Dreams & Nightmares

Rainstorm was the only one awake when the monster stirred from his slumber. The priestess had passed out on her chair after twenty minutes spent looking at her mud tablets, and none of the princess' knights or guards had come to give her new orders. So the pegasus remained.

'Whatever happened must be bad if the War Flight is taking this long.'

She'd spent the night wondering about that, but it had all been fruitless. She knew nothing of the horned ones' feuds or rivalries, and it was too late in the year for her kin to raid south.

'The windherds must be home by now,' she thought as a light breeze flew in through the arrow slit to caress her face. Her wings twitched. She wished to fly again so bad...

'Longwing must be abuzz with fliers. The hunters probably already left for the frozen plains...'

She did nothing to betray her thoughts, but the permanent scowl etched into her muzzle deepened. The memories did that to her with a terrible ease, and she knew better than to entertain them. Yet they came all the same.

'Mother leads the formation into the north, my sisters are her wings, while father and my brothers bring up the rear with rope and spears to spare...'

She looked through the arrow slit. It was a tiny thing, a small window into the bright dawn that threatened to spill over the horizon line. Through it she could almost feel the wind currents, the mighty roar of heaven's breath, and she longed to be with them. To fly through that tiny gap in the stone and be free of...

'She's with them. At mother's right wing.'

Her expression soured and darkened, and it was only then that she realized she had smiled. For the briefest moment. Rainstorm breathed in to fill her lungs fully, slowly, so as not to betray the depth of the pit that had formed in her chest. She didn't dare raise a hoof to her eyes to check for tears, but she knew none had come.

'It's been years, Rainstorm. It doesn't bother you.'

Nothing did. She was Rainstorm, the barbarian! The warrior of the skies! Mares feared the stomp of her hooves, unicorns shivered at the beat of her wings, and colts trembled in her hard embrace. A different kind of smile crept to her muzzle, one she didn't care to let slip. It was a dangerous smile, a barbaric one, that she knew the unicorns feared as much as her scowl.

"A penny for your thoughts?"

She started. Her eyes tore away from the arrow slit to focus on the human, now awake and sitting on his cot. Dark, small eyes focused on her.

'Buck's sake, filly. Pay attention!'

"My thoughts are my own," she growled.

'Also what the buck is a ‘penny’ supposed to be?'

The human raised his claws, palms towards her. A peace gesture? A threat? The gentle smile on his face convinced her of the former.

"Of course," he said. “I just wanted to talk. It seems to me that we’ll be stuck together for a while, at least until my condition–” a coughing fit struck him, almost as if to prove his point, “...improves. Pardon me.”

Rainstorm eyed him harshly—the kind of look that made the yellow-livered unicorns scamper away at the market, whenever they got too curious or obnoxious—but the creature seemed to be made of sterner stuff. He merely held her gaze coolly, with eyes so small it was impossible to glean the slightest cue from them. Were all of his kind so difficult to read?

...were there more?

“You want to talk to me?” She sniffed and sat on her haunches. The strings of her bark-hide lion coif danced at the sides of her face.

“Let’s talk. Why haven’t you escaped?”

The human chuckled. That low, rumbling sound that thundered from his throat unnerved her something terrible.

“Why do you think I could, even if I wanted to?” he asked and waved a claw around him. “This does seem like a rather formidable castle.”

Rainstorm shook her head. “I’m not stupid, creature. One look at you tells me all I need to know. So if you don’t want to escape, why remain here? What is yer purpose?”

The human caught sight of the covered tray the servants had brought in for him by his bedside table. He looked at it inquisitively, and at a brief nod from the pegasus, he took hold of it and uncovered its contents.

Fruits to the far end of the platter; grapes, diced peaches, pear, an apple, and several cuts of sunfruit; to the near end there were toasted grains, nuts, and dried berries; on the left of it several cuts of roasted lemon-fish, marinated in a sweet sauce if the smell of it was any indication, and to the right there was a small vegetable salad over a bed of spinach and lettuce. Still on the table was a deep bowl of beer, and though it wasn’t the good stuff the princess drank, it was enough to make Rainstorm’s mouth water.

The platter held enough food for three grown mares, yet in the human’s claws it looked like barely enough for one of his kind.

“Is this... fish?” he asked, and gingerly picked up a cut of lemon-fish in his digits. “How curious. It doesn’t look like fish at all.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

The human bit into the lemon-fish and his features shifted from surprise to mild amusement, as though the taste had shared a joke. He shook his head and held up what remained of the cut to his eyes, like he was seeing fish for the very first time.

“How very curious. It’s consistency is almost like... boiled carrots? It’s hard to describe. How very, very curious...” He set the fish down and eyed the rest of the food. His digits danced over most of it, they sometimes stopped to pick up a grape or slice of peach, other times they entertained the sunfruit or went back to the lemon-fish.

“As for your question,” he said in between apple slices, “your mistake is to assume that I must have a purpose here. Though I can't blame you for being suspicious. I would be too. No, I’m afraid I do not understand my current predicament any better than you seem to.” He paused to glance at her. “I was hopeful that one of you might explain to me what happened.”

Rainstorm glanced at the priestess, fast asleep with her head on her desk, with a line of drool that dripped over the clay tablets. Her white frock and hood were now more a blanket than anything else. It was the pegasus’ turn to shrug.

“If the horned ones don’t know,” she said, “then it’s the mudpony’s luck to you. I’m not one for mud tablets or dumb chit-chat outside temple steps.”

“No,” the human said. “You don’t strike me as the type. In fact, and I mean no offense, I cannot help but notice how different you are to the others.”

‘How perceptive!’

“I am a pegasus of Windland!” The pride in her voice surprised her. It had been so long since she’d spoken of home to anyone who cared beyond the seasonal raids, the routes and rest stops along the way... It felt odd, but nice. Rainstorm extended her wings. It wouldn’t hurt to show off a tad.

“Creature, you say ‘different’ when you truly mean ‘stronger’. No mare in this or any unicorn mudfield can hope to best me, and the shadow of my wings is known from the Gilded Bay to the Sapphire Tower. I am Rainstorm of Longwing, and you had best remember that name.”

The human nodded in acknowledgement and extended a claw towards her, like he had done to the priestess. Rainstorm scowled at the gesture. Before, in the gloom of midnight she failed to recognize it, but now she realized what it was. She had been wrong to think of it as a threat, but it was no less an insult.

“Where I come from,” the human retracted his limb upon seeing her apprehension, “a handshake is a sign of respect.”

“We are not ‘where you come from’, human,” she said, but relaxed her expression. “This is the Unicorn Shore, and from end to end and in every city of the horned ones, a hoofshake is mudpony gesture. All it’ll get you is a buck in the teeth.”

The human raised his brow, but nodded his understanding.

“Very well,” he said. “Is there a better way I might show my respect?”

‘What in Cerberus’ three jaws have I done for him to respect me?’

Rainstorm frowned. She thought it over as she looked at the creature’s odd form.

“The unicorns do some buggery with their horns,” she said. “That’d be bloody hard for us both, so...” she hesitated a bit, but decided there was hardly any harm to it in the end, and crossed her wings over her chest so that her primary feathers formed an X before her, “this is a pegasus salute, at least on land.”

The human crossed his upper limbs over his chest, so that his claws were at shoulder level pointed upwards. It was a crude imitation and it pointed the wrong way, but Rainstorm supposed it worked well enough.

“It will do,” she said. The strangeness of the situation dawned on her then. There she was, teaching this odd creature how to do some bastardized version of the pegasus salute, while a unicorn priestess snored away off to the side. All of it in a dungeon.

Rainstorm cleared her mind and instead focused on the sudden curiosity that had befallen her.

“Are there more of you in the Pass of Rubies?”

The human shook his head as he picked up the bowl between his claws... his hands, he had called them. He gingerly toyed with the straw, poking and stirring at the floating husks of grain on the surface.

“Not that I’m aware,” he said, and took a sip of the beer. “This is very sweet. Not unpleasant, just sweet... Very thick. You say this is beer?”

The pegasus shrugged. If he had complaints he could take them up to the castle staff himself. On her desk the priestess stirred, snorted, then continued to sleep. A thin stream of drool flowed from her open mouth, down the tablets and onto the floor, to be lost amid the cracks in the stone.

“Where’d you come from?”

The human tutted. “It’s my turn to ask a question. The levitation... how do they do that?”

“Never said we were taking turns... Magic. Where’s yer homeland?”

The human raised an eyebrow. “Magic, truly? How interesting.” He put the beer down. “Can you use this ‘magic’ to return me home?”

The pegasus scrunched.

“Ah, of course.” He paused and covered his mouth with a bloody towel. The coughing fit came and went with ease, much lessened since yesterday when it had nearly felled him. Still, Rainstorm couldn’t help but wonder at all the blood on the towel.

“I come from a place called ‘Earth’,” the human continued, as he dabbed blood from his lips. “It is not of this world, however. My kind have extensively mapped the planet over more than two millennia... there isn’t a spot on the surface we have not discovered. Whatever it is that brought me here... I cannot begin to understand it.”

Rainstorm took a moment to digest that information. A part of her wanted to disregard it as lies—the world was untamed and free, endless in its expansity and limitless in possibility, and it extended forever unto legendary Equestria itself—but if this earth was a different world, perhaps it did have an end?

“The horned ones always speak of the ‘end of the known world’,” she said. “But they are grounded, slow and weak. We pegasi have travelled beyond this ‘edge’ and have seen it go on forever. I look at you, human, and I see the same thing that I see in the horned ones. Flightless and slow. I don’t believe you when you say you have seen it all, unless yer world is bloody tiny.”

The human merely shrugged. “Perhaps it is small in comparison to yours,” he said. “I have not seen enough of your planet to dispute this. But I know that you are wrong in one regard, Rainstorm of Longwing. I have flown before.”

The pegasus’ frown deepened. Her wings extended further, and she took a step towards the creature.

“You mock me, beast?”

He serenely shook his head.

“I can’t fly like you do,” he said. “I have no wings, nor the strength to defeat the forces that ground me. But I have flown before.”

The pegasus wasn’t sure what to make of that. Perhaps the beast was merely touched in the head? The priestess did say he had died for a moment or two. How much seawater had he swallowed? How much blood had he lost to that terrible cough? The more she thought about it the less insulting the statement was, and the more amusing it became. Perhaps she could convince him to jump off the walls?

“Prove it then,” she said.

He said nothing for a minute. The human took a long drink of his beer, then looked into the arrow slit, same as her. His face was as still as the stone of the wall itself, and those small eyes betrayed nothing as unknowable, alien thoughts coursed through his mind. Rainstorm had the sense that whatever memories he conjured within his head were as unbelievable as the rest of him, and she couldn’t help but wonder...

“The drop,” he said at last. His voice broke the pegasus free of her musings and brought her back to the cell. “The feeling of emptiness that grows in your stomach the faster you hurtle to the ground. The chills in your skin, like so many needles poking you all at once... The cold bite of the roaring wind, louder and louder still with every second that passes. Then, with the ground so close you can see every detail... pure exhilaration as you pull up back towards the sun.

“Then you see it,” he continued, eyes so distant they could only be in one place, and Rainstorm knew she had been there too, “the endless horizon as it stretches forever in every direction... the expanse of greenery, the trees like blades of grass so far below. People like ants, homes are little more than minuscule specks on the dust at those heights... Everything is so small, even yourself, as you become lost in a kingdom beyond reality, far up where the clouds are as castles in the sky.

“It is perhaps the freest one can be, so far removed from reality and everyone else. Alone where nothing can reach you, not even the birds with wings of their own. Silver clouds like snowy fields, aglow in the golden light that bathes them from on high. A different world. Surreal, peaceful, hidden away in plain sight for anyone who simply glances up at the sky...”

The human fell silent. His eyes remained there, wherever it was that those memories had come from, lost in the past and a world now forever denied, and all those wonders he had witnessed, she knew were now as thorns to him. What could she say to him that might help? The thought alone caught her by surprise. Why should she care for his well-being? He was nothing to her, though he had seen the realm of the pegasi, the endless fields of white where legends said they once had been able to settle and raise cities from the clouds.

‘Castles in the sky...’

Rainstorm said nothing else for a long time. The human ate in silence, the priestess snored peaceably on her desk and she remained on her haunches, eyes fixed on the stone floor while thoughts formed and died in her head. There was so much she suddenly wanted to ask, about the skies of this 'Earth', how he had managed to visit the realm beyond the clouds... but she did not. There was no point. This human was not her concern.

"I dunno if magic can send you home... What’s yer name, human?"

The creature removed his gaze from the arrow slit where it had come to rest. The empty plate shifted slightly on his lap, where not even crumbs remained. The empty bowl of beer he'd set aside a while ago, too. Food enough for a small group, gone in the blink of an eye. The pegasus begrudgingly knew she had to respect that if nothing else.

"I am Saul," he said, and in his eyes shone a flame like firelight. "Remember my name, Rainstorm of Longwing, and this promise: I will not die here. On the life I left behind, I swear I will return to my world or make this one my own."

Rainstorm would have laughed had anypony else made such a boast. She had no laughter in her now.

"Bold words for a creature on his deathbed," she said. But there was little truth in her own words and she knew it. Bedridden as he was, the human, this Saul, was no closer to death than she was. She had to wonder if he truly was sick at all.

Saul laughed that thunderous, hearty laugh that made the room seem to tremble. Rainstorm realized with no little shock that she too was smiling.

"Rainstorm of Longwing, I believe we will get along just fine," he said.

The silence that followed broke when a groggy priestess jumped to her hooves, awakened by the first light of dawn that touched her mane.

"Gah! I'm going to be late!"

The priestess was late but not to the event she had imagined. Not five minutes after she had frantically rubbed the sleep from her eyes, a guardsmare knocked on the door to the cell.

"Pardon me, sister," she said. "But Her Grace requests you bring her creature to the throne room."

Rainstorm watched the exchange with mild interest. To say she knew the unicorn princess would be an exaggeration, but to deny it would be a lie. Crimson Belle was a hedon, a ridiculous one at times, but a dangerous mare all the same. Though the same could be said of anypony with land and title to their names.

Still, any summons from the princess should not be taken lightly. The priestess clearly understood that, if her widened eyes and the stupid look of fear on her was any indication. But did the creature?

...did Saul?

Rainstorm turned to look at him. The human seemed relatively unfazed, though it was nigh impossible to tell with any certainty. It seemed to her that only his most intense or exaggerated emotions could be read in those minuscule features. Still, he seemed anything but relaxed.

She took that to be a good sign.

"Can you walk, Saul of Earth?"

The priestess jumped a bit at the question. She turned away from the guardsmare to stare incredulously between pegasus and human, as though offended.

"I believe I can manage," he responded, hands pressed into the cot as he pushed himself onto his... hooves? Hands? Neither seemed correct any longer. "I would not wish to keep Her Majesty waiting, after all."

That crazy mare? Majestic? Rainstorm cringed. The horned princess was a lot of things, yet the pegasus could scarcely find one that was positive. Maybe ‘red’? Nay, it was a stupid color.

"Oh, good! But the proper style would be 'Her Grace', uhmm... Saul? Would that be correct?"

Rainstorm cleared her mind of idle nonsense and turned to face the guardsmare by the door. She was entranced with the human—a grown mare turned into a curious little filly—but the instant she caught sight of Rainstorm’s glare, she straightened up and returned to ‘guard’ mode.

"I will wait for you by the entrance, sister," the guardsmare said and turned to walk away. The low clip-clop! of her hooves on the stone faded as she drew further away down the corridor.

The human smiled pleasantly at the priestess. The priestess smiled pleasantly at the human. Rainstorm was getting woefully bored. Perhaps she’d thought too highly of the bloody creature? He could babble as much as the horned ones, for sure.

"It is. Sister Pearl, if I'm not mistaken? My apologies for the late introductions."

"Oh, not at all! It's fine! It's been a weird couple of days and... Right. Yes, we should probably make sure you’re well enough to move. How have you been feeling? Any pain? Is the cough still there-?"

“Oh for buck’s sake, you two! Get yer stuff and bloody trot!” Much to the surprise and horror of the priestess and the thinly-veiled amusement of the human, the pegasus poked and prodded until both were out the door and on their way upstairs.

The door closed behind them with a screech of its hinges and an audible thud!

Eyes followed them wherever they went. The servants, guardsmares, even landed noblemares and their retainers could do little more than slow down and gawp at the creature as he made his way through the lively main hall on the way to the throne room.

"My greatest regret is that I haven't had time to bathe or change my clothes." Saul said, and tugged at the hem of his massive coat. "I stink of brine and blood."

“The whole city stinks of the stuff,” Rainstorm said, more to herself than anypony else. Worse, even. The flightless horned ones hadn’t the bloody sense to piss or toss their droppings away from the very places they lived. “Reeks worse than a lair of pine-bears...”

“It’s not all bad,” the human responded. The pegasus had to do a double-take to make sure she hadn’t misheard a comment meant for the priestess. Nopony ever responded to her snide remarks! “The seabreeze can be quite pleasant. Just not... on me, I suppose.”

"It's no concern, Saul the Human!" The priestess yipped and yapped endlessly, like a timberwolf pup hounding at its mother's teats for a drink of milk. "I’m certain the princess will arrange for more comfortable lodgings once I’ve explained the situation. Or we can always ask the Exalted Mother! Or my sisters and I have a spacious enough..."

'Uugghh...'

Saul chuckled as the unicorn babbled her tongue to dust at his side. His gigantic strides were almost great enough that Rainstorm had trouble keeping up at a leisurely pace, and the priestess was outright forced to trot by his side.

"Just Saul will do, sister," he said. "And thank you. I appreciate the hospitality."

The priestess scrunched.

"...would that be 'Just Saul' or 'Saul the Just'?"

The human laughed all the way to the throne room.

Crimson Belle's throne room was much smaller than her main hall. A mosaic floor dominated its center with its portrayal of a warrior mare in the nude, but for a spear held high in her aura. The Red Princess of unicorn legend, whose histories and myths were vibrantly painted on every wall, on every pillar and high above them. The Red Princess looked from all directions within her ancient throne room.

Her portrait on the ceiling glared down on all supplicants, and though her features had faded with time, there was no denying her eyes. Encrusted with rubies and polished bronze, the Red Princess' gaze was a smoldering, hateful scowl on all that stood beneath her. Surrounding her were many depictions of battles long-since forgotten, the taking of slaves from Verdant, and the ceaseless struggle against the pegasi barbarians.

Rainstorm had been in that room countless times, but for all her efforts she could never shake the dreadful feeling those eyes gave her. Like ice on her spine, or a raptor's shriek in the night. She entered the room with her gaze fixed on the throne instead, and ignored the Red Princess as best she could.

The throne itself was carved stone, polished to a shine. Its backrest was crested with cut onyx as large as a grown mare's hooves; both armrests had polished agates at their ends, alive with every color imaginable, and of course there were rubies beyond count. A system of bronze mirrors surrounded the throne. During midday, the light of Celestia's sun shone with such intensity behind it that none could look upon the princess directly.

All of it was elevated above the floor where supplicants would stand before her, by at least four pegasi in height as measured from hoof to the base of the wings.

But the throne wasn't where the princess waited for them.

The priestess came in behind Rainstorm, and the human behind her, followed by the sound of the closing gates as the guardsmares pulled them shut. Saul had to duck as he entered, though the gate was far taller than the largest earth pony mare. The pegasus wondered what he might think of the Red Princess... There was no shame in her discomfort, of course. Anypony who had ever seen the Tartarus-begotten glare of the horned monster felt likewise, and whoever claimed elsewise was a liar!

...unless?

She stole a quick glance up at the human—the strings of her bark-hide lion cap dancing as she did so—and a pang of anxiety cut into her gut. Briefly, of course. To the depths with what the human thought... Still, some relief washed over her as his brow rose and his lips twitched. He had looked straight at the red scowl of the beast!

"Fascinating," was all he said. His eyes moved on and settled on the throne, then the walls, the pillars, and buck knew what other bucking nonsense...

Rainstorm scrunched.

All around them rose a low murmur. It was early enough in the morning that the skylights alone couldn't fight the encroaching gloom, and even the candelabra ensconced on the walls struggled to illuminate much around them, but there was no mistaking the human.

Even the royal guardsmares that lined the walls failed to remain impassive as Saul approached the empty throne. What few nobles, knights, and advisors were scattered about in private conversations of their own, all ceased their chatter. Everypony had eyes only for the human.

At Saul's side the priestess went on and on in soft whispers about how to properly greet the princess or some other wind-hog droppings, when a very familiar scarlet gust swept by the pegasus.

"Real spooky huh?"

Unseen to the group, hidden behind the mighty throne and pillars, were a series of wooden slabs that had been driven into the ancient murals quite recently. These led to a hidden perch high up in the ceiling where one of the older skylights had been saved from being filled, by the whim of a maniac. Rainstorm wanted to groan so bad.

"Y-your grace!"

The temperature in the air shifted ever so slightly as the unicorn did her horn buggery, but if the princess noticed or cared, she didn't show it. Crimson Belle, Princess of the Crimson Shore and lady of all the lands around it, sat on her haunches in front of the human and stared.

Her coat was pristine, the color of her namesake, and brushed to a shine. Gold and silver bells adorned her many braids, both on her mane and tail, and these danced and clinked! when she moved. The thin robe of spun golden thread she wore—all laced with polished bronze discs—shone intensely in the candlelight.

Rainstorm didn't bother with a salute. Saul did, however. He raised his hands to his shoulders as she had shown him, and offered a small bow as well. He seemed about to speak, but hadn't the chance.

"Celestia's rump, Sister Pear! You taught it to do that silly thing my barbarian does sometimes!"

The pegasus sighed deeply.

"Y-your grace, I did not..." The Sister gaped at the pegasus, shock and fright battling over control of her brains. "I don't know how he learned that, forgive me... I should have shown him the proper-"

"Oh don't be silly, Sister Pear. He doesn't have a horn!" The princess giggled. "It's as good as it gets, I suppose! Better a barbarian greeting than... Eugh... Let's not bother ourselves with alternatives. So!

"How is my beastie?" She beamed at the priestess. Behind her, Rainstorm noticed no fewer than a dozen guardsmares, armored in maille barding, with iron helmets and long, steel-tipped spears held in their auras. She recognized the royal guard easily enough, all painted in the darkest red and grim as death.

The priestess made to answer, only to be cut off by the deep, powerful voice of the human.

"I have seen better days, Your Majesty. Though I am grateful for your, and your subjects' hospitality."

A silence gripped the room. Rainstorm didn't know what she had expected, but it wasn't that.

The human remained impassive as always, and the pegasus could do little but curse that strange stoicity. She wasn't sure she'd have done the same. Not on her first meeting with the princess, by Grogar's guts... The priestess seemed to agree. Her face was the definition of panic.

The princess did not move, but looked at the human out of the corner of her eyes. Any emotion seeped from her features, and Rainstorm had no idea what to make of her anymore. Her face—a cold mask of ruby plaster—was in that moment as unreadable as Saul’s.

She pivoted on her rump to face him. He towered over her as he did anypony, but if the princess found him as intimidating as they all had, she showed no trace of it. She merely looked at him as a foal might a jar of sweetbreads high up on a shelf.

"I am normally addressed as 'Your Grace'."

"My apologies, Your Grace."

Seconds mounted. The slow trickle of each moment crashed into the next in deathly silence, and the buildup was thick enough to be cut with a knife. Then Crimson Belle broke into a smile, and Rainstorm realized she'd been holding her breath.

"No need! I am rather majestic, am I not? Maybe I should change my style... to be more... Huh..." The princess stood on her hind hooves—as tall as Celestia had willed her to be—and balanced before the human. She barely reached his waist. "Luna's mane, you're big!

"Lady Glowspur! Get down here, if it please you! I want to see what my three biggest subjects look like side by side. Could somepony go and get my angry barbarian?"

"I'm right here." Rainstorm frowned. "I’ve been here the whole bloody while."

"What a twist!" Crimson Belle leapt away, a red blur in the stillness of the throne room. A stillness that did not last.

"Come one, come all!" the princess called, and her echo filled every crack and crevice in the hall. From behind the pillars opened doors that led to corridors, which led to halls, and the veritable maze that was the Crimson Palace. Through those doors entered unicorns, armed and armored, clad in iron, in cloth, their horns alight with spears and crossbows in their auras.

'What the...?'

Rainstorm tensed at the sight. Crossbowmares spread out to fill the gaps between royal guardsmares along the walls, while more royal guardsmares fell into line behind their princess. Crimson Belle herself had plopped down on a massive cushion, embroidered in silver thread, with rainbow-colored string all along the edges. Four unicorns levitated it off the ground as the princess stomped and fluffed it up for her royal rump.

Then entered the Crimson Knights in full panoply. Maille barding secured at the base of their necks and between back and loin with wood-horn cow leather belts; iron coifs under thick, conical nasal helms, and woolen cloaks heavy enough to stop an arrow. All of it over padded barding, and bright-scarlet from hoof to head.

In their auras they held a selection of weapons too varied for Rainstorm to recognize, but she needn't know their names to know she wanted no part of them. Nor of the mare that led them.

"At your command, your grace," Lady Glowspur said. Her eyes were fixed on the priestess, whose ivory coat had fallen into a paler shade of white.

"What the buck is going-?" Rainstorm began, but a sharp turn of the princess' head shut her down. Her eyes simmered in her sockets. Her smile shivered on her lips. Scarlet irises burned like the fires of Tartarus, pupils shrunk to pinpricks. The pegasus was rooted to the spot.

“My dearest subjects,” Crimson Belle said to the room at large, where nobleponies and their retainers watched in wonder and alarm as a veritable army surrounded them and moved to block the exit ways. Rainstorm counted ten times three guardsmares, a third of those with crossbows; two-score royal guards, and then Glowspur and her lot.

Rainstorm did not usually bother to learn the names of the horned ones, except for those she had to deal with daily, or the dangerous ones... The Terror of Verdant and the spawn of her loins were the latter.

Shimmershield, she knew. Lancer, she knew. Some of the others too—Bronzehammer, the twins Arrowberry and Barrow—and then more that she didn’t. Even some runty creature, impossibly awkward under all that iron at the far back of the lot. She’d never seen that one before.

“This day we received some rather... unfortunate news.” The princess continued from atop her cushion, as the servants who held her quietly bore the weight. It mustn’t have been hard. Rainstorm couldn’t believe something as fast and agile as the princess could weigh much.

By her side the human was more on edge than ever before. His hands opened and closed constantly, balling into hammer-like fists until the veins showed, swollen and angry under his dark skin. He remained still otherwise—his eyes fixed on the princess—statuesque, a bastion all his own. Though a dozen and more crossbows itched to set him in their sights... it was to him an afterthought. He had eyes only for the princess.

Rainstorm wondered if his flesh could halt a crossbow’s quarrel, like she’d seen the wind-hogs do... ...a vicious twang! a horrid screech, and the spurt of green blood from a flesh wound. Alive and enraged, the wind-hog charged...

She did not want to find out.

“The Sapphire Tower has sent word...” The princess spoke cheerily, but her eyes remained deranged. “Storm Mane has attacked anew. Princess Sapphire Dew,” she spat the word like an insult, “has... defeated her.”

Silence. Not the wind, not the songbirds, nor the crackle of the candleflame dared make a sound. Crimson Belle beamed at everypony in the room. She looked each and every one in the eye, until at last she settled on her. Rainstorm felt a cold, hard stone in her throat.

“...Sapphire Dew will not swear fealty to me.” Crimson Belle finished. “Oh, dear subjects, I have had a really bad day...

“...and now I’d like to have some fun!”

Author's Note

Sorry about the delay! We're getting very close to something cool and I'm fussing over stuff like crazy.

Anywhoo, this will be the last of the daily updates. Expect one more update soon-ish, and then I will work on the story in the secrecy of the Himalayas until I have a week's worth of daily updates again.

Love y'all, like comment and subscribe, and take care! ❤️