The best laid schemes of mice and mares
I could hardy believe it. I had won. Years of research and training, months of detailed planning, then a frenzied week of execution, striking swiftly before the powerful could work out how to defend against me — and I had done it. It was over now. Princess Sparkle had been the last, and she now sat before me, impotent in the cage of iron and crystal.
But I shouldn’t celebrate quite yet. I couldn’t get overconfident and complacent. I picked up the princess’s cage with my magic, and strode down the palace’s hall towards the royal residences. Princess Sparkle had sent all the staff away (I presumed to save them from becoming collateral damage), and the palace was eerily silent apart from the sound of my hooves on the stone floor.
I strode into Princess Sparkle’s personal apartment, and set her cage down near the middle of the chambers. I looked around, thinking of the renovations I’d do to make them my own — no, not yet, there’ll be plenty of time for that later. The mirror over Sparkle’s vanity would suffice for my purposes. I brushed the items on the vanity’s shelf aside, and set up the components for the spell, arrayed in a half-circle before the mirror. I energized them with my horn, and the mirror began to pulse and shimmer. Images of the nearby central Equestria flickered in the mirror, going by too fast to see. Then of the kingdom’s outlying areas, and then of the lands beyond, from undersea kingdoms to barren, uninhabited wastes, until the entire world had been covered. And not once had the spell stopped to show me any creatures powerful enough to threaten me that I hadn’t yet neutralized.
The spell’s effect faded, leaving the mirror to show a widely grinning unicorn, the smile of a unicorn who had just achieved her lifelong dream. I cackled in glee; I couldn’t help myself. It really was time to celebrate my total victory after all. There was an unfinished cup on tea on Sparkle’s desk, and I took a sip. Golden tip, with a bit of jasmine to enhance the flavor. “You have good taste in tea, ‘princess’, but I prefer oolong,” I mockingly told Sparkle — pointlessly, as she couldn’t hear me any more than I could hear her.
The pot of tea had gotten cold, so I began heating it with my magic, and as if triggered by this cantrip, the book open on Sparkle’s desk started to flash. It was open to a page that was only a third full, but before my eyes the manuscript was finishing itself. Or not — before my ever-more-curious eyes, it stopped after a single line.
I’ll be right there. in a slightly old-fashioned style of cursive.
I read the page. It was all written in the same old-fashioned style, but by two different hooves. It was like a conversation. Ah, this book was some kind of a message relay. I’d never heard of anything like it; I’d have to study the spellcraft on it sometime. It was all boring personal fluff between Sparkle and her friend, until her last line, TOTW emergency here. Bring your weapon.
Well, one of Sparkle’s friends was on their way to confront me, with their “weapon”. From my spell, I knew they couldn’t be personally powerful, so Sparkle must be counting on her friend’s weapon, whatever that was. I shot Sparkle a quick glare, sure that she had been deliberately non-specific, but she just looked back at me, appearing stoically unperturbed in her confinement. No matter, I had counter-measures to deal with every kind of weapon this world had ever devised.
Those measures were distributed among my battle equipment, but to be as prepared as I could be, I double-checked each one. Arrow or javelin, sword or polearm, battle-ax or war-hammer, I was immune to them all. Then, nearly too faint to hear, the sound of hooves stepping on stone came from the open doorway. I smiled and set out to confront the pony Sparkle foolishly thought could best me.
I soon reached the entrance hall, but the doors were still barred. But however stealthy this pony’s entrance was, hoofsteps in an empty castle don’t make for continued stealth, and I quickly found their source in a side hallway. That source was an elderly unicorn mare. She had a pale orange coat and her mane and tail were striped white and gray curls, and she looked at me with vivid green eyes through thick glasses. Besides her eyeglasses, she also sported a pair of items I didn’t recognize in her ears, and had a strange wood and metal staff slung across her back — presumably her “weapon”.
“Are you the pony trying to take over the world?” she asked me.
I grinned at her. She was no threat — handling a magic staff wouldn’t be a problem. “I already have! The world just doesn’t know it yet. And who are you, to stop me?”
“I’m Sunset Shimmer,” she answered, as if I was supposed to know who that was and be impressed.
I didn’t, and I wasn’t. But I had encountered that name before — somewhere. I tried to remember where...
Sunset saw my confusion and sighed, “I was Princess Celestia’s student, before Twilight Sparkle.”
Ah, yes, that’s where I’d read that name. But the timing was impossible. “That was over half a century ago!”
She tilted her head slightly, “Yeah, so?”
“So, you’d have to be in your sixties!”
“I’m seventy,” she responded, deadpan.
“You’re seventy?!?” I said, incredulous.
She scowled, “Fine, seventy-two.”
How could a pony possibly live to such an age? I didn’t see any wings, but maybe... “Are you an alicorn?” I asked.
That was apparently the wrong thing to ask, as her scowl instantly deepened, and she shot the most powerful fire lance I’d ever seen at me from her horn. I caught it in my magic, but it was still strong enough to make it feel like my horn was burning. If I hadn’t trained with multiple battle mages shooting me at once, I don’t think I could have held it off. How could a unicorn this powerful not have shown up on any of my scans?
No matter. I had something that’d neutralize not only magic staffs, but also unicorns with more magic than I. I threw the black crystal down the hallway and it hit the floor between me and Sunset, and with a flash of white light its anti-magic field enveloped us both.
Sunset’s horn flickered as whatever spell she tried to cast fizzled. She snorted, sat on her haunches, and unslung her staff. Half the staff was narrow and made of metal, the other half was broader and made of wood. She put the wooden end against her right shoulder, “Twilight’s a softie. She’d just lock you in Tartarus or turn you to stone.”
She pointed the narrow, metal end right at me, and I saw it was a hollow tube. She hooked her left forehoof through a loop of twine that went through an intricate mechanism at the center of the staff, “Not me. I play for keeps. If you don’t surrender, I’ll kill you.”
It was a well-delivered threat. She certainly sounded sincere. But she wasn’t going to cow me. Few unicorns knew magic-free combat at all, and of those few none were even in my league. I drew my blade and smiled wickedly at her, “You have it backwards, dearie. I’m going to kill you.” I lunged forward.
Everything happened at once. Sunset pulled the loop of string backwards. Despite the anti-magic field, fire spat from the end of her staff. A force bolt struck my chest, staggering me, and I stumbled in my charge. The sound of a lightning bolt shattering a boulder filled the hall, making my ears ring.
My training kicked in, and I tried to raise a shield, but it instantly fizzled. Then I tried to teleport away, and that spell failed too. The black crystal was stopping my magic, but not Sunset’s staff! While I was failing to cast my spells, she’d lifted the end of her staff slightly. She pulled the loop of string back again, and it was like a sword had sliced into my neck, spraying the wall and floor with blood.
The pain stunned me, and convinced me it was time to run away. But Sunset had already raised the end of her staff a little more, and I’d only barely started to turn when she began pulling the string back again
.
Author's Note
This story has its genesis in the riddle of why the EqG main characters are clearly juveniles when their pony counterparts clearly aren't. Maybe they're the same age, but the ponies are more mature because horses mature much faster than people do. The flip side is that horses also reach senescence much earlier. Which could lead to somepony overlooking and dismissing an important character who is aging like a human...