A Prelude to Thunder

The Princess

Royal guardsmares formed up to either side of the princess, crossbowmares slammed quarrels into the grooves of their weapons. Surrounded—with all exits but the skylights blocked by steel and mares—Belle's little mice huddled together and cast worried glances about.

'Well, most of them!'

All but one. He stood in the center of the great mosaic floor and watched her—strange and monolithic—an oddly placed, dark pillar in the middle of the throne room. His black, leathery hooves trod mud and dust over the mosaic floor, nearly as old as the unicorn race itself, and carefully maintained through centuries of both prosperity and strife. The thought that Mother would have gone into a rage at the sight made her giddy.

“Your grace,” the priestess extinguished her horn, a nervous grin on her face, “forgive me, but this many guards are hardly... I can assure you that Saul poses no threat at all!”

The shift in formation ended, and with it the clamor of armor and hoof against metal and stone. All her little pieces were in place, the board was set, and with some luck the show might even wash away the sour taste the war council had left in her mouth. From her comfy cushion, Crimson Belle shrugged her shoulders and offered Sister what's-her-name her best winning smile.

“Can you really, Sister Pear?” she asked. “Because to hear the little tune my guardsmares sing, this creature seems to have the run of my castle. Why, he just up and strutted to the front door!”

“Your grace, I... He just needed-” Pearl started, but soon fell silent. From between her and Rainstorm, the creature stirred. Like a titan of stone risen from the depths of the sea, he took one step forward and raised his claws, palms towards her.

The suddenness of the gesture pulled up every crossbow and leveled every spear in the room at the creature, yet all that steel and all that iron was naught to the one they called Saul. He had eyes for her alone, and bore himself steady and severe. He came to stand but four or five unicorns before her, and in that gaze she felt something she hadn’t felt in so long... an odd sensation, as though she stood naked before some creature long since buried in the recesses of her conscious mind...

“If I may, your grace,” he said, and his voice was cool and collected, yet accented by the intensity of his eyes. “I was rather ill and felt that some fresh air might help me feel better...”

Crimson Belle ran her tongue over the inside of her lips and remembered. Of the few memories of her fillyhood she had, there was one that lingered against her will. Murmuring thoughts spoke inside her mind, and they whispered of iron bars and snarling teeth, half-starved and crazed by the endless prodding of sharpened sticks. A villa, her sister Scarlet—beloved of Mother, gracious and wise—and long hours... endless, terrible hours, spent alone with the-

“...I’m afraid I left Pearl and Rainstorm little choice but to accommodate me...”

A cold, unwavering stare. Belle looked into those fierce, almond pools now, and felt a filly under the glare of such bestial eyes—ghosts of her foalhood, a cry born from behind those iron bars—so full of rage and defiance. A thrill coursed down her spine.

“...though I assure you, I never meant anyone any harm. This is all just a misunderstanding.”

‘You didn’t? A shame... we do wonder what those limbs can do...’

She held his brutish gaze until at last he spoke again. Every second felt an eternity.

"I hope," he added and there was no apology in his tone, but something that was nearly demanding, “that we can leave this incident behind us. I merely wish to return home.”

“Leave?” she asked. But he had just arrived! What fun was there in that? She had so many little questions that simply screamed at her for answers! How fast could he move? What strength lay hidden under those massive limbs wrapped in so much cloth? Did he bleed like a mare? Did he fight like one?

Could he die like one?

“But we haven’t played yet, dear subject!” She leapt from her cushion and sat before him, to the great agony of all her security. Their moaning and groaning could be quite funny! But she wasn’t afraid. Though the beast’s body exuded Grogar’s bestial might, in his eyes shone Discord’s guile. She beamed up at him and the beast’s composure cracked a little, the faintest trace of concern flickered on his face. She loved it.

“Play?” he asked, and Crimson Belle nodded enthusiastically. All her bells and discs clinked! like tiny, crystal raindrops shattered from a fall.

“Yes! It’s a tradition in my court!” It was no lie either, though it hadn’t been done since long before the Blasphemy. But Belle remembered the spectacle! The fanfare! The long, slavering teeth... Her grin turned into a smirk. “It’s fun, trust me. We don’t have lions anymore, but...”

Her eyes settled on Rainstorm. The pegasus stared back at her with that resigned, insolent glare that so characterized her impudent kind. The princess wondered.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline any kind of game that involves lions, your grace.” A booming, rolling chuckle filled the throne room. Yet the muscles of his limbs were taut, his huge legs were tensed. Like a cornered beast, he sized her up and the room at large. “I’m allergic to cats. Big ones, in particular.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You’re mine. I can do whatever I want with you, creature.”

Something shifted in his complexion.

"I am no creature."

His voice was thunder in the throne room. A low, rumbling growl that made the hairs on Belle’s neck rise, and had every crossbow and spear twitch in the auras of the guardsmares around them. The human took a single step toward her, decisive and unyielding, and the princess felt smaller than she'd felt in a long time. Her grin widened under his shadow.

“As for your games...” he continued, stern and stiff like a statue, but for his eyes. Where he now stood, his face caught the skylight in full, and those eyes that before were covered in darkness now shone plainly under the sun. Crystalline pools in a face like hewn rock. “My death may amuse you for a while...”

Under his towering stature, Crimson Belle struggled to pay attention. The scent of him was overwhelming... a mixture of salt, sweat, and blood, served to her senses over the gentle aroma of candle-smoke and the pleasant dampness of the seashore air. Her own perfume wafted to join the mixture, and her muzzle tingled under the assault. She edged a little closer.

Across his stern features, shadows and sunlight battled over the bridge of his aquiline nose. His lips twisted and thinned. His gaze hardened. His brow furrowed.

“There is something I can offer,” he said. “But for a single meal? A dungeon cell? What I’ve been given is not enough.”

Crimson Belle scrunched.

She flicked her ear and a quarrel shot out to hit the floor a few tiles in front of the human. The ominous twang! of the bowstring that loosed its deadly munition echoed across the room.

Rainstorm and the priestess recoiled at the sight. Crimson Belle didn't terribly mind. The human? It was like he hadn't noticed at all.

“I'm getting quite bored of this silly chatter. Was restoring your life not enough?”

“The one you now intend to take?” Saul pressed a heavy hand to his chest. “My life is part of it. But I want more.”

The princess frowned. This... was not how she wanted things to go at all! This was supposed to be fun, not full of chit-chat! Belle shook her head vehemently, a tiny whirlwind in the room. Her bells and discs sang in her mane.

“No deal! I’ve given you enough, monster. I am owed, and you will give me this thing you keep blabbering about...” she beamed, “or I can take it!”

The human crowed, without trace nor sign of fear or concern for his own safety, though Belle clearly saw the beads of sweat that pooled on his forehead. His meaty claws came to rest on his waist, where he hooked the thickest of his digits under a heavy leather belt.

“So you might,” he said. “But how much would you gain, compared to what you’d lose? There’s much that I know already, but even more that I only partially remember. Pieces, fragments, all so complex as to make the slightest alteration fatal to its replication. How many days might I withstand you? How much more after that would I survive?

“Torture and death will only get you so much, your grace. But I offer it all, if you’re willing to pay for it.”

‘So die then! I’ll take what it gets me and be none the worse for it!’

The creature was a pebble! What did it matter to her if his dumb knowledge was lost? Her realm was fine. She was okay. It was all just so very, perfectly, still... and she was princess of the Crimson Shore, if not the Sapphire Tower, as mother had been.

‘The realm is shrunk.’

Let the stinking Sapphire Dew rot behind her walls—solid as the mountain stone beyond the Bay of Mangoes, and taller than the masts of her galleys—they could be her prison. She could live the rest of her days beneath their shadows, encased while Belle’s armies circled her fortifications for years... eating away at her grain stores, forever away from the fields while the slaves grew wild and the pegasi roamed freely through the countryside...

‘The realm is lesser.’

Mother had fought tooth and hoof to keep her influence strong... but it didn’t matter! New princess, new rules! Step aside, everypony, Crimson Belle says we don’t need anypony else! The Crimson Shore is more than enough—and to be honest?—the best-looking city of the bunch. Frankly. Who needs any of those when you’ve already got the best one? But wow, this thing was really getting on her nerves! Belle’s teeth ground together and a low ringing filled her ears.

‘We are the realm, Belle. We are-’

“Listen to me, beast.” She giggled, but there was no mirth in her voice. Her eyes were hot in her sockets, and there was the faint taste of iron at the back of her throat. “This isn’t funny anymore, but you’ve piqued my interest. So tell me this powerful secret! and on Celestia’s mercy, I swear I won’t skin you alive.”

Saul held her gaze for a long time. Cool, unwavering eyes set to the placid color of freshly oiled wood stared into her own, and she knew the answer before he ever spoke. There was no room for anger in her heart, for it throbbed in her chest with such intensity...

“No,” he said, and Belle’s blood boiled in her veins. Her smile crept up once more, and though it was thinner and quivered with her quick breaths, she knew it to be genuine.

If nothing else, she’d have her fun.

The Barbarian

Crimson Belle showed no emotion. Not when the human refused her, not when her glare failed to move him. She returned to her cushion and sat like the firstborn daughter of the world itself, undeniable, beyond the judgement of mortal beings... and still the human said ‘no’.

“Rainstorm,” she said at last. “Kill him.”

“Your grace please don’t!” the priestess shrieked. She threw herself in front of the human, legs splayed across the mosaic floor. Pearl’s eyes were alive with terror. “Please, I’m begging you. He meant no offense! H-he doesn’t know what he’s saying, doesn’t understand our culture, or who you are... please, your grace...”

Rainstorm heard the priestess but few of the words made it through the haze that had clouded her mind. Crimson Belle’s command rang loudly in her ears and deafened her every sense. She swallowed. Hard. The pegasus moved to the edge of the room and motioned at one of the nearby guardsmares...

“A lance,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.

“No!”

Emerald and burgundy auras had Sister Pearl by the frock and shoulders, and Rainstorm saw from the corner of her eye as Shimmershield and Lancer dragged the priestess away with pursed lips and stern eyes. Even under all that metal the shame was plain on their faces.

The guardsmare put a spear in her hoof.

“Is this so, O Powerful Saul?” the princess sang. “Are you merely confused? Would you like a chance to apologize?”

The creature chuckled. Loud, clear, devoid of humor. It was like they were both mad and playing games, like life and death weren’t on the balance, and Rainstorm herself wasn't a part of that twisted game.

“Do your worst,” he answered.

Rainstorm extended her wings and faced the human. Faced Saul, thrice her height, and heavier than her by Luna knew how much... Saul, whose arms were thicker than her neck. Saul who had seen the realm beyond the clouds and whose only crime was to be at the whim of a lunatic...

She gripped the lance under her foreleg and compensated for the sudden imbalance, wings ready to jump at a moment’s notice. He faced her too, and in his eyes there shone that damnable glint of Luna-knew-what that she had seen before...

‘He’s big, he’s clumsy. Speed is the game.’

Crimson Belle watched from her cushion with a stupid grin plastered on her pretty face. Rainstorm wished she had the guts to run her lance through her belly instead...

‘No way he can move fast enough. Fly hard, fly true. Dip the lance at the last moment.’

Saul the Human opened his stance and wasted valuable seconds with sentimental nonsense. He did the salute she had taught him. The fool... the poor, innocent fool...

Rainstorm clenched her jaw. She opened her wings to their fullest extent, mighty weapons of the north that they were, and beat the air back with the force of the hurricane, of Great Luna beyond the skies, and all the rage of her foremothers. Eyes peeled, teeth bared, drool flowing...

She charged.

“NO!”

Recommended Listening:

Time worked in strange ways.

Moments could speed by at a pace to rival lightning. They could stop too, like a waterfall in winter’s cold embrace. Sometimes time moved so slowly it was painful, and others it moved so fast... What happened next was—in Rainstorm’s eyes—the fastest and slowest moment of her life.

First was the air in her eyes. In every charge there was a moment of blindness, before experience and willpower overwhelmed the instinct to shut one's eyes against the rush of air. Rainstorm’s eyes closed halfway for a second. Then she must angle herself so her lance would pierce the human’s chest... this was easy, it was a large target.

Then came the surprise.

Saul's left hand reached inside his coat and gripped something. Rainstorm was too close now, going too fast to recognize it. The moments lost gave him the chance he needed.

Her eyes widened. Her wings twitched, fully extended behind her so as not to lessen her speed, and unable to alter her course. She had committed. She’d made a mistake.

Saul struck. A rock from the courtyard shot out towards the pegasus—hard and fast—it hit her muzzle and made her flinch. Blind, she continued her charge and dipped her lance with a scream of frustration in her throat.

She never had the chance to let it out.

A fist like iron rammed into the side of her head. She lost all control, dropped her lance, and felt her teeth rattle in her jaws. The taste of copper flooded her tongue. Thoughts jumbled together in her head... fear, rage, relief... she hit the mosaic floor and rolled hard over the tiles.

The room spun around her, a salad of colors and blurry images, dressed over in the coppery aftertaste of blood. She opened and closed her eyes, flexed her wings, and rolled her tongue over her teeth.

‘Luna’s mercy...’ she was whole.

She struggled to her hooves and turned back to face the fight, but the fight was over.

Huge, corded limbs like battering rams snaked around her neck and midsection. The scent of seawater and sweat flooded her nostrils, and all across her back and at the base of her wings she felt the softest fabric she had ever known... over the warm, solid body of the human. He lifted her up in his arms, and she had the briefest moment to notice all this. Then he tightened his embrace. Rainstorm screamed wordlessly under the pressure.

“I’m sorry, Rainstorm of Longwing,” his voice was soft in her ear, like a lover’s whisper. She gnashed her teeth, kicked her legs and beat her wings hard to break free. But she couldn’t.

“Sleep.”

Consciousness abandoned her.

The Guardsmare

“Aaamazing!” The princess clopped her hooves together from her cushioned seat. She smiled. Why? Orchid hadn’t a clue. It was her barbarian on the floor, beaten to a feathery mess. The crossbowmare swallowed her concerns. They didn’t pay her to care about pegasi or the princess’ doings... all she had to do here was put a quarrel in that... that...

‘Oh, dearest Celestia, guard us from this thing...’

Saul, he had called himself. Powerful Saul, the princess had named him. Horror, Orchid decided, was a better title for the beast in the center of the room. She watched as Saul wiped the pegasus’ lifeblood from his fist and picked up the spear she had dropped...

“I pity the fool that has to-” Orchid began.

“Guardsmare!” the princess called to her. “Drop that silly crossbow and kill the creature!”

‘Horse-bucking-apples!’

Orchid howled like a mare possessed when she charged the beast with her mother’s mace in aura. The same Orchid howled like a foal when the creature cracked! the barbarian’s spear over her head with the ease with which one might break a twig underhoof.

She still reeled from the blow when the beast gave her a quick punt to the stomach, hard enough that all the wind left her lungs and something snapped! in her body. Orchid lay on the mosaic floor for what felt like hours. She sobbed, alone, and certain that it had been her spine.

‘Oh no. Oh Celestia, please no. Anything but... anything...’

When her fellow guardsmares dragged her away they found a broken rib and a hideous bruise that ran from one side of her body to the other.

Orchid thought herself the luckiest mare in the Unicorn Shore.

The Gentlemare

“What need is there for such senselessness?” the monster asked. “I’m just getting started, Saul Ironhoof!” the princess responded, giddy as she bounced in place.

Arrowberry brushed a thin strand of crimson-tinted mane out of her eyes. It was always the same strand, too! So unbecoming. What might anycolt say who saw her? Arrowberry, Crimson Knight? More like Squalorberry!

“Lady Glowspur,” the princess purred. “Saul thinks us weak. Mayhaps a demonstration of the Crimson Shore’s noble blood is in order?”

“As you command, your grace,” Glowspur replied. Oh, she was mad. Arrowberry could tell without looking, the old mare was properly pissed.

But would she say anything? Nope! Arrowberry had seen this play out so many times before, yet it always managed to impress her on so many levels. Lady Glowspur’s dedication to the throne, the resilience of her teeth—oh, but did she ground them together in her sleep!—and of course, the princess’ ability to get under her coat.

“Lady Arrow,” the Terror commanded. “You heard your liege.”

Arrowberry... didn’t quite expect that.

She brought her fauchard to bear regardless. Lady Squalorberry, perhaps. But Cravenberry? Never!

“By your will, my lady!” She stepped forward and offered her foe a twirl of her weapon and a gentle flourish of the horn. “Saul the Foul, as I live and breathe, by mine oath to the throne and the Alicorns of Old Equestria, lower thine weapons and submit to my steel!”

She braved a quick glance at the crowd. Ah, what luck! Sirs Lapiz and Topaz were among the spectators... mayhaps a visit could be arranged later on, should they be sufficiently impressed by her gallantry? Arrowberry offered the colts a gentle smile—perfect white teeth like pearls on her muzzle—and relished the delicate blushes that spread over their cheeks.

‘Arrowberry does it again. Heh.’

A heavy step on the mosaic floor disturbed her thoughts. Saul stood before her with half a spear in one of his claws and a guardsmare’s blunt mace in the other. His chest was big, and it rose and fell with rapid breaths that made it look all the larger. Then there was his face...

Arrowberry looked into those eyes and all good cheer left her. There was insult in them, and none of her own good spirits. There was something else, too. Something cold, dispassionate and... and real.

‘Oh,’ she thought.

The beast drove the spear hard into her chest. Metal scraped against metal, sparks flew and Arrow felt her body give way under the force of the blow. She lost her hoofing over the mosaic tiles and it saved her life... the speartip slid over the maille and scraped hard against her fore chausses.

‘It will bruise, girl. But you’ll live to see the morrow...’

Instinct took over and her aura twirled the fauchard hard against the monster. The heavy steel blade fell with force enough to cut through maille, but instinct had angled it to slay a pony.

Saul stepped back from the blow with an ease and speed that belied his clumsy form. The fauchard stabbed at the mosaic tiling right in front of Arrow, where its deadly blade surely would have slain any equine in its path...

Arrow knew from experience that it would take any attacker, even a unicorn, at least a few seconds to close a gap that great and attack anew. Arrow knew that she had that much time to rise to her hooves and mount a proper defense.

Arrow didn’t think much after a cold iron mace beat her muzzle in.

“ARROW!”

Lady Arrow heard her twin sister’s voice like... like a... she couldn’t think of a metaphor. She couldn’t... what was that horrid taste in her... her tongue felt so numb, and... were those rocks in her mouth?

Arrowberry rose to her hooves and shook her head to clear it, but the pain only worsened. Her aura gripped her iron helmet and lifted it free of her head... her coif came undone on its own, and... she opened her...

“Oh,” she said. “Oh Cedesthia...”

Teeth. Teeth like loose pebbles fell from her mouth to hit the mosaic tiles like so many pearls... perfect, beautiful little pearls coated in ruby tears...

Arrowberry screamed until she could scream no more.

The Paladin

The silence in the throne room was absolute. Bronzehammer and Lancer dragged Arrowberry from the hall, a mess of blood, tears, and teeth clutched in aura. Her sister wept in bitter rage at Lady Glowspur’s side.

And still the princess grinned.

“Who’s next?” Saul asked the room. The room had no answer it would willingly offer. All eyes were wide, somber orbs set on his mighty form... bloodied by two strikes, one from the pegasus’ lance where it left a long, ugly gash on his shoulder... the other from Arrow’s frantic slashes and wild stabs—all of which had missed—but one.

The cut ran from shoulder to navel and had ruined the creature’s black wear. A thin, red line marked its passing and stopped at Saul’s waist, where a thick belt had stopped the poorly aligned blade. Arrow’s rage had not been enough to hold on to the fauchard when the creature gripped it. Now he had the weapon and nopony dared to look at him with defiance.

“A most impressive display,” Princess Crimson Belle said from her cushion. “But you can stop now. Give me what I’m owed and you may keep your life.”

Shimmershield drew in a deep breath. She kept her mind free of thoughts. Focused on the creature. Her mother—she knew—would do the same. It was the knight’s duty to bleed and make bleed for the throne, whatever it was the throne demanded, and Arrowberry had done her duty. Anything else was beyond them.

Saul laughed. But in this bout of laughter there was something new—and if Shimmershield had to be frank with herself—it was deeply unsettling.

“I owe you nothing!” He stepped across the room with those terrible strides that had doomed Lady Arrow, until he stood but three unicorns’ length away from the princess. “But I have something to sell, if you can afford it.”

Small, sharp teeth shone under the rising sunlight as the creature grinned. Something in Shimmershield’s deepest instincts stirred at the sight.

“Saul the Bothersome,” the princess yawned, “I grow so very weary of you. You did not have so much as your own life when I found you, and you mean to tell me there is something in your possession right now that I should consider buying?

“Fool! I own land beyond reckoning. Armies muster at my vaguest whim, and the very sea shudders at the beat of my galleys’ oars! You are little more than a vagrant trespassing in my realm.”

“Then let me leave.” He pointed the fauchard to the door and the sea beyond from whence he had come from.

Now the princess frowned. Shimmershield did not pretend to understand her reasons, nor those of the creature. When called upon, she would answer. Her aura caressed the glaive leaned against her side.

“I have already offered your life!” the princess growled. “You’ve refused and annoyed me! So you can either give me this secret and live, or die!”

The beast snarled. “To live at your mercy? To be disposed of or made to battle wild beasts at your whim? I demand a guarantee.”

“And then what? You leave?”

Saul nodded. “Rainstorm spoke of magic. I have seen enough to believe it. Use your magic to return me to my world... and I will give you the power to break walls and make castles crumble.”

“Bah!” Crimson Belle curled up into a little red ball in her cushion. “If you have such power then save yourself! Lady Glowspur, I believe I gave a command?”

“Listen to me,” Saul hissed. “There is a compound... a mixture!”

“By your word,” mother said. Shimmershield could see the strain in her eyes... it was hard, she knew. But it must be done. “Lady Shimmershield, you heard your princess.”

“By your command!” Shimmershield said and levitated her glaive forward. She would not make Arrows’ mistake.

The monster’s shoulders sagged. For the briefest moment it seemed to Shimmershield he might relent... she saw the exhaustion in him. It was plain. Blood trickled from his wounds, from his mouth whenever he struggled against a recurrent cough. In his eyes shone a desperation now that wasn’t there before. She wondered if perhaps she should say something?

“Lower your arms,” she ventured. “Her grace is merciful.”

Saul’s eyes caught fire. His muscles tensed and the veins in his neck and arms pulsed with fury. The fauchard in his grip rose with murderous intent.

‘It was perhaps the wrong thing to say?’

They met in the middle.

Shimmershield felt steel cleave the air in two every time the creature swung. The fierce rush of it made her want to flinch, but she didn't dare. Fear was a powerful thing. Some mares detested the idea that they might feel it... But Shimmershield didn't. Fear was a constant companion of the knight.

"I have the secret to break armies." Saul spoke between swings, still in a verbal struggle with the princess. Desperation had seeped into his tone. Fear, perhaps? Shimmershield tried hard not to let her thoughts wander.

'Eyes on his weapon. His movements are limited by his limbs. Tired. Let him swing.'

His arms lifted Arrow's fauchard and brought it down with a strength that cracked the mosaic to pieces when she dodged. Shimmershield kept her distance. She angled her glaive and feinted a jab.

The creature blocked with a grunt. Shimmershield aimed low and cut. He sidestepped at the last second.

"There's a very loud buzzing in my ears!" the princess taunted. "Could somepony swat this little fly, pretty please?"

Shimmershield drew back her glaive in an exaggerated downward cut and allowed the beast to catch her weapon in a bind. She readjusted her aura's grip on the haft with practiced ease, and the head of her weapon slipped over the monster's block to cut straight for his head.

Saul pulled away with a desperate shout. Blood gushed down his face where Shimmershield's glaive left a deep cut down the side of his cheek.

"Walls will crumble!" he howled. "Armies will scatter before you, broken without a sword being drawn! Fire and smoke will fill the fields..."

Shimmershield pressed her attack. She thrust, she cut, she slashed and forced the creature back. A part of her hoped he would surrender... there was something in her conscience that bothered her deeply.

'...there is no honor in this...'

She breathed in deeply and batted aside a crude swing of Saul's weapon. He followed up with a rushed jab, aimed straight for her side.

Shimmershield let him connect. The fauchard struck and slid off the maille harmlessly.

"Mayhaps you'll rise again, Saul the Undying!" Crimson Belle giggled. "Just maybe we will get to do this all over again!"

The knight closed the distance before the creature could recover. She rammed the blunt end of her glaive into his gut... then brought it about in a downward swing and struck him across the back with the haft. Saul's legs quivered under him. He gasped and blood splattered the ground as another coughing fit threatened to overwhelm him...

Shimmershield clenched her jaws.

"I will not die here..." he said, eyes alive and fiery in spite of it all.

"Please surrender." She drew away from his reach and aimed her glaive at his neck. "There is no shame. You've fought gallantly."

"...and live as your plaything?" His eyes settled on her. The depths of the rage that boiled within were unfathomable. Shimmershield shuddered.

"If I die," he said to the princess, "my secret dies with me."

"If you die?" The princess took a long sip from a bowl of apple juice. She smacked her lips with delight. "How optimistic!"

"Lady Shimmershield," mother called. "End this."

Shimmershield drew in a deep breath.

'Dearest Celestia, you who are fair and loving, forgive your knight for this sin. Just and mighty Luna, make my punishment light in your glorious halls...'

Before her, Saul collapsed to one knee in a fierce coughing fit. He trembled under the force of the convulsions that wracked his lungs... Blood from his shoulder and mouth pooled over his hand. She leveled her weapon to his chest.

“You could have lived,” she said to him. He looked into her eyes.

“Life and nothing else...” He spat blood. “Worthless.”

Shimmershield leveled her glaive to his chest. His final words echoed in her mind even as she prepared to give him a soldier’s death...

...she struck.

Recommended Listening:

The Princess

A red aura gripped the weapon by the haft and shoved it aside to bite harmlessly into the tattered remnants of the creature’s clothes. Shimmershield staggered. Her weapon fell from her grip and clattered uselessly away, free of the mysterious unicorn’s magic.

‘Wait is that...?’

“Your grace?!” Shimmershield’s eyes shot wide open with shock. Lady Glowspur, still at her side and motionless, opened and closed her mouth like a silly lemon-fish. Yes, it certainly looked like her own aura...

She checked her horn. Yep. It was hers. She’d done it.

“What a twist...” the princess said.

There was a stillness in the room that had not been seen for years. Not since the day of her coronation, when Storm Mane's hosts ransacked the Temple of the Sisters, when they crawled like daemons into the castle to wreak havoc and slaughter... Not since the day mother died.

Crimson Belle remembered that silence like nothing else. She remembered the emptiness in everypony's eyes, the grayness that gripped her world. She remembered the worried glances they shot her way when the corpses were counted and identified.

‘They found Scarlet under a beam.’ Scarlet! What a beautiful mare she had been... so strong, too. But not strong enough to lift that which crushed her, and when the flames were done with her? Oh, proud and favored Scarlet! Beautiful no more... Shimmershield and Glowspur were talking. She didn't care what they had to say. Somehow her hooves had taken her to stand before Saul, and the beast rose to regard her... eyes alive with purpose.

‘Ruby Eyes... Half of her we found in her bedchamber,’ powerful claws parted the hairs of her coat and slid up her body to grasp her neck. Those long digits caressed her with a gentleness that belied the power behind them... though his limbs trembled with exhaustion, the raw promise of strength under his reddened flesh sent a shiver down her spine. She stifled a gasp, ‘...the rest we found in the sea...

‘...and little Velvet...’ Saul's digits tightened around her slender neck. She looked into his gaze and saw nothing. Eyes like furnaces, a snarl begotten from Tartarus itself, and yet the hatred within was so dull, so... controlled.

"You can't kill me," she said. The tightness in her chest said otherwise. The way her heart beat inside her body... so small in his hands, so very fragile... Her mouth was so dry.

Saul wrung his hands tighter.

"No," he said. "But I can make you queen of this world."

Crimson Belle smiled and kissed Saul's bloody forehead. The sweet taste of blood filled her mouth. She could see it... cities ablaze, their walls brought low and bastions razed to ashes... and at the end of the known world—with the lands of the mud ponies and the barbarians set aflame—all those who doubted her would bow their heads and call her queen... With her heart aflutter she realized that she knew that smile. It was the same smile she wore the day everypony died. The day they had to make her Princess.

"Make it so," she said, "and such wonders will be yours... when the day comes to choose between your world or mine... the choice will be easy."

They would howl. They would scream and curse the Sisters like they did the day she was made Lady of All. She didn't care. Let them scream! Let the world rage and thrash in fury! She was Princess, she was all, and all would be hers or burn!

"By the glory and might that is my birthright," she said to the world. "I welcome you to the Mournful Sea, Saul of the Brine, and into my service... to deliver what was promised...

"Now rise," she took Shimmershield's glaive from the ground and laid its blade against his shoulder. "Rise a knight of my Crimson Shore... and take it as your guarantee..."

‘...‘til death or failure part you from my side.’

He did. Though he trembled with pain and exertion, he rose to stand before her, her court and the world itself. An animal no longer—nameless and without worth—but a knight under her service. His first breath as such was deep and long, as though the air had a sweetness it never did before.

Lord Saul of the Brine cast his gaze across the throne room—severe and imposing—as if to challenge anypony there to deny him his prize. None did.

"It will do," was all he said.

Author's Note

This marks the end of the first act and of all regular updates for the time being. See you guys again for the first half of Act 2 as soon as it's ready!

To the Himalayas I go!

Addendum 9/1/21: This chapter was remastered during the previous month. Re-reading is recommended but not necessary.