass, and it stretched yonder horizon to the east, where its tail was lost behind the slope of a hill.

She knew that snake. It was no common vine-snake, nor feared rosethorn-serpent. But a snake of mares and iron. They came from the east, these, and she knew them at once by the color of their banners, the fiery golden crown on a red field, the streaming pennons ablaze like torches in the rising dust cloud of their hooves. Firecrown mares of the eastern holds, and these were the serpent’s head.

Behind them came others. A violet stripe on a black field, and three black molars. They served the Lady Sabletooth. Then flew banners that bore a blue sword against a silver field, its two upper corners vibrantly green. The Lady Robin. Behind them and last, an odd shield displayed on a banner Pearl did not know. Partitioned in three, blue, silver, and gold, with a red bark-hide lion overall. The priestess furrowed her brow but found no name to give it.

They’d come, the mares of the eastern holds. But what of the rest? She turned and looked south, inland down the river, where the wilderness was wilder and the beasts were bolder. That land bred stranger mares, fiercer, and broader of withers. True enough, they came too. A second snake, smaller and wider, with no clear formation to its step. This snake did not shine as did the eastern one. Its scales bore no glittering chainmaille or polished helms, but rough bark-hide caps and beaten linen barding, stuffed full of iron plates or whatever else might be cheap. Rough, dull coats and dimmer wits, born and raised in uncivilized lands, and these were the Inlanders, from the colonies south of all shores.

Their banners were many and their shields varied, but Pearl paid them little mind. She did not know the noble governors who ruled the colonies, and an odder thing trailed fast behind them...

‘Savage unicorns!’ she nearly gasped the thought out loud.

The tail of the southern snake was a throng of creatures with unicorn horns. They hooted and hollered and rushed the rear of the Inlander formation. They jeered and taunted them, screamed and grabbed at their tails and armor with dull-colored auras. Black, white, or brown were their coats, and whenever one mare or their captain faced them with steel, they sped away cackling. Dull beasts, desperate to incite violence that they may loot a corpse or two for stuff to barter within the city. No banners did they fly, but horrid standards made of skin, inscribed in the symbols of a religion Pearl insisted had nothing to do with the blessed Alicorns... but the savages guarded the southern marches well, and so the Crimson Shore bore with them still.

‘What terrible future we’ve stumbled upon that we must look to these creatures for service...’ The priestess turned away and shivered. She looked to the north instead and hoped to find solace from the wildness that threatened her city from the south. Alas, there was little comfort in the final snake that bore upon the Crimson Shore.

Hoofbeats echoed downwind with the seaborne breeze. Synchronized, a single, terrible drum that beat to the rhythm of their imminent arrival. Thump-pa-da-thump! Thump-pa-da-thump! Thump-pa-da-thump! and all the rattling of iron and hooves against the trodden path. Pearl’s eyes looked but did not wish to see the thing that stormed from the water’s edge across the fields. They snarled, they whinnied and shoved aside whatever came upon their chosen path. Undeniable in their black and red livery, the Horned Keep had come, and the one that led them was largest among the large.

Horned Shield, princess by title, a titan by reputation... the mare was Crimson Belle’s age, three years younger than Pearl, and twice as large as either of them. Her muscles were the stuff of stories, her strength, of legends. She spearheaded the march of her household knights clad in full panoply—blackened, her maille and helmet shone like pure ebony under the pale sun—a crown of sea-blob tusks sat on her head. The whole of her horde rushed down the northbound road to the beaches, as though they’d sprung from the sea.

‘Why do they come from the north?’ Pearl turned east again, where she knew the Horned Keep and its great river lay beyond the eastern holdings. But the answer wasn’t there. It came from above, a sound that prickled her skin.

‘Wings!’

The powerful gusts of air first echoed faintly overhead, but soon she felt them through her mane and in her eyes. Dust and loose petals swept over the parapets, and Rainstorm stormed the walls with ease that unsettled her.

“What’s the point of walls if you’re gonna do that?” Pearl called over the roaring wind and steadied herself. She doubted if she’d ever grow accustomed to the beat of those terrible limbs.

“Oi!” Rainstorm crowed. “It’s no’ ma fault if you’se horns cannae use yer heids a wee bit. How’d ye mek it in th’first place?”

She smiled. Pearl’s eyes narrowed.

“You know I have no idea what you just said.”

The pegasus giggled and propped herself on her front hooves between two merlons, looking out north to the mouth of the river and a strange forest that seemed to sprout from the murky waters of the Mournful Sea. Bare trees, hundreds of them, with clouds forcibly lashed to their trunks.

“A ken- err, know,” she said. “Just messin’.”

“Well, don’t.” With a huff and a scrunch to subdue the faintest tug at the corner of her lip, Pearl followed Rainstorm’s gaze out to sea. She’d missed the ships, she realized, and the answer to the mystery.

“They’ve brought a fleet. Biremes and galleys. But why?”

The pegasus shook her head. Her mossy-green mane dangled loosely where her braid had failed, but sweat and time had faded the green away. Golden locks like new stalks of wheat fell down Rainstorm’s withers and over her back, down the muscled legs that twitched excitedly as she recounted one thing or another. The priestess turned her eyes back to the water and the serpentine omens of ill-fortune. She cleared her throat.

“Ye alright?”

“Just worried!” she said, face forward, straight as an arrow. Westwards and over the Crimson River, past the slave colonies and the fields, there crossed a road that led to a bridge. Both were empty. “It’s a lot. Too much. It is just a festival...”

The pegasus watched her. Pearl felt her eyes on the side of her face, over her coat, and felt a tightness in the chest. A great pressure, not unlike the one she felt whenever the wingbeat of her limbs shrieked overhead. She shifted on her hooves.

“A festival? Ye haven’t been paying attention, priestess.”

Horns sounded in the distance. With a groan, the gates were opened, and the armies of the Crimson Shore entered the city.

The human was calm for somepony who’d just been told his last hope was dashed. He sat by the balustrade of a palace balcony, overlooking the barbican and the main road to the east. The eastern ladies had begun to stream through, and there the princess and her court greeted them in person. The human remained behind, perhaps with good reason. Down by the eastern gate, a great many mares clad in maille were now assembled, and by the south gate, the first reports of violence had begun to reach the palace. There’d be hangings before sundown.

“Sabotaged?” he asked, impassive, frustratingly so. He sat there with his great limbs crossed over his chest and watched the horizon with all his features neatly frozen in place. His lips only just moved when he spoke, and even that was masked by the growing beard that had sprung from him nearly overnight. It grew quickly, perhaps on account of the cold. Palfrey wouldn’t know. Facial hair had long since grown out of fashion. Mares preferred smooth coats and delicate features. The creature before him was anything but so.

“Or so I’ve been told,” he said and wondered if he should express his sympathies. The human seemed so unbothered. “Apparently during the night. Some watchmares saw the slaves flee into the fields, and when they went to investigate, they found the... pit flooded.”

Urine and rotting vegetables... Palfrey didn’t presume to know much about weaponry or warfare, but he knew enough to think the whole project rather odd. Still, the human had staked much on it. It wouldn’t do to be impolite.

“Thank you, lord Palfrey. It’s a shame, but if I’m being honest, I doubt it would have made much difference. Not at this point.” His eyes were on the west, the empty, desolate west.

Palfrey looked to the bridge and the lands beyond. He was young when he last saw columns like those that now marched into the city, but in his youth, they’d marched down that westbound path. Pennons fluttered and a forest of lances that trailed endlessly from the gate to the river, they all seemed fresh now in his memory. His brow creased and his aura levitated his bowl of spiced wine to his lips. It’d grown cold.

“What are you thinking, Lord?” he asked.

The human said nothing for a long while. His almond eyes were stuck to the east gate, where the banners and their shields caught the sunlight in their colorful cloth and glimmered brightly by the animated crowds. The faint call of music began to rise from the streets as the city came alive with the very first breath of festive cheer. The festival had begun.

“That I’m out of time.”

It began with a cry.

“Where is she?!”

Nighttime fell over the Crimson Shore, and with it the closing of the gates. The festival had gone on as it had for years, centuries, at least until that very last moment when the sun touched the horizon and the light began to fail. Then rose wrath and fury.

“Where is the traitor?! Where damn you! Bring her to me!”

But she was nowhere to be found. She had never shown, who held the city on the westbound path, whose walls were stone and a tower taller than the oldest cedar trees. Sapphire Dew’s absence echoed harsher than the princess’ wrothful cries, deeper than the furrows that creased the brows of those seated at the long banquet table set beneath the scowl of the Red Princess.

“My l-lady sends her apologies, y-your grace!” wept the messenger, a unicorn mare robed in the colors of the sea, her hem like clear skies embroidered in delicate threads of gold. Her eyes were purple, barely visible at all, reduced to pinpricks under the twin snarls that bore down upon her. The one, long dead and ethereal in its hatred, the other very much alive. “She’s indisposed c-currently. She s-sends her warm r-regards a-and-”

Crimson Belle stood before her throne like a fury incarnate, a gaze of fire on a coat of blood, a mane like liquid flames. She wore no beautiful dress of gold or silver, nor silken robes or pristine furs. Her mane was loose, it flowed under the flickering of the candles and the blazing of the braziers, and in her eyes swirled so much light. There was no sign of her smooth coat like velvet roses. Only metal. Rings entwined with rings of shining steel, a chainmaille coat that clung to her figure girded by a leather belt, black as night itself. At her side hovered her blade, Rosette, steady in her aura.

“And what, mare? Finish your sentence.”

“She told me to say it, your grace. She told me to!” The messenger’s lips quivered. Tears welled in her eyes.

The cut was expertise exemplified. Clean and certain, it parted thread and hair as surely as it did flesh and muscle. A frightful slash! filled the room. Rubies dripped from the silvery blade, steady, as though it had never moved at all.

A silence fell on the room.

“Get out,” the Princess of the Crimson Shore commanded, and the messenger fled with a deep gash on the side of her face. It bled profusely, it trailed behind her, and it sent her message with surety. Crimson came to the Sapphire Tower.

“You are mercy personified, Belle,” the princess of the Horned Keep said from her seat at Belle’s right. “Were I you, I’d have thrown her to the lions. For sport! Do you remember the lions?”

“There are no lions,” Crimson Belle said. Her breathing was controlled, her eyes steady. “I cast them out. Every last one. There are no lions.”

“Pity! They always made for good shows.”

‘They did, didn’t they, Belle? Gnashing teeth and flying spittle through thin, iron bars covered in rust... Oh, what shows we got to see...’ Crimson Belle felt the blood thump in the side of her head. Her ears were full of its sound, like drums, they thundered terribly from the depths of her head.

“I waited!” She shouted to the throne room. “Did I not? You counseled to wait! What did it gain me?”

Silence. Not a voice, not the clatter of knives on plates, not even the crackle of the fires. Absolute, deep silence.

“Answer me!”

“Your grace I beg of you-” Stern Counsel flinched as the princess’ sword shattered the wooden table. A single stroke, a clean cut that broke through the cedar beams like reeds left out in the sun.

“Speak! You’re ever so eager to spit out words, councilor. So counsel me now, damn you! Speak!”

Stern Counsel wiped at her mouth with a cloth held in tremulous aura. Eyes wide, gaze cast low, the Grand Diplomat had nothing more to say. Feebly she shook her head and fell silent.

“My wrath is my birthright,” Crimson Belle spoke. “Would any here deny it?”

One stood. The Exalted Mother removed her cloak and her eyes flashed beneath the moonlight. Lady Glowspur rose after her. Venerable in age and deeds, great among the worthy, the two mares faced their princess.

“We’ve offered our counsel faithfully, my princess,” the old priestess said. “We have spoken truthfully, out of love... As we served your mother, so have we sought to serve you.”

“Your counsel was to wait,” Belle said. Rosette lay between them, stuck in the wood, drenched in shimmering light. “I waited as you said, and summoned my vassals to me on this day... guess who did not come?”

“The Princess will address Her Holiness as is proper.” Glowspur’s lips were pursed, a thin, pale line on hard-set features.

“Now, my lady,” the old mare said, “spirits are high. A grave thing has happened here today, this is true, and the princess is right. Did we not counsel patience? We tried, my lady, to maintain a fragile peace. Alas, even the best gardener has had flowers wilt under their care.”

“Speak plainly, Exalted Mother.”

The old mare bowed her head. By her side the Lady Glowspur’s ears lowered, her eyes lost some of their youth.

“My princess, your Mother put her trust in the mare that now scorns you. We put our trust in her, too. We believed that if we waited, diplomacy may prevail over violence, and peace in your realm could be achieved.”

“We, too, have been deceived.” Glowspur’s voice was a growl. “My princess, there is no foe I would not fight if you so command it. But I’ve seen much be lost under the dread walls of the Sapphire Tower. Their cataphracts are fierce, their archers are true of aim.”

“They are our sisters, too. The Alicorns teach us love and tolerance, my princess.” Her eyes welled with pity. “The cruelty of war should not be suffered among sisters. If steel must be wielded, it should not be against our own illustrious kind.

“So yes, we counseled peace. But peace can only be pursued so far.”

“There is a line not to be crossed,” Glowspur nodded. A darkness befell them both. “The worm in the tower has crossed it.”

Youthful anger lit up the old mares’ eyes.

“Many decades we counseled your mother, Crimson Belle, Princess of the Crimson Shore. For long years she called us sisters, and when the beast of the jungles or that of the north came calling, we three answered with courage and steel. Won’t you hear our counsel once more?”

Upon her throne, the princess freed her sword from the table in a blaze of gold and silver. She nodded.

“What do you counsel, then?”

“It must be war.”

“War,” said Glowspur. “Your knights are with you, true and steadfast, and none better. Let those west-born swine stand if they can, let them raise walls if they like. We will cut their legs from under them. We will bring down their city stone by stone if we have to.

“The Crimson Knights fight with you!”

“Luna’s wrath burns bright!” The Exalted Mother turned to the crowd. “Her anger lights up the darkness, a torch to guide you, a beacon to be followed. Look how the moon sails! Where does it lead?”

West. West was the word that spread through the room. West and blood, west and slaughter, west and the price of insolence. No mare stood in that crowd who bore arms that did not feel their insides boil. No mare lived that day who heard the princess’ anger and did not stir to violence. West!

“Celestia’s judgment is upon them! The sun rises red, the moon sets bright crimson! Westbound point the lances, on westerly winds shall fly our pennons! Banners be raised! Courage and justice, their city be taken!”

Princess Horned Shield stood and raised a mighty cleaver. Black, it shone under the candlelight as brightly as her eyes did. West, too, was the word on her lips.

“I will honor our mothers’ alliance, Belle! Thrice-damn those yellow-livered fools! Thrice-curse their pathetic city! I will climb their walls if I must, I will tear down their tower if it pleases me. Crimson Belle, your mother, and mine fought side by side once. Let me honor this pact, as old as our cities, and fight beside you as olden heroes once did!”

The mares of the eastern holds rose too, and their steel shone brighter then than ever it did in the sunlight. Oaths were sworn, boasts were cast, and they spoke as one under the voice of old Firecrown.

“Long have you honored us, Crimson Belle. Gifts of precious stones and glittering jewels you’ve given us. Bracelets of gold and white silver dress our sons, and swords you’ve gifted our daughters. Our holdings you’ve honored, and long have we held the marches for you as we did for your mother. If by life or death we can serve you, we shall.”

Then spoke the Inlanders in their rough and twisted accents, grim and gaunt beneath the candlelight:

“From endless woods and unending plains we’ve come. Crimson Belle, oathbound we are to your spear. Point and we shall strike. We are your hounds. There is no flesh we shan’t tear, no bones we will not gnaw. Doom comes to the west that spites you.”

Then howled the savages, the creatures of the southern marches, filthy and stained in the food they’d devoured:

“Let us at them!” their chieftesses howled. “Let us, Great Chieftess, and we will make tents of their skins, and necklaces of their teeth! Let us! Let us! We will do to them as we’ve done to the things that crawl in the woods. We will make them squeal and the song of their throats will fill the glens and dales... From the mountains they’ll be heard. To the depths of the Deep Hater!”

The room was engulfed in a fire born of bloodlust, a deep thirst for glory, and the call to arms that forever beckoned those whose lives are lived on the field of battle. They heard it, too, and the sound of the crackling flames fanned the fires further. It had begun.

In her own thoughts Belle heard it, but something else too. Its voice was its own, it was fierce, hateful. It rose from somewhere past the veil of memory, of things cast to shadow and dark nights under black skies.

‘Vengeance beckons. Does it not sound like birdsong? Mayhaps, once all that has been promised is given, we should strive to hear this tune again. Hear how sweetly it rises. How softly it falls. But strong. We must be strong, too. For too long they’ve all pushed us aside. It is our moment.’

Tears burned in her eyes. Over her, the Red Princess’ snarl still bore down hatefully upon the room, but something had changed. Crimson Belle looked up at those eyes and they looked down at her, too. They saw her. Her grin shone back at the mosaic and she felt something stir in her memory. She wanted her due.

“Bring me the Lord of Brine.”

Author's Note

Alright! This is the last one for the time being. Work has already begun on the next installment, so hopefully it won't take as long as this one did.

All that being said, here's the other piece of fanart I wanted to show off! This one was made by Goat11 and I absolutely love it. It captures one of my favorite scenes that I wrote in the first act:

Well, that'd be it! Hope you guys have enjoyed the story so far, and I'll be back in a while with some more! Cya!