They Can't Stay Encased in Stone Forever
The last thing Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow remembered seeing was the multitude of creatures standing before them as dark shapes began to cover their faces and eyes. Tirek moved backwards, closing his eyes and trying to shield his head with his arms, Cozy put her hooves to her face in horror, and Chrysalis lunged forward in a last-resort attempt to attack Discord, Celestia and Luna. In an instant, everything stopped and unconsciousness slipped over their body like a cover till they were asleep.
Just a few moments later, they regained consciousness and the dark shapes began to fall off. Their eyes moved around in all directions, but it was too dark and blurry to make out their surroundings. As the stone flakes chipped off of their mouths, their breathing started up again and they found they could move their faces and other body parts. All the stone flakes finally fell off in thin chunks. Chrysalis and Tirek fell to the ground, while Cozy plopped on top of the large round pedestal that was magically formed underneath them when they were cursed.
They groaned and slowly began to stand up and shake off some of the remaining flakes. They looked around to see it was night. They were in what appeared to be the Canterlot statue garden with Canterlot City in view, on the edge of the mountain. Cozy looked up and saw a dark cloud of smoke with yellow eyes staring at her. It grinned wickedly while laughing and then disappeared without a trace.
“Wha…what was that?” Cozy said, staring into the empty space in front of her where the apparition had been.
“Were we just turned to stone?” said Tirek as he stood on his four horse legs and began flailing his arms around, shaking off the flakes.
“Those fools! How long were we out?!” Chrysalis said as she stomped on the ground in anger.
“You guys didn’t see that thing?” Cozy asked her comrades as they looked back at her and then tried to find whatever she was pointing to.
“See what?” Tirek asked.
“Oh who cares?! We all know the last thing we saw: our enemies before us, but now they’re conveniently gone, and it’s night! For all we know, we could have been asleep for centuries!” Chrysalis replied.
“WHO GOES THERE?!” shouted a voice from behind the large rectangular hedge to the side.
“Oops,” Cozy said, gulping.
“You two, run off! I’ll catch up!” Chrysalis told them.
Tirek and Cozy ran into a nearby forest as Chrysalis stayed behind and transformed into a female unicorn guard. She walked over to the source of the voice and could see a beam of light moving around. The voice came from another guard that was using his unicorn magic to light the way and hold a spear next to him. He saw the guard mare in front of him and appeared to recognize her.
“Oh, hey. Did you by any chance hear anythi-AAGGHH!”
Chrysalis tackled him to the ground and used her magic to point the spear right at his face.
“WHERE AM I?! WHAT YEAR IS IT?!” she barked.
“WHAT?! What are you talking about?!” the guard yelped.
“HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE PRINCESS TWILIGHT SPARKLE’S CORONATION?!”
“Uh…eight…eight years? Almost nine? Why?”
Chrysalis’s eyes widened and she looked up to see more lights shining in the distance as voices could be heard. She turned back to the guard, lifted him in the air with her magic, and threw him against a nearby statue. He grunted and fell to the floor, unconscious. Chrysalis snapped the spear in half, transformed into an eagle, and flew off to join Cozy and Tirek.
The male guard slowly started to awaken and saw some of his fellow guards surrounding him, tending to his wounds.
“Are you alright, soldier?” one of them asked.
“That…that girl. She was one of our own. I don’t know why, but she attacked me. She couldn’t stop asking questions like what year it is or something.”
“The statue! It’s broken!” one of the guards said, pointing to the empty pedestal.
The other guards rushed over and surrounded the pedestal.
“Great. And right after Twilight orders a 24-hour watch. We are so going to get demoted for this,” grumbled another guard.
“What’s going on over here?!” said a deep female voice behind them.
Just beyond the corner of the hedge was Tempest Shadow, the new captain of the royal guard, whom Princess Twilight Sparkle had appointed a few years prior. She was wearing her new silvery armor and a helmet with an extended bit for her broken horn to help regulate her magic when she wore it.
“Captain Tempest! The statue! They’ve escaped!” one of the guards answered.
“WHAT?!”
Tempest rushed in and removed her helmet to inspect the pedestal. Her eyes zig-zagged back and forth to find any clues to the Trio’s whereabouts. She noticed cloven hoof-prints on the dirt leading to some grass. Tirek had most likely left them behind.
“Captain, I’m sorry. I was the one on duty. I saw another guard out here but she attacked me. I think it was the changeling queen. I wasn’t able to fight back before she knocked me out,” the injured guard said to Tempest.
“That will do, Spaulder,” she replied. “We all knew this day was coming, I just wish we were more prepared. You three go out that way and see if you can find any of them. Bring them back alive if you capture one. The rest of you stay here. I’ll alert Twilight right away.”
Tempest pointed to several of her guards to give orders. The first three turned around and went in the direction of Tirek’s hoof-prints while the others stayed around with their spears drawn to search the area. Tempest put her helmet back on and rushed back to the castle to tell Twilight everything.
Several hours later, the Trio had run off to hide in the Everfree Forest. They finally decided to camp out by a deserted cave with a small fire lit to keep them warm. Cozy and Tirek were discussing their situation after having been set free. Chrysalis stood a few yards away from them, watching carefully to make sure no one was spying as the other two began to argue.
“I still can’t believe we were there for over eight years!” Cozy pouted. “I should be an adult now!”
“Oh please, that’s nothing. Try taking over a thousand years in Tartarus,” Tirek grumbled.
“Oh be quiet, you two!” Chrysalis bellowed as she returned to the campfire. “It doesn’t matter how long we were there. What matters is we were pathetically defeated and should be plotting our revenge.”
“And how exactly do you plan on getting revenge now?” Tirek asked her. “What good is it anymore? I’ve grown tired of dealing with these stupid ponies.”
“To be fair, you guys weren’t really team players,” Cozy told them. “We probably would have won if we worked together more and actually behaved like friends. You know…the way Twilight and the others did?”
“SILENCE, CRETIN!!” screeched Chrysalis as Cozy shrunk down behind the tree stump she was leaning on. “Last I recall, you were the one taking that bell all for yourself like you were going to use it against us! Also, you nearly betrayed us when you took Discord’s powers! Do you call that being a ‘team player?’ HUH?!?!”
“SHHHHH! Alright, alright, let’s not raise our voices! We don’t know who could be watching!” Tirek whispered as he tried to get Chrysalis to sit back down.
“Well, I say we lay low until we find a way to at least get back at Discord and the royal sisters. They did this to us after all,” Cozy said with anger in her voice. “We basically just time traveled into the future with no way back and I missed out on all those years of growing up!”
“You are a fool if you think we should only take those three, little one,” Chrysalis told Cozy. “This is why I wanted to work on my own. I don’t know why that idiot Grogar…well, Discord decided the three of us would make a good team. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he probably was trying to make us into the good guys on Mount Everhoof.”
“Well, like I said: we would have done better being friends, but you barged right in and called friendship a disease!”
“It is a disease! It took my own family from me!”
“Yeah, well at least you still HAVE a family!!!”
Cozy leaped in the air and flapped her wings as she shouted at the changeling queen. There was a brief moment of silence between the two. Tirek had given up on trying to quiet them down and just sat there, rubbing his forehead with one of his hands as if he had a headache. Suddenly the ground began to shake and they saw a flash of light in the distance. A few moments later, a huge green column of light shot into the sky from the same area and then disappeared. They closed their eyes at first, but Chrysalis opened them back up and stared in amazement at the beam. The energy that emanated from it seemed familiar to her.
“That…that energy. I haven’t felt it since… Scutellum?” she mumbled to herself.
“Who?” Cozy asked.
“Yes, it must be!” Chrysalis said as she finally started to form a smile on her face.
“Must be what?” asked Tirek.
“Before we joined up at Canterlot to stop Twilight and the others, I found Scutellum. He was one of my most loyal drones who had rounded up tons of other changelings that were still loyal to me. They were supposed to meet us in Canterlot, but they were obviously too late once we were turned to stone.”
“And you didn’t think to tell us this before?” Cozy said, angrily.
Suddenly, a loud buzzing sound could be heard around where the light shone. It got louder as the source of the sound got closer. A dark object flew overhead but began to slow down as it noticed the campfire. The creature in the air had two reflective blue eyes and looked below to see the three of them.
“My…MY QUEEN!!” shouted the creature.
He landed in front of them, revealing he was a changeling. He stood taller than most other changelings and clearly had grown more powerful. He rushed forward to Chrysalis and fervently bowed.
“Scutellum? Is that you?!” she said.
“It is I. I didn’t expect to find you this soon! I was growing so impatient; I decided to start taking matters into my own hands. I tried to destroy the Tree of Harmony back there, but I was defeated. The Elements of Harmony have returned.”
“What?! Impossible! King Sombra destroyed them!”
“I’m just as confused as you are, my queen, but with you back, the changelings will rise again. I have an army awaiting you in the Badlands.”
“An army…perfect.”
Chrysalis looked back to the area that Scutellum had just flown in from and then over to Cozy and Tirek.
“So this is one of your loyal changelings, eh?” said Tirek.
“Well, that makes four of us now, I guess. How many others are there?” Cozy asked.
Chrysalis looked back to Scutellum who shared a glance with her. She thought for a few moments and then turned back to the other two.
“Alright. Look, you two, I think it’s time to admit that this alliance is no longer necessary. Your business from here on out is your own. I would say it’s been fun, but I’d be lying,” she said, smugly.
“What?! So you’re just going to rat out on us like that?!” Cozy hollered.
“I have an army waiting for me and I don’t need you anymore. That will be all. Now go your separate ways. Scutellum!”
“Yes my queen,” Scutellum replied.
“Lead me to the others. We have work to do.”
Chrysalis and Scutellum transformed into pegasi and flew away, vanishing in the darkness. Tirek and Cozy were left behind. Cozy looked disappointed while Tirek seemed indifferent.
“Did she just…ARRRGGGH! The nerve of that bug!” Cozy whined as she crossed her arms and sat on the stump.
Tirek sat down across from her, still not showing much emotion.
“Well I guess it’s just you and me now,” Cozy said. “I know you’re tired of the ponies, but I think I have a way we can get back at them. Have you ever heard of the Alicorn Amulet? It’s a necklace that gave Twilight and the others some trouble in Ponyville before I came along. If I could find it, I could get my alicorn powers back and so much more. What do you say we look for it?”
Tirek didn’t respond to the little filly. He continued to sit and stare at the fire. He was cross, but Cozy could tell he was thinking hard.
“Tirek?”
“Cozy, listen,” Tirek began to say, “Chrysalis is right…”
“Wait, you too?!”
“Look, the bottom line is: I’m no longer concerned with Equestria. This is the third time in a row I’ve been defeated by the Elements of Harmony and there’s no use in trying anymore.”
“Do you not even care about what we all did together? How close we came to winning?”
“On the contrary, I cared more than I think either of you did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, did you not notice how powerful I was when the three of us took on everyone in the throne room?”
“Um…well, you did appear a bit taller now that I think about it.”
“Yes. Grogar’s bell gave us all an equal amount of power when we first used it, but I stole magic from the Pillars of Equestria just outside of Canterlot including Starswirl the Bearded, putting me far ahead of you and Chrysalis. I nearly ascended to my next level. I could have easily turned on both of you and won. I could have tried taking the city for myself, but I chose not to.”
“So…you’re trying to say you…spared us? Why?”
Tirek paused for a minute and thought hard. His voice became softer and more reasonable than he had ever tried. He took a deep breath before speaking again.
“Because…because you and Chrysalis are the only real family I’ve had in ages.”
Cozy looked in surprise at what Tirek had said. She never thought she would hear such words come out of his mouth.
“Ever since my brother betrayed me and I was put in Tartarus over a thousand years ago, I have had nothing but contempt for my family. When we found the bell on Mount Everhoof and you started going on about how well we did as friends, I…I actually believed you. I thought perhaps friendship could work after all, but Chrysalis wanted none of it, so I just grew too proud to ever admit it. Even now, I’m in no mood to take it seriously after our defeat. I just want revenge on my brother and to take my kingdom back. I will allow you and Chrysalis to do whatever you want here in Equestria.”
Tirek stood up and began to walk away.
“Where are you going?” Cozy asked.
“To do the only smart thing right now: turn myself in.” he replied.
“You’re surrendering? They’ll just turn you to stone again or send you back to Tartarus.”
“Not if I can get them to just send me back home. Princess Twilight may be powerful, but she still has the weakness of compassion on her side. All I have to do is feign apology and she’ll go easy on me.”
Tirek continued walking on until Cozy stopped him once more.
“Tirek?”
“What?”
“Just…be careful, okay? And…like I told Chrysalis: you’re lucky you at least have a family.”
Tirek stared at the little filly and finally understood what she was trying to say. For a brief moment, he pitied her. He almost wanted to stay behind and help her, but his desire for revenge was set in stone and he wouldn’t let anything get in the way.
“I understand. Farewell, Cozy Glow.”
The horned centaur somberly walked off into the forest, along the trail they used to get to this spot. Cozy continued to look at him until he finally disappeared into the night. She sat down in front of the fire and stared at it. The look on her face was grim. She still wanted revenge on Discord and the royal sisters, but there was also something else she desired; something everyone had that she never could. Despite missing Tirek and Chrysalis, she would no longer be alone once she had what she wanted. She began to move her hoof around on the dirt in front of her and drew two figures, a male pegasus and a female pegasus next to him. She looked at her doodle and smiled, but then started to think hard. She quickly added unicorn horns as well as crowns and other regal accessories to them until they looked like royals. A smile started to form on her face.
“You two will be perfect,” she said, mischievously.
