A Wraith in Winter

Lapis Lulzi fell into the snow with a cry as her foreleg buckled. The makeshift bandage slipped around her knee and spilled dark red droplets into the snow. The pale blue Earth Pony bent down and pulled the strip of cloth taut with her teeth. Tears froze to her muzzle from the pain while the cold winds raged around the fallen pony and threatened to bury her.

The Earth Pony struggled to catch her breath, feeling the cold air bite at her lungs. “Emerald,” she called out into the storm. “Wait!”

Ahead of her, the blurry shape of a green Earth Pony halted in the snowstorm for a breath and turned back. Lapis could barely make out Emerald’s namesake green eyes through the snowstorm, then they disappeared as she turned away. Emerald continued trudging through the snow, away from Lapis.

Lapis watched her supposed herdmate abandon her with wide eyes.

For nearly a season, they had bunked together in a small mining town, so new that it didn’t even have a name yet. The Earth Ponies, both miners by trade and talent, were part of a herd of Equestrians entranced by the promise of adventure in the Frozen North. For a thousand years, it had been nothing but snow storms and blasted tundra, but then the Crystal Empire reappeared, straight out of the old stories.

The new Royal Couple had defeated the legendary tyrant unicorn Sombra, and Princess Cadance offered generous contracts to expand the crystal mines all along the mountains. Her husband, the Captain of the Royal Guard, Shining Armor, promised them safety. Lapis and a hundred other ponies had taken up their offer to build a small community nestled in the Crystal Mountains, one of a few dozen set up over the past two years.

The Crystal Empire was rich, but it wasn't without its problems. The Crystal Ponies were skittish around the trains from Equestria, Lapis noticed, and tended to keep to themselves. The few Crystal Ponies in the small town had their own bunkhouse. Several weeks ago, the shipments were delayed by the Crystalling and the birth of Princess Flurry Heart. Something happened during the celebration that required the Royal Sisters to intervene.

It was all a lie. Lapis grit her teeth and stood. The blood streaming from the slash on her leg was freezing to her coat, but Lapis seized on the pain as a motivator and trudged after Emerald, following her tracks before the snow buried them. Emerald and Lapis were following the train tracks south, to the rail station and other ponies. The snowstorm had buried the rails overnight, and Lapis had no idea if they were even headed the right direction anymore. Everywhere she looked, she only saw snow. Snow, and dark shapes in the distance.

The attack had come at night, during a sudden snowstorm. They had too few Pegasi to clear the storm, so the miners quit early and retreated to their bunkhouses, burning the coal they dug up in their search of crystals suitable for enchantment. The miners were paid a generous stipend, provided by the Crystal Crown, and additional quota for whatever they dug up. The early arrivals had already made a thousand bits in a single season.

Emerald and Lapis had been a fun evening with drinking and games with the other mares; it hadn’t been the first time the Frozen North had sent a wild storm into the valley, and the ponies weren’t concerned. Lapis and Emerald huddled together under two quilts and discussed which of the stallions in camp would make a good herdmate with a few of the other mares in the barracks. As always, there were too few stallions and too many mares.

Garnet was discussing a rumor she’d heard from the mailpony about the other mining camps sharing their stallions around when a window shattered from the outside. A powerful gust of wind threatened to knock over the lanterns hanging from the rafters of the wooden building. The mares in the bunkhouse, twelve in total, quickly propped a spare mattress up against the window. As Lapis leaned against the mattress to support it, she heard screaming from the other bunkhouse across the way. She pulled the edge of the mattress back and peered through the broken window to see the other building on fire. The wooden building was going up in smoke that mixed with the falling snow. Before she could raise an alarm, a pony fled out into the snow, towards Emerald’s bunkhouse.

Shapes emerged from the wind and surrounded her; they were shaped like ponies, but moved too stiffly in stumbling gaits. The mare gave a wordless howl of terror, and one of the shapes leapt onto her back and drove her down into the snow. Emerald watched, frozen in terror, as the whinny was silenced with a sickening crunch that carried over the howling wind. The shapes turned towards her building.

Her memory was fuzzy after that. The figures in the snow pounded on the sides of the building. One tried to climb through the window, gnashing its teeth before Emerald caved its head in with a powerful strike of both front hooves. Lapis had been sliced across the foreleg from the broken glass, and Emerald tied a strip of pillowcase around the wound.

Lapis only remembered the piercing blue eyes and mottled skin of the not-pony, just like the pictures of those disgusting changelings that attacked the Royal Wedding. It had been the talk of Equestria for a season afterward. The Princesses had been attacked in their palace in Canterlot, by an enemy that nopony had even known existed.

Nopony but the Princesses, Lapis corrected herself as she pushed forward. They had known about them, and Celestia and Luna had done nothing. Luna, Nightmare Moon, had returned to the welcoming hooves of her sister and brought nothing but misery with her.

The other windows were hastily barricaded, but it wasn’t enough. A lantern was thrown by a screaming mare, and the building went up in smoke. Garnet was dragged through a hole in the wooden wall when the creatures broke through.

Lapis didn’t try to save her; she used her pickaxe to chop through some loose floorboards, and pushed some snow aside. Emerald and her escaped by crawling under the elevated foundation, digging themselves out of the snow. The not-ponies avoided the fire above them, retreating into the storm without words. Emerald seized a burning blank in her teeth and waved it about, and Lapis limped after her. They didn’t have time to grab their goggles, coats or boots. They waded out into the snow, naked except for their fur, trying to outrun the storm and the monsters pursuing them.

Lapis realized she was going to die. “Please Celestia,” she breathed out haggardly. “Please, let me make it back to my family.” No amount of bits was worth this. She hadn’t written to her mothers and father in a year, not since they had needled her to settle down and find a herd. Well, she snorted, I tried to find a herd, didn’t I? And she left me to die.

A howl echoed behind Lapis in the storm. The pony sobbed and kept moving forward, trudging through the snow one hoof at a time. Her eyelids began to freeze, and suddenly she didn’t feel so cold anymore. In fact, she was almost sleepy. Lapis kept stumbling forward until a shape approached her from the front. She watched, feeling detached from her own body, as Emerald staggered out of the cold winds ahead.

“I thought you left me,” she managed to slur and fell to her knees.

Emerald moved stiffly forward, bright blue eyes burning through the churning snowflakes. Her lower jaw was gone, ripped from the muzzle. Frozen blood streaked across her barrel and forelegs. Emerald didn’t seem to notice.

Lapis was too tired and cold to cry, or scream out in terror. The blue earth pony laid down in the snow and waited. She couldn’t run, even if she had the will and the energy. There was nowhere to run; the rail station was too far away.

The shapes in the snow danced around the pair. Emerald made out equine figures pirouetting in the snow, like a dance. Howls echoed through the storm and reverberated in Lapis' bones. A shadow fell across the fallen pony. Emerald stared down unblinkingly. With the last of her strength, Lapis raised her wounded foreleg.

Emerald gently pushed the foreleg aside, then pressed her cold hoof to Lapis’ throat.