A princess languishes in a tower;
A dragon guards this fragile flower.
Who will ascend the lofty spire
To save the maiden from dragonfire?
The brave knight pushes back his visor to wipe the sweat from his brow. His armour glints in the fading light. At long last, the end of his journey lies before him.
The tower.
Rising alone into the starry evening sky, it dominates the landscape. A single spire vaulting into the heavens, with no doors or windows at all, save one at the very top. A single window, and a song floating gently out from it.
For a long moment, the knight pauses, entranced by the melody. It is beautiful — as beautiful as he knows the owner of that voice to be. His breath catches in his throat. Soon it will all be over. He will save her from her long imprisonment.
And then the Princess will be his.
He needs no further encouragement. With a flick of his foreleg the visor slams back into place. He starts forward and breaks into a gallop, hurling himself down the hill towards his destiny.
The thunder of his hooves shatters the evening calm, and a flock of pigeons clatters into the sky. The song cuts itself short, and the knight grins savagely beneath his helmet. She knows he is here. That her deliverance is at hand.
Then something stirs in the gloom.
There is a rumble, a grinding, a shifting of rock. The knight’s steps falter, and his headlong gallop slows into a canter. He squints into the murk at the tower’s base, and then he sees it moving.
A vast purple-black body, curled around and around the spire, shifting slowly — and a great head, rising up and up and up on a hideously long neck.
The knight stops in place, his breath hissing between his teeth far too quickly.
The dragon’s eyes open, glowing and slitted and green as it glares down at him. It opens it’s mouth, and he sees row after row of serrated white teeth, each as long as a dagger.
The knight crushes down the sudden urge to scream. He is — he is a soldier! A warrior. He can do this. For her. For her. He peers up again at the window — and there she is! A flash of pale-pink, almost white against the darkness of her room.
His horn glows and the lance strapped across his plated back floats free. He levels it at the dragon, and when his challenge rings out, his booming voice hardly trembles at all.
“Stand down, beast! I have come to free the Princess!”
The monster roars. Green flames flicker in its throat. The knight lowers his lance and charges.
“There he goes.” The booming voice seems to come from every side, and the tower trembles slightly with every syllable. “Running like a rabbit.”
“Good.” Flurry Heart, sprawled on her bed, speaks without looking up.
A vast green eye peers into the window and the room floods with emerald light. “Don’t you think it’s a bit…well, harsh? I hate scaring them like this.”
Flurry sighs impatiently. “It’s necessary.”
“But it makes me feel bad.”
With another dramatically heaved breath, Flurry Heart slaps the book down onto the quilt and rolls to her hooves. “Do we still have to go through this every time?”
The eye winces a little, and the rumbling takes on a hurt tone. “Well, I’m sorry if I don’t like being a monster.”
“It’s what you signed up for!” She stomps a hoof impatiently.
“I had to work so hard as a kid not to be seen as a monster,” the dragon says regretfully, scales grinding against the stones of the tower as he shifts his weight. “And now you’ve got me doing it twenty-four seven.”
Flurry Heart’s face softens, and she moves a little closer to the window. “I’m sorry, Uncle Spike. I know…I know it’s a lot to ask of you.”
He sighs; an exhalation so powerful that the floor beneath her hooves seems to tremble. “You know I’d do anything for you. But…it’s been nearly a year. How long are we going to keep this up?”
The sympathetic expression morphs back into displeasure. “As long as it takes. It’s barely been eight months, anyway. Don’t exaggerate.”
“Your parents miss you. Twilight misses you.”
“Well, then they should have thought about that and kept all those idiots at court away from me. You know what it was like, Spike. A proposal every other day! Ugh.”
A low laugh. “Is it so terrible to be popular?”
“I wasn’t popular. My crown was popular.” She scowls. “None of them knew me in the least.”
“I get it,” he says, the single eye in her view managing to look remarkably sympathetic. “I do. You needed a break. But…how long are we going to hang out here? What’s your plan?”
She rolls her eyes. “Not everyone is like Auntie Twi. Not everypony has a plan.”
“You sure seemed to have one when we arrived here. Growth spells for me, magic class for you. The three trials for all your visitors. But no one has passed even the first.”
Flurry Heart sighs and lowers her haunches to the floor. “Well…good. I don’t want anyone to pass them.”
“So what are we going to do? Just hang around this mountain until…until when? You’re going to live a long time, Flurry. I don’t think I can handle a century here.”
“So don’t, then.” She fluffs out her feathers and hunches her wings up close to her face. “I’m not holding you hostage here. You’re not the prisoner.”
The vast eye narrows dangerously. “Nor are you, young lady. You’re in a tower and you have wings. And magic. And super-equine strength. No one is stopping you leaving.”
“I know.” A sigh. “I know, Uncle Spike.”
“Come on, Flurry.” A note of pleading enters his voice. “You can talk to me. What’s going on with you?”
“Isn’t is enough that I’m tired of all those morons hanging around me and trying to get their hooves on all my delicious royal power?” She flattens her ears. “It’s been going on since I was sixteen. I’m just sick of it.”
“Did you ever talk to—?”
“—Mom? C’mon, Uncle Spike. How much use do you think she would be? She’s the princess of love, she’s been gagging for me to introduce her to a coltfriend since I was a kid.” She drops her head low. “I think she encourages them.”
Spike hums, a long, low note of sympathy. “I’m sure she just wants you to be happy.”
“If she thinks that’s the way to make me happy, she doesn’t know me very well at all.”
Spike sighs again, and the eye leaves the window, to be replaced by a single huge claw. It just barely fits through the window, and Flurry stares at it for a moment or two before finally getting up and walking over to lean against it.
It isn’t much of a hug, but it’s…enough. It’s enough for now.
The armoured figure pauses at the crest of the hill. The face is covered, the dark slits in the red helm concealing whatever lies beneath. The knight looks down at the tower. White stone, a giant looming over the valley. The trees are like mere shrubbery beside it. The gigantic purple beast slumbering at the tower’s base only adds to that impression.
The red knight lingers for a long time, and once or twice seems almost like they are about to turn back. But at last, the crimson-plated figure begins to pick their way down the hill. The sun glints off the embossed rook on the crupper.
As the stranger approaches, the dragon raises its head and heaves what could almost be a sigh.
“Get out of here,” it snarls, in a voice so deep it shakes the ground beneath the red knight’s hooves.
The red knight does not speak. Does not move. Does nothing but stand there, stock still. Waiting.
The dragon growls again, long and low and threatening, but still the stranger does not run.
He opens his mouth, and green fire flickers deep in his throat. “I won’t warn you again.”
That blank red visage is impassive. Impervious. The red knight does not move.
Discomfort registers on the dragon’s face, but he opens his mouth to let loose the flame.
“—Wait.”
The voice that speaks is small and distant, high above the dragon and the knight alike, emanating from the tower’s single window. But it is clear, and firm, and the sound carries all the way down.
The dragon is nonplussed. “Are you — are you sure?”
There is no audible response from the window, but the dragon frowns in confusion. Nonetheless, he shifts his body, and heaves his vast bulk slightly away from the tower’s base.
“Right this way, then, I suppose, Sir Knight.”
The red knight unfurls pale wings from protective metal flaps in the armour’s sides and flaps up and over the dragon’s belly. Concealed behind the great purple scales is a door. Small and unremarkable, of plain wood and iron.
The red knight rests a hoof on the door, and with one motion, shoves it open. The dragon stares as the stranger vanishes inside.
The door does not lead to a staircase, a ladder, or even a room. The red knight steps forward, and the door slams shut as soon as the last red-armoured hoof is through. The knight pauses and the helmet rotates from side to side as the occupant peers into the darkness.
But the blackness is absolute, and nothing can be seen. Even the outline of the door is gone. Hesitantly, the red knight shifts their weight and places a tentative hoof a little further into the void. As the hoof touches where the floor should be, blue light ripples out, like a leaf landing on a pond.
The red knight studies the ripples until they fade, and then straightens up, something resigned in their stance. That magic is too familiar a blue to be mistaken.
Shifting her hooves enough to generate enough light to see it by, the knight reaches up and removes her helmet. Freed from their confinement, blue ringlets bounce across her peytral and crinet.
Cozy Glow lets out a long, slow breath as the blue light dances through the darkness around her. “I might have known you wouldn’t make this easy,” she says, and her red eyes gleam.
One hoof before the next, the pegasus stalks the darkened halls. The only illumination is generated by the impacts of her hooves upon the intangible floor, and the percussive rhythm of them sends strange blue lights skittering across her face.
She walks until it seems she has been walking a very long time. There are no walls, no doors, no corners. Nothing to mark the passage of time or space. Her eyes narrow, and she begins to trot, then to gallop. Frustration turns to anger, and finally she skids to a halt.
“Flurry!” she shouts, and her voice echoes in the darkness. “Flurry Heart, let me in already! This is ridiculous!”
There is no answer, and the blue ripples fade. Cozy Glow is in the darkness once more.
She presses her lips together. “Fine,” she says, through gritted teeth. “Fine, if that’s how you want to play it.”
She flaps into the air, just in case flight is the answer to the puzzle — the Princess is way too damn fond of puzzles — and when it is not, her face twists and she draws her sword. Where logic fails, violence can answer.
She wings her way up, higher, higher, and then dives back down, sword foremost, to drive it home into the invisible ground.
Light flares up — brilliantly, blindingly blue — and Cozy staggers back, sword forgotten. Colour swirls and floods outward from her sword, and suddenly the floor is marble. Pillars materialise, shimmering crystal, and an arched crystal roof high above.
Cozy’s ears flatten against her skull. The crystal court.
And finally, the ponies appear. Crystal ponies, Canterlot nobles, unicorns and pegasi and earth ponies. All well-dressed and well-educated and well ready to condemn anyone who doesn’t fit the mould. All of them looking at her, with disdain on their faces and disgust in their hearts.
“You’re back, then,” a voice says coldly, and Cozy spins in place to see the throne dais behind her.
On the throne sit the Princess and the Prince Consort, and below the dais, right in front of Cozy, is the speaker.
“Flurry Heart.” The anger leaves Cozy’s face as she speaks the words, though her chest is still heaving, her breath still coming too hard.
“Cozy Glow.” The second Princess looks at Cozy without expression. Without warmth and without hate. Just looking, blankly. Waiting.
“I thought you’d come back,” Cozy says, her voice tight, trying to ignore the other ponies whispering and watching. Illusions, they must be.
The Princess — for she is every inch the royal and not the mare Cozy knew — sniffs. “I thought you never would.”
“I wasn’t wrong,” Cozy insists. “You shouldn’t — you shouldn’t have run off like that.”
“I wasn’t wrong,” the Princess mimics. The courtiers laugh. “You never are.”
Cozy Glow flinches and stares from side to side. “Why are they all here?”
The Princess’ face shows not a hint of mercy. “Because this is my life. This is how I live.”
“It doesn’t have to be your life.” I don’t want it to be my life.
“See that throne?” The Princess points a wing. “That’ll be my throne, someday.” The wing shifts to point at her father. “And that one would have been yours.”
The courtiers are laughing, elbowing one another, but Cozy Glow tries to shut them out. To focus only on the mare in front of her. “You have to understand — I don’t — I don’t do well under public scrutiny. I wouldn’t be a good royal.”
“You mean you wouldn’t want to try.”
The laughter is rising in volume. Some of them are cackling like hyenas. Howling like wolves. Cozy’s eyes flick desperately towards the door, the window, her sword. If she told them all to shut up, would they? If she — if she ordered them to, would they?
The Princess slams her hoof against the marble floor. “Cozy!” Little cracks spiderweb out from the impact.
“I do want to try,” she says, her voice ragged. “I do.”
“You want to be with me?” The Princess forges toward her, her steps thunderous. “You know what I am.” A smile plays around the edges of her lips, a horrible smile.
You want to be with me? You know what I am.
Her own words, twisted back around on her.
“I only — I only said that to warn you. The people wouldn’t have been happy—”
The people are howling like jackals, pressing in on every side.
“—They wouldn’t want me!”
“I wanted you!” The Princess’ voice booms above them all.
The ponies are reaching for Cozy, clawing at her, their laughter a physical force battering at her. How could she love their Princess? How could she be worthy? After the things she had done, the crimes she had committed — her every insinct was screaming at her to flee —
But she had fled, before. She had fled, and she had ruined it all.
Not this time.
The Princess is still bearing down on her like a warship, wings spread. “I wanted you!”
“And I want you!” Cozy screams back, her own wings flaring. “I want you! I want to be a stupid consort! I’ll sit on the throne and I’ll wave and smile and suck up to whoever you want me to if it means I get to be with you!”
Suddenly, there is silence. The court is gone. The dais is gone. The ponies are gone. All is darkness again. Only the Princess remains, and she is fading.
She smiles, and it a smile so sad it could break Cozy’s heart.
Her last words hang in the air even after she vanishes. “Why couldn’t you have said that eight months ago?”
Blue light sparks, and a door appears.
The Princess looks up, and a thousand emotions flit over her face too quickly to be named — before the shutters come back down, and she smiles that empty royal smile. “You made it through the maze, then.”
The mare in the doorway looks broken. Wings trailing on the floor, head down, red armour dulled. “I…I did.”
“I’m sorry,” Flurry says, tentatively. “I had to be sure.”
“Sure that what?” demands Cozy, but the snarl is only half-hearted. “That you could — humiliate me? Make me sorry?”
Flurry Heart flinches. “Aren’t you?”
Cozy stops, the wind gone from her sails. “I…”
Hurt twists the other mare’s face. “Oh.”
‘Wait, Flurry.” Cozy puts out a hoof. “It’s not like that.”
“What is it like, then? I — I’ve waited here for nearly a year, Cozy. Waiting to see when you’d decide you were ready. If you’d decide. Why did you come, if you still aren’t?”
“Wait,” Cozy spreads her wings. “Wait. I — weren’t you there, in the room? Just now?”
“What?” It takes Flurry a moment to understand. “Oh — you mean the Social Situation Simulation spell? No. I cast that so long ago I’d nearly forgotten.”
The other mare is silent.
“It’s one of Clover the Clever’s,” Flurry offers, weakly.
Cozy Glow coughs. “It was…very believable.”
“What…what happened, in it?”
“Don’t you know?”
A shake of the head. “No.”
“I…I apologised,” Cozy Glow says softly, though it is not quite the truth. And then, “I’m sorry, Flurry. I do…I do want you.”
Flurry looks up sharply. “You know I can’t give up my thr—”
“—I don’t want you to. I want you, however you’ll have me. I want—”
The sentence is never finished. A white muzzle presses against the pink, and soft white wings enfold them both.
