Tears

The barbarian clenched her jaw. She opened her wings to their fullest extent and beat the air back with the force of Tartarus and every daemon within. Eyes peeled, teeth bared, drool flowing... Sister Pearl could do nothing but watch in horror while Ladies Shimmershield and Lancer dragged her out of the throne room.

“Please don’t do this, my ladies! He’s going to die!” Pearl struggled against their auras—an azure little glow that flashed angrily around the burgundy and emerald hold of the Crimson Knights—only to watch her magic wither around theirs. She couldn’t get past them. Her muscles were thinner, their auras were stronger, and encased in all that iron there was no way she could move them. Pearl was a blade of grass that beat against the oak.

Shimmershield pushed the priestess out of the hall with a firm shove of her aura.

“I’m sorry, sister,” she said. The doors came aglow with her and Lancer’s magic. “There’s nothing we can do.”

In the background the barbarian charged and the last Pearl saw was a lance aimed straight for Saul’s heart.

“NO!”

The doors slammed shut. Silence followed, and for a moment it was all Pearl could do not to break down and cry. Then—with her heart drumming in her throat—she raced across the hallways of the Crimson Palace on her way to the guest rooms, where she knew her last hope had spent the night after the war council.

‘The Exalted Mother can fix this!’ was the only thought in her mind. That her wise counsel had always been well received by the crown, that she was always the voice of reason wherever she tread... that if anypony had a chance to stop this terrible misunderstanding, it was her. The priestess dashed through the thresholds of a dozen doors on her way back to the main hall and the stairwells that led up to the many rooms of the Crimson Palace.

The Exalted Mother’s room was easy to find. It was always the closest to the stairs on account of her age. Pearl beat her hooves against the wooden door while her lungs burned and her ragged breaths came like growls.

“I heard you the first damned time!” The Exalted Mother! “Celestia’s endless patience be with me...”

“Exalted Mother, it's Pearl!” the priestess all but howled. “Please, you have to help me! The princess is going to kill Saul!”

“Pearl?” Her raspy voice took on that motherly tone. “Dear child, what in Equestria’s green fields are you going on about?”

“Please!”

A moment of hesitation. The sound of the bolt as it unlocked. The Exalted Mother was as Pearl remembered her, if not a little in disarray. Her gray mane had a few wild strands, her amber eyes shone a little dully under the early morning light. It was the day of the Sun, after all. The temple initiates had the morning off to practice their letters and prayers, and the old mare could sleep in a little longer.

“Alright, alright...” The Exalted Mother’s aura ran through Pearl’s mane as she led her into the room. Pearl realized tears welled in her eyes. “Come in, dear.”

“B-but Exalted Mother! She’s going to-”

“Sister Pearl.” She spoke with a firmness that called back to Pearl’s younger years. Her mouth shut on its own, a traitor to the urgency in her heart. “Calm down. Come in and we can discuss what’s wrong like civilized ponies...”

Seated on cedar chairs around the doused brazier that dominated the guest room, Sister Pearl hurriedly explained as best she could what had happened. The Exalted Mother listened, nodded every once in a while, and sighed deeply at the end of it. Pearl didn’t know what else to say. She could merely watch as the old mare rubbed a hoof under her chin and thought deeply.

“This is... well it’s not good, for one,” she said at last. “But my daughter, it’s out of our hooves. We can’t go against the princess’ wishes, especially not regarding this... Saul.”

“But she’s trying to kill him, Exalted Mother! He’s my patient and the Temple’s authority extends the Sisters’ protection to any-”

“-pony, Pearl. To anypony whosoever may need it, for as long as they need it, on Celestia’s boundless mercy, until such a time a Mother decrees them free of ill health.”

The words died in Pearl’s mouth. She knew the wording by heart, and had fought tooth and hoof with that exact argument whenever the foremares tried to deny the earth ponies the rights to a summons... and it was because of that experience that she knew she couldn’t win this. Saul wasn’t a pony, not by a longshot, and if the princess so much as lifted a hoof, she’d have every theologian in the Crimson Shore lined up to tell her just that. The old mare merely shrugged her shoulders, a sad smile on her lips.

“Remember what the princess said, Pearl dearest. It’s her ‘beastie’ or some such made-up hooey... and you don’t want to get between a princess and her fun.”

Pearl opened her mouth to protest. She wanted to argue, to come up with a brilliant defense! To show up in that throne room and present such a compelling case that nopony could look her in the eye and tell her otherwise...

But she couldn’t.

“...but he thinks, Exalted Mother. He speaks like a pony, he feels like a pony... does that not make him a pony?”

The Exalted mother tilted her head ‘maybe’, but that sad smile never left her lips.

“Even if you were to convince the princess, Pearl, you’d only buy him a few hours. Just long enough for Her Grace to summon one of the Mothers and put enough gold in her saddlebags to make her jump, kneel and roll, and declare him free of ill health.”

“We could argue the case, Exalted Mother,” she insisted, back on her hooves. “A few hours is enough time! We can convince the princess... or we can convince him to apologize and then...”

“Pearl,” the Exalted Mother’s aura held Pearl’s chin in its gentle grasp. “The creature is already dead, or close enough that it won’t matter. If he denied the princess as you say, then, believe me, he will have to conjure Celestia’s wonders to save himself.”

“But there must be some way-”

“Pearl, please stop.” The old mare rose to her hooves with a heavy sigh. Her slender frame did not weigh much, but age and decades of summons had ruined her knees, and a pained grunt of effort escaped her lips the moment her hooves hit the flagstones. Pearl was by her side at once, ready to support her.

There was a sternness in the old mare’s eyes that did not lessen, not when she thanked Pearl for her help, and not when she saw how her gaze made the little priestess wither.

“I don’t understand you, Pearl,” she continued. “You are such a talented young mare... you know our histories by heart, the rituals, the prayers, down to the very minutiae. Your letters are impeccable, your numbers are precise, and you have the brightness of Celestia’s own beautiful sun. Pearl, you’re like my own daughter.”

Sister Pearl felt each compliment like sunshine on her coat. But there, at the end of it all, she saw in the wizened mare’s eyes a pain that made her dread whatever words were left unsaid. She did not know whether to embrace her or beg forgiveness.

“I... understand that you’re fond of the slaves, Pearl. It’s an important act of humility for a Sister to devote her time to them too, but...” She stopped to chew on her words. Her eyes were downcast, her expression conflicted. Pearl didn’t know what to feel, except for a lingering sense of dread. “Then there’s this creature, and on Celestia’s mercy, I know I’ve tried to be lenient with you, dear daughter.

“After everything you went through during the raids, I...” The Exalted Mother breathed in deeply. Pearl couldn’t breathe at all. In the end, the old mare shook her head and exhaled for what felt like minutes. She spoke.

“I just don't want you to waste away your life, Pearl. You could do such great things, my dear. If only you weren’t burdened by this strange obsession with your lessers...”

She caressed Pearl’s cheek with her hoof and wiped away a tear. Her smile was motherly, kind, and loving. But in her eyes, there was something different. Something almost cruel.

“Maybe it’s time that...”

“Mother...” Pearl said. A little slip, one that had happened many times since that very first night—when lightning flashed and thunder roared—and a little ivory-coated filly hid under her blankets and cried for her birth mother within the temple walls.

The Exalted Mother came to her in that terrible darkness. She told her stories of the storm that raged when the first tribes were taken from Old Equestria... a time of deep sorrow, exile, and misery... She told her that it had been a storm of magic.

Magic! What wonderful secrets did it hide? Pearl had listened with wide eyes as the Exalted Mother spoke of Old Equestria like nopony else ever had. To her it was real and they would all go there someday. With the help of magic.

Would she like to learn magic, too? Yes, Pearl had said. That was the last she thought of her birth mother.

Now that same mare, older, wiser, and torn by some unknown pain, looked at Pearl with tears shimmering at the corner of her eyes. Whatever it was she was about to say died in her throat. She shook her head.

“It’s nothing, Pearl.” She turned away, towards the lone window at the end of the room, and stepped over to gaze out at the river beyond the walls, at the slave quarters, the harbor where the galleys and biremes were moored, and the distant sea beyond the horizon.

“Leave me, please. I’m tired and... I need to think.”

“But Saul-”

“Leave, Pearl.”

She did, and when the door closed between them—alone and silent in the long, empty hallway—Pearl stared at the cedar grain and grasped the edges of her frock in her aura. The silver cloth stared back at her with more questions than answers, and the little priestess wandered the halls without direction. Alone, helpless against the wrath of a princess, what could she do?

Her wanderings took her past the throne room. There, before the closed doors that barred the way to the tragedy within, Pearl knew a sickness like no other. Thoughts of cold iron and beating wings threatened to overwhelm her, and she knew she couldn’t bear to enter again. Yet her hoof touched the wooden surface and pushed. To no avail—the guardsmares had barred the gates—and the priestess knew that the Exalted Mother was right. Saul would soon be dead, if he wasn’t already.

Hopeless against the twists of fate, the priestess resolved to leave that evil palace and return to a haven of good—the Temple of the Sisters—where she knew she had a purpose, beyond the whims and madness of warrior mares and princesses.

“Guardsmares! Remove my barbarian, pretty please.” Crimson Belle spoke. Her words were a muffled mess in Rainstorm’s ears... like so much rainfall through a vessel’s hull... on that cold mosaic floor, the pegasus drifted in and out of consciousness.

“Summon my physicians. Everypony leave!”

The buzz of magic took hold of her. Different auras grabbed her by the mane and forelegs, and a flash of pain shot through her scalp. Fleeting, distant, like a half-forgotten dream. Something else called to her. A terrible darkness dressed in silver light that danced beyond the threshold of reality, and Rainstorm knew what it was. The realization filled her with dread greater than death.

The memories took her.

The battle-barge groaned and strained under the force of the waves. Rain fell hard over the wind-hog pelts they used for a tarp, and lightning flashed from on high. Thunder followed. Droplets like silver tears fell from giant clouds in the heavens, black and angry. They roiled and crashed into each other so far above, locked in celestial battles beyond the ken of mortal beings... yet distant enough to allow for life, for growth, and—in the depths of that battle-barge, bound to blood and glory—for love.

In the belly of the vessel, wet with sweat and aching with desire, two forms struggled for control. Unaware of the maelstrom beyond the thin wooden walls, of the titans that charged each other in the skies, Rainstorm knew nothing of the world but Lightning. Soft moans filled the air.

She thrust herself against her. Sex to sex, damp and hot with need. Soft, firm movements that brought them closer than any bond of sisterhood could. The smell of her passion was intoxicating.

"My sweet little raindrop," she murmured in the dark. Rainstorm had no response. She tensed, wings flared as pleasure surged through her. She held on to Lightning's leg and ground herself against her, lost to the world in that moment. She groaned and panted. She thrust with abandon. Faster, harder. She wished that seconds could become hours. That their brief trysts in the dark might extend over a lifetime...

She finished with a cry to rival heaven's thunder.

"Keep it the buck down!" cried the wing leader. The old mare had a pillow pressed hard over her head, though both her wings were stiff behind her. A few bursts of applause rose from around the battle-barge and a mare or two whistled. Rainstorm buried her fierce blush in her cap and groaned.

Still locked together, her battle-sister rolled her hips one final time and gave Rainstorm a gentle slap on the flank.

'I love you,' she mouthed through the gloom.

The memory faded away. Reality reared its muzzle through the silver curtain of the ethereal dreamscape. Voices.

“She’s damn heavy!”

“Where are we supposed to take her anyway? The princess didn’t say...”

“Oof! Just dump her... wherever!”

Nothingness beckoned once more.

Mother stamped her hoof down hard against the straw-covered floor of their ancestral home. The echo of her iron sabots rang as thunder from wall to wall.

“Rainstorm,” she said through gritted teeth. There was a fury in her eyes that Rainstorm had seldom seen outside the battlefield. “I am sick of your whining. Your brother will be married and there is nothing more to be said, do you understand me?”

She remembered tears. Boiling, desperate tears in her eyes. She trembled.

“Then I will leave,” she said to her mother, her heart split atwain, her liver shriveled and engorged alike with courage and terror she didn’t know was in her. “I won’t be insulted like this. I won’t...”

She could barely speak. Her voice quivered in her throat and she knew that soon she must break. But not yet.

Before her, Mother’s gaze hardened into something so bitter she could barely recognize her. The pride she’d seen in those eyes when as a filly, Rainstorm had thrown her first javelin was gone. The glowing praise when Rainstorm had flown by her side in the spring hunt, when their first raid together saw them covered in gold and silver, furs and pelts... all of it disappeared under a look steeped in disgust.

“You’re not my daughter,” Mother said. “You’re an embarrassment to this family, to my nest, and to me. Luna, bear witness, though I ought to beat the life out of you, in your father’s memory I won’t. Get out of my home, and may you find shame wherever you go, for that’s all you’ve brought to this family.

“Coward.”

Rainstorm opened her eyes inside a long, empty hallway.

Tears blurred her vision. A watery veil that distorted reality, and matted her fur in dark streaks that trailed down her cheeks. She fought back a sob and grit her teeth against the dreadful cold that gripped her body. Though the sun rose warmly over the horizon, she shivered.

‘It’s long past,’ she thought. ‘Another life. Somepony else.’

“Are you alright, ma’am?” a voice called out from beyond the threshold at the end of the hallway. Rainstorm’s blood curdled in her veins. Her head rose to face the voice. A young filly, a servant perhaps, stood not ten paces from where she lay.

“Do you need me to call somepony?”

Pity. It was plain in her voice, in the way she looked at her, like a wounded animal dying in its own filth. Rainstorm stood on trembling hooves, eyes wide and bloodshot. She stepped forward and the filly’s gaze shifted with the twitching of her wings, the baring of her teeth.

Concern gave way to fright and the little unicorn tried to back away.

“What are ye looking at?” Rainstorm growled, and the little filly stammered a response, much too low for her to hear. Rainstorm’s head throbbed—alive with the pulsing aftershock of that terrible blow—and through the haze, the filly’s sputtering was like laughter.

The pegasus stepped closer. Heavy hooves, cracked and worn, stomped against the stone floor. The filly backed into a wall, eyes alive with terror, rooted to the pegasus’ glare. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Rainstorm looked into her frightened eyes and saw herself reflected in them, but monstrous and twisted... a nightmare, a distorted ghost of a creature she once had known.

‘Good... It is as it must be...’

“Look at me like that again,” she whispered, “and I’ll crack yer head open against the floor. Do ye understand me?”

The filly trembled under her shadow and choked back a sob. She nodded.

Rainstorm’s breath caught in her throat.

“Get the buck away from me...” She walked past her, unsteady, badly bruised in one eye. Rainstorm made her way through the threshold of that cursed hallway and back to her cell... to the privacy of darkness and solitude, where what was left of her could mourn in silence.

‘Summon my physicians. Everypony leave!’

There was a heavy silence in the throne room. A hollow husk, aglow in the early morning sunlight, where the only things that seemed real anymore were the cracks in the mosaic, the blood splattered across the tiles, and the smell of sweat and steel that lingered in the air.

Crimson Belle sat alone on her cushion, her servants long gone and the room empty and deathly quiet. Her physicians had arrived, Saul had been taken away to be treated, and all around her the walls seemed eternal and the room had become a great, unfathomable world in itself. An empty, desolate place, where nopony stood with her, and all that existed was the glare of the Red Princess.

She watched her from on high. That horrible portrait, those monstrous eyes, fixed on her own, minuscule frame. Belle was no princess under that terrible stare...

“Why did you do it, your grace?” was the question that came from the darkness beyond reality. For reality was gone, replaced by the ethereal sensation of that hateful scowl. Everything was... disconnected, it floated away like unmoored boats in the mist. Belle stood under the Red Princess and the world was an afterthought.

“Who can stand before you?” Belle asked, her voice a low whisper. Above her, the Tartarean eyes of her most ancient ancestor seemed to glow with disgust. “Who can meet your gaze and call herself strong?”

“I don’t understand, your grace.” A pause. Heavy, armored hoofsteps approached her. “Why did you knight that monster?”

Belle tried to grasp that line of thought, the meaning of the words that the voice spoke, but they were as tendrils of smoke in the wind. In Belle’s mind, there were only those terrible eyes, under whose glare all mares were insignificant. Princess or peasant, firstborn or runt... tiny little things, scurrying about in the soil.

“Your grace?”

The Red Princess moved in the mosaic above. Her lips twitched, her nostrils flared, and those unblinking, hateful eyes like furnaces in the night settled on Belle. Blood dripped from them. A hate so pure, so impartial, that had scoured generations long before the little princess was born.

‘None are worthy,’ the Red Princess seemed to say. Belle knew it to be true. It must be.

All of it faded away. Reality seeped back into the world.

“My princess?” Lady Glowspur was at her side. Her hooves hovered over Belle’s lithe, crimson withers, though she did not dare touch her. There was a look in her eyes that Belle did not know.

“I’m alright!” The princess moved away from her. “You were saying, Lady Glowspur? Something about kites?”

“Knights, my princess.” Lady Glowspur straightened out, stiff and severe in her armor once more. “I asked why you chose to knight that creature.”

Why? That bit was obvious! Belle frowned.

“Tut-tut, my lady,” she said. “After a whole day and night spent fretting over the traitor scum, you still must ask me this? We require every weapon and strength possible to crush that cockroach! Squish her! Into a paste!”

Now Glowspur’s expression soured. The old mare breathed in deep, though to her credit, she’d gotten much better at hiding her exasperation!

“My princess, Sapphire Dew-”

“Scum! Traitor! Filth!”

“-asked to renegotiate the terms of her vassalage. It doesn’t have to mean war, your grace. There can be negotiations. We must strive for peace.”

But it was so painfully clear! Excuses, betrayals, knives in the shadows! The traitor thought her weak. She thought her less than Mother, and now—emboldened by one measly victory against the barbarians—she thought to rebel!

Belle scrunched.

“There is only one answer for treason, Lady Glowspur.” Belle shook her head, and the bells in her mane sang. “A pact was struck, the terms were clear, and there can be no compromise. Sapphire Dew will submit to my will as she did to Mother’s, or by Celestia’s sun, I will raze her stupid tower to its foundations!”

Uneven, tired hoofsteps interrupted Glowspur’s rebuttal. Heavy with age and weighed by exertion, the Exalted Mother entered the throne room with a hurried gait that was strange to see now in the late times of her life. Concern darkened her features.

“Our sovereign princess speaks with wisdom, my lady,” she said.

If she meant it or not, Belle wasn’t sure. But to hear the elderly priestess side with her in any way was more than enough reason for suspicion. The princess watched the Exalted Mother approach and nodded her respects, while Lady Glowspur extinguished her horn before her.

“Crude, misplaced wisdom... but wisdom nonetheless,” the Exalted Mother finished. Belle’s expression fell. “There will be a time for steel and courage, your grace, but Lady Glowspur is right. Peace must be our foremost concern for the good of the realm.”

Crimson Belle tightened her scrunch. What was the meaning of all this opposition? The war plans were drafted! The grain had been rationed! As bleak as the prospects for a quick victory were, they all had agreed to march with her...

...if it came to that. Ah, yes. Belle had decided not to hear that bit.

“The Sapphire Tower is my city,” Belle said, with a little hoofstomp.

The Exalted Mother sat on her haunches with a pained wince. Belle offered her cushion and the elderly mare took it with a grateful smile and a kind word.

“But yours is the realm as well, your grace,” she continued, “and the realm is not well.”

Her words were cold ice on Belle’s heart.

“My realm is fine,” she said. It was! It had to be.

The Exalted Mother shook her head.

“No, my princess,” she said. “It is not.”

“Grand Admiral Cedar Oars reports pirates have been sighted off our shores, my princess. Our merchant fleets huddle together in the Mournful Sea and fear the waters we once sailed with impunity,” said Lady Glowspur.

Crimson Belle turned to face her.

“Assemble our fleet, then! Let’s crush them!”

“But there is no grain to feed the crews, your grace,” the Exalted Mother said. “We have fewer slaves than ever before, the barbarians have killed too many. We need our mares in the fields.”

“We can raid for more slaves,” Belle growled. “The fleet is ready, our forces are strong! We can deal with this and much more!”

“With the barbarians roaming the countryside, your grace, we would need to split our forces three ways, between the fields, the fleet, and the garrisons,” said Glowspur. “What force could we spare then, to march against the Sapphire Tower?”

Belle pressed a hoof to her temple. This was what they had discussed already, and it was as dumb as it had been before! She knew how it ended, and that was an outcome she would not accept. Sapphire Dew must be made to kneel, not given the chance to negotiate!

“Mercenaries,” she blurted out, already painfully aware of the answer.

“Lady Stern Counsel has seen into the affairs of the Gilded Bay,” the Exalted Mother shook her head, “and Princess Gilded Gaze has hired all sellswords from here to the Fluttering Pass. There are none to be found.”

“My princess,” Glowspur continued, “we cannot afford a war with the Sapphire Tower. We must negotiate with Sapphire Dew.”

Negotiate with a traitor! Her throne belongs to us, Belle! We will not suffer this humiliation!

“We can!” she tried to say. ‘I must!’ were the words that tore at her insides. Failure was not... to let Mother’s conquests be lost... Belle grit her teeth and steeled herself against the barrage she knew must now come. Her eyes were heavy, her breathing labored. Yet they spoke on.

“Hunger plagues the land...”

‘We have failed.’

“...the Horned Keep is starving, my princess...”

‘All that was given us, collapses.’

“...pirates... pegasus battle-barges... the seas are unsafe...”

‘What will they say?’

“...colonists speak of strange creatures in the trees, deep in the jungles of Verdant...”

‘What waits for us beyond the threshold of the morrow?’

“...our mining outposts say supplies are disappearing... shadows in the night...”

‘When all has been written, who will you be?’

Her councilors spoke as one, and in their voices there was nothing but doom and misfortune. Visions of damnation swam in the princess’ mind, until her eyes could see nothing but fire and death. Belle tried to speak, to argue, to make them see. But no words of hers could pierce their assault.

“Enough!” Crimson Belle’s voice cut through the attack. A heavy silence fell on the empty room. Before her, Glowspur and the old priestess extinguished their horns and backed away.

“I am the realm,” she said. “When its borders are pierced, I weep! When its fleets are harassed, I rage! By my will, this city will thrive once more and all who doubt me will wither in its glow!”

She could not tower over Glowspur, and even the Exalted Mother’s elderly frame was a few hooves taller than she was, yet in that moment she felt greater than Saul himself, higher than Celestia’s own flaming orb. Belle looked at the dead horns of her councilors and knew herself above them. A grin tugged at the edge of her lips even as hot tears swelled in her eyes. Her hooves trembled.

Mother’s greatest, cowed before us!

But there was no fear in their eyes. They did not tremble, nor did they scowl. Glowspur and the elderly priestess merely looked at her in the strangest way... She couldn’t quite place it! Belle turned away from their stares, unsettling in ways not even the Red Princess could manage.

“Assemble my council,” she said in the end. Weary and overwhelmed by exhaustion of the body and mind, the princess turned to face her little stairway, driven into the walls of the throne room. The wooden slabs lead up, up, and into her nest, where nopony could reach her. There she knew she could be alone for a while. “We meet the Lord of Brine as soon as he’s well enough to do so.”

The Exalted Mother left. Only Glowspur remained with her in the dreadful silence under the Red Princess’ glare. Belle waited for the sound of hoofsteps before she let her defenses crumble. Before her shoulders sagged and the weight of Mother’s crown ground her into the stone.

A step drew closer to her, armored and heavy, but hesitant. Belle’s ears twitched, but she would not turn. Not when her eyes were so heavy. Lips parted. A pause.

“I would follow you to the ends of the world, my princess.” The sound of her voice made Belle’s chest tighten. A warmth trailed down her cheek.

“To death itself.”

Silence was followed by the painful echo of heavy hoofsteps on the mosaic floor. A door was opened, then closed. Its sound reverberated from the walls, the floors, the ceiling, to envelop her in its mournful wail.

Alone in the room where it all began, the princess wept.

Author's Note

I'd like to take a moment to thank all of you for reading and commenting. I appreciate every single like and comment like you wouldn't believe. They give me the drive to push onward!

ALSO THE FANART. You guys are amazing! I'd like to share some really cool images I've gotten!

First up is Pearl, by the amazing Clarke Otterton! An excellent artist and writer, I thoroughly recommend you check him out. His Dawn Glean story is a wonder to read.

She's so cute! AAAHHH!