Ghostblaze
"Come immediately to my chambers," Celestia had ordered. Ghostblaze found out through a guard, who had woken her up from her slumber with his harsh knocking.
Ghostblaze strode towards the chambers of Queen Celestia with a relaxed pace, a slump in her body that spoke volumes as to her mood. Her teeth gripped down on a hot loaf of bread, recently taken from the kitchens, and she tore off a large chunk as the loaf was dragged away by telekinesis, which she promptly set her teeth to grinding into a thick, tasty sort of paste, ignoring the heat of the food. A pair of royal guards approaching from the other direction received her sharp glare and a subdued, teeth-baring smile, causing the pair to avert their eyes until they had passed her by.
Worthless, the scarred grey mare thought, as she let the smile fall off her face, her lips twisting into a scowl. "Mighty and disciplined fighters," and yet somehow they all manage to flinch when I give them a smile. She continued walking down the stone halls of the Alicorn's Castle, metal hoof coverings giving quiet metallic clangs with each fall of a hoof. With her slow pace, it took a fair while to reach the Queen's chambers. The heavy wooden door guarding the room was flanked by another pair of guards. Ghostblaze approached smiling.
"I've been summoned, correct?" She telekinetically lifted the loaf of bread to her lips again, and bit off another massive chunk. One of the guard's—the one on the left—lips curled slightly downward at the edges in contempt. The other made no motion but a nod. Ghostblaze looked to the one on the right and gave a slight tilt of her head. Then she turned to the pony on the left. Crumbs fell from her mouth as it opened to speak. "Hey, fresh meat. Open the door."
"Open it yourself, Blade," he said back, disdain obvious in his voice.
Ghostblaze's smile widened a bit as she chewed. She swallowed. "You're on door-guarding duty for an immortal princess with magical abilities beyond common scale. If ponies don't let you at least open your door once in a while, you'd be truly useless, wouldn't you? And none of us want that." The pony (Ghostblaze had no way of knowing if they were a stallion or a mare while they were wearing that enchanted armor, though she didn't particularly care which any given guard was) hesitated a moment, presumably during which his discipline strangled his retort, then moved to open the door. Ghostblaze walked in, and the door closed behind her. The smile on her face grew more subdued, and she took another bite of bread. "We should eliminate new guys. Is there anything more worthless and annoying?"
Queen Celestia looked up from the various scrolls set on the carpeting around her seated form. She gave a small smile, though her eyes simply looked tired. Ghostblaze had heard other ponies saying that Celestia looked ageless to them, but to Ghostblaze, the subtle signs of weariness on the Queen's expression were always present and obvious.
"You do remember that all the current old guys grew from new ones, Blaze, correct?"
"Yes. A shame we can't skip that transitional phase. There's nothing that rouses my hunger quite so much as an arrogant fresh recruit." Ghostblaze tore off another chunk of bread. "They're not yet afraid of me, and it makes them dreadfully tempting as possible prey."
"You could learn to ignore your hunger for violence," Celestia said. She said it with almost a seductive tone, halfway between normal speech and a coo. She had a fondness for speaking that way to friends and her upper-level guards. A way of testing their self control... or just playing, the upper-level guards were never too sure. They tended to assume it was a test. Ghostblaze assumed play.
"What use would I be if I wasn't hungry for blood?" Ghostblaze said through a partial mouthful of bread. She strode over to the Queen, and sat down in front of her. "I'd be about as useful as all the previous Sun's Blades, and none of them did much to serve the nation at large." Celestia raised her eyebrows slightly.
"They guarded me perfectly well and more diligently than you, and they didn't make ill-tempered brutes of themselves in public."
All polished armor and diligence, my predecessors. "Useless," Ghostblaze said with a small shrug. "What did you call me for?"
"Work," the queen said.
"I'm pretty sure you could call me in here to fuck you and you'd call it work," Ghostblaze said. She finished the bread in her mouth. "Details?"
The Queen gave a gentle laugh. "You're to guard my student when she goes to wastelands to sign a peace offering between us and the Changlings."
"The bugs who tried to invade Canterlot. What have they offered us to earn peace, my queen?"
"They have substantial power, and they have submitted and begged mercy." Celestia gave her a playfully judging look. "Still insisting on calling me queen?"
"You're in essence the sole ruler of a nation by blood. That means you're the queen." Ghostblaze tore off another chunk of bread. "Why does the mighty Twilight Sparkle need guarding?"
"The Changelings are shapeshifters, and they have little reason to love me or Twilight Sparkle, even if they're sincere about wanting to surrender. Twilight is skilled, perceptive, and powerful, sure, but not... Harsh, enough, to defend herself ably." Ghostblaze laughed.
"So, I'm to protect her. Wonderful. I'm sure your famous little bookworm and I will get along splendidly."
"I'm sure you will," Celestia quipped dryly. There was a moment of silence.
"I presume we'll also be traveling with the usual retinue of guards," Ghostblaze said, more seriously. Celestia nodded.
"Shining Armor, by request, will also accompany." Ghostblaze gave a snort of disgust, and looked to the door.
"Him?"
"Yes, him," Celestia said with practiced calm.
"You know, letting him accompany me somewhat defeats the point of sending me."
"I'm aware of the differences between your respective beliefs regarding mission policies," Celestia said simply. "He'll behave. More than you will, I'm sure." Ghostblaze drew in a long breath, before giving out a tired sigh. After a short interval of silence, she chuckled.
"Lovely. This ought to be the most fun assignment ever."
"Ghostblaze, you know as well as I about your less than ideal relationship with the Equestrian public. A successful diplomatic mission, or saving the life of one of the elements of Harmony, should it come down to it, could improve your reputation." There was a stillness in the air for a moment, a vacuum of speech or reaction. Ghostblaze laughed again, this time more bitterly.
"If I don't behave..." Ghostblaze started, but the end didn't come. It wasn't necessary to say. The two understood each other completely, and Celestia knew what the scarred mare would have finished with. "...Is that all you wanted, Celestia?" Ghostblaze asked, relatively subdued.
"It is. Twilight will arrive here tomorrow, likely around noon-ish, and you'll depart in the evening, by foot. Do anything you feel necessary to prepare before then." Celestia had closed her eyes and sighed. She held her eyes shut tight for several seconds. When she opened them again, her face was hard, her mouth a cold line of hard indifference. "If you are attacked... Do what comes naturally."
And Ghostblaze had flashed her wolfish smile, given a bow that would have been hard to firmly classify as either mocking or sincere, and said, "It shall be done, my Queen."
Shining Armor
Shining knew Ghostblaze by reputation long before he first saw her. In the guard academy, she was practically a legend—the sort of infamous troublemaker that fed the voracious appetite of gossip on a daily basis. He had heard numerous tales of her violent nature, her practice of sparring so brutally she soon ran out of partners to spar with, the time she beat an instructor in a sparring combat match, the time she broke her coltfriend's leg... The last one in particular seemed to get passed around a lot. Whether it was because that was the last thing she had done before getting kicked out of the guard academy, or because it involved both dating and violence, Shining could not say.
Any of those things could have been falsehoods, so far as Shining was aware, as could any of the rumors behind why she had since become the Sun's Blade. Those flew as well, and it was not hard to see why. A rejected royal guard candidate with discipline problems, handed what was debatably the most honored position in the Equestrian military, that of Celestia's personal guard and champion, and—this was what, no doubt, truly made her hiring into gossiping gold—from a jail cell. Just hearing the story made you want to go chatter about it to anypony who would listen and start throwing around conspiracy theories.
He had since seen her, and his own assessment couldn't seem to do him justice for deciding whether or not he believed the stories. She was taller than most mares, and even most stallions, but she wasn't a particularly large mare; speaking in terms of bulk, she was rather unimposing compared to the average guard. She was muscled, sure, but in a lithe, honed sort of way. It gave her slender frame a strange feel of strength that somehow felt out of place with her lanky, dirty body. Her face, eternally twisted into either a scowl or a wild grin, was decorated by two prominent scars, and the rest of her body by many more. The silver collar and silver horseshoes of her office glistened on her dark grey coat, and the blades attached to the front of the horseshoes had made her every step click oddly on the stone of the floor. Hoof blades were an old and somewhat awkward weapon; when he saw them on her, it had been the first occasion he'd seen them on anypony. Her coat was dirty, her dark blue mane long and crudely styled, hanging loosely over her face. And, though Shining wasn't completely sure he hadn't merely imagined it, he could have sworn she carried a lingering odor of iron about her alongside the stench of flesh and sweat.
But despite the strange look of her body, all things considered, she felt far more dangerous than anyone under his command, even if Shining couldn't envision her defeating some of the larger of the experienced guards in the force.
Regardless of how much she lived up to her legends, however, he didn't want to be tasked with dealing with her. But he was. As captain of the guard, he was responsible for the health and safety of his guards, which meant that he had been the one who had to confront her over injuring guards in sparring matches. This, in practice, meant he had to confront her fairly often, for the mare seemed to use the sparring grounds almost as a place to hunt. Shining had a clear memory of how frustrating those confrontations had been; royal guard sparring was assumed to be rough, and technically, he had no authority to punish her for her actions, however brutal. She'd told him as much.
"The young Captain of the Guard, Shining Armor, trying to criticize me for doing my honest best against a new recruit. We're fighting now to prepare for battles to the death later. Would you go easy on them?" She had said. Shining had restrained his response then, trying to keep a civil tone. He had known, even starting his attempt to correct her, that he couldn't do anything with force or punishment. Civility was all he could use to try and persuade her.
"You went beyond trying, Ghostblaze. You cut him far beyond demand and you broke several ribs. He surrendered to you, and you kept at it."
Ghostblaze had laughed, then. And as she did so, Shining's weak hopes for a good result had died.
"What, and an enemy wouldn't? Why, one would almost think you don't respect them." Ghostblaze had smiled and taken a step towards him, her wild, pinkish eyes glaring up at him. The smaller of the two scars on her muzzle, a small vertical scratch over one edge of her mouth, twisted with her smile, and the effect had been eerie to see. "I wasn't aware striking someone in a fight was an offense."
"Sparring is only for pract-" Shining had begun.
"Though, it isn't as though you'd have any authority over me even if it was," she cut him off. Her bright fuchsia eyes had met his, narrowing in anger as they staring into his own. Captain," she added. The way she'd said his title had made apparent the venom aimed his way, despite the words themselves lacking any implication of anger.
And, as she'd said, he didn't have any authority over her, and so she'd walked away with no punishment, and no reason at all to not be cruel in sparring again. Which, naturally, she was, over, and over, and over again. Shining had felt compelled to make another attempt after each incident. None had ended well.
And that's who Princess Celestia assigns to guard my little sister as she goes to interact with the Changelings. The thought didn't make Shining angry, though he felt it perhaps should have. All he felt was a dull confusion and a vague sense of betrayal. She shouldn't have been necessary. He'd volunteered for the mission as soon as she'd sent for him to discuss the idea, and she'd agreed that his absence in Canterlot was acceptable and that he would be useful as an extra guard for his sister. He was captain of the guard. Why was sending Ghostblaze along necessary? Was it just an extra precaution?
"Are you still worried about the mission tomorrow?" Shining jolted from his thoughts at the speech, whipping his head around to look for the speaker. Cadence laughed as she approached. "Apparently so."
"Sorry, Cadence," Shining said, rubbing a hoof on the back of his head. "I guess I am."
"She'll do fine, you know. And you'll be there to protect her even if she doesn't." Cadence nuzzled her head gently against Shining's neck. It was stiff, he realized. He'd been leaning forwards, staring down into his desk; for too long, evidently. Shining turned around more fully in his chair and returned the affectionate gesture.
"I know, I know... Still. I'm the big brother. It's my job to be nervous."
"I was under the impression that your job was to defend Canterlot and manage the training of the royal guard," Cadence said playfully, as she drew away. Shining smiled.
"There's that too." He turned back to his desk and sighed as he leaned back on his chair. "I dunno. It's just so... Odd. The treaty with Chrysalis," he said, thoughts turning back to his marriage, and the monstrous queen who'd almost ruined it. Almost. He'd been magically recharged with Cadence's aid, and barely repelled her. The memory made him suddenly question if his presence at this meeting would be seen as an insult. "...and the mare Celestia originally intended to assign as the primary protector of this mission," he finished quietly, after a moment.
"Who is it? You never said." Cadence asked, in a more serious voice. Shining looked back to her again.
"Ghostblaze." Cadence's eyes widened with surprise, and Shining caught a flicker of something on her face before her face became merely surprised. Disgust. Shame... he'd seen something. Or, he thought he did. It was hard to say for sure. Cadence was rather hard to read at times.
"The madmare?"
"The madmare," Shining repeated solemnly. "I've got no idea what Celestia's thinking, having her on a diplomatic assignment." Cadence was silent for a moment, but then smiled again. She nuzzled her husband's neck again.
"Just be extra cautious then, Shining," she said, before planting a light kiss on Shining's cheek. Shining gave a chuckle.
"Is that all I get before heading off on a multi-week peace negotiation effort with my sister, 8 of my men, and a psychopath?"
Cadence laughed too. "Well, I'll consider giving you a bit more love before you go. Maybe. If you can get yourself perfectly calm and like your normally loving self in the next... hmm, fifteen minutes or so." Shining gave a weak sputter of objection.
"Wha- but, Cadence-!" She giggled as she headed to one of the other rooms that composed their combined chambers.
"It's perfectly fair play, dear. I would know; My talent is love, after all." Shining didn't move, but he did find an admittedly still strained smirk on his face after she had shut the door between the rooms. He sighed as he looked back to his desk. Nothing was on the desk's hard, clean wooden surface, but it still made a decent spot to think. And despite his wife's efforts—and he recognized them for being that—to cheer him up, he still needed some more thought before he could call himself settled. His mind flashed back to the flicker of disgust Cadence had shown.
If that was really there, perhaps she does too.
He took a deep breath in the silence. I can be calm about this. I'll be there, as well as 8 other royal guards. Twilight herself commands a lot of power. And Ghostblaze... Well, as unsuited as she seems, Celestia has to have picked her for some reason. He thought of the day Celestia had chosen his little sister to be her personal student. And now, she was a several-time savior of Equestria. She had a reason. She must have.
"Well," he said aloud to the now-empty room. "I guess, in the end, it'll all depend on you, Sis."
And the room answered back with silence.
Twilight Sparkle
Twilight Sparkle hopped off the chariot that had brought her to the entrance of the Castle with what could have been accurately termed apprehension. It was strange to her how her nerves seemed to work—on any occasion where she was presented a challenge, there seemed to be about a fifty-fifty chance of absolute confidence. The alternative, it would seem to her, was being an anxious wreck about facing said challenge. Today, she felt somewhere in between, and by the fluctuations from one to the other it seemed her mind wasn't quite set on the matter of how to feel.
She gave the two pegasi guards who'd flown her in a formal nod and an appreciative "thanks," and they nodded in turn, before departing, no doubt to immediately go do some other work. Canterlot, she thought as she turned to the castle entrance. Home. She took a moment to enjoy the feel of nostalgia, as she did whenever she returned to Canterlot, and then started into the castle.
When I was a foal, this castle seemed so imposing, she recalled. Her stomach had an odd, hollow feeling in it, and her head was developing a slight ache. Her stress felt silly. I confronted Chrysalis no problem before. Signing a treaty with her should be a piece of cake. Comparatively. She nodded to the guards standing to either side of the main door, who opened the thick doors smoothly.
I wonder what facing her was, then, metaphorically. Some kind of bitter food, maybe?
"Twili!" came the call, almost as soon as she had entered the door. She smiled. It was apparent that Shining had been waiting for her. And, indeed, he was standing a short distance from inside the front door, smiling over at her. She dashed over to him in a quick sprint, and they embraced.
"I came to greet you," he said, somewhat unnecessarily, though Twilight appreciated the effort anyways. He was wearing his distinctive purple body armor, though he wasn't wearing the helmet. Twilight was glad of that. She found it rather strange looking when he did have it on, a foreign element framing a familiar face. He always looked, and, she suspected, tried to act, a little more serious when he had his helmet on.
"I can see that," she said, giving a small giggle. She suspected immediately that her nervousness may have contributed to that, though of course, it was also just sort of funny. Perhaps her nervousness was making her mentally overstate her nervousness.
There was a brief lull in interaction, and then Shining said simply, "Well, I suppose you'll want a rundown of exactly what's going on."
"That would be rather nice, yes," Twilight said, following her brother as he started to head further into the castle. They moved together in silence for a short time, and then her brother started to rattle off their plan of action. The number of guards, the path they'd take, things they were bringing... Twilight filled in all the blanks in her own rather limited knowledge as he spoke. All that she had been told was that she would be sent to sign a treaty with the Changelings. It seemed, thus, logically, that getting more knowledge about her task would fill her with confidence. But it wasn't. Her nerves were swinging more towards nervousness, which seemed a bizarrely illogical progression to her.
Twilight didn't like illogicality.
"Are you okay with going?" Twilight asked Shining as they turned a corner. Hearing about her coming trial was making her sick. Shining cut off his descriptions of each of the team's guards and looked at her.
"Hmm?"
"Going to make a treaty with Chrysalis after the whole, 'Replacing your wife, taking over your kingdom,' thing."
Shining looked up in thought. "It doesn't bother me that much. We were all deceived, and she was only doing it for her invasion plan." Shining noticed Twilight's irritated expression and chuckled. "Well, all deceived besides you." His expression grew tense again. "Still, no. Not too much. I'm more worried she might take offense than me."
"She could," Twilight offered in comment. "Though she's offering a surrender and she was the one who manipulated you. If anything, I would assume she would be apologetic, at least publically."
"True," Shining said. Twilight noticed a flicker of unease on his features as he spoke.
"Do you think there's any reason Celestia wants me to do this?" Twilight asked.
"Does she ever need one for having you handle something?" Twilight flashed her brother a strange look. He chuckled. "She trusts you, Twili."
"I guess so," Twilight said, not really sure if she felt proud, amused, or just more anxious. The two walked a while, each simply enjoying the familiar presence of the other.
"Did you eat a lunch before coming?" Shining asked after a time.
"No," Twilight answered. "Intentionally, of course."
Shining smiled at his little sister. "Well, then, we best proceed to the kitchens. We can finish going over the plans for the journey while we eat." The pair proceeded to the kitchens and asked one of the cooks inside if they could have two meals, a request which was swiftly met with an affirmative. The two sat down at a table in the castle's main dining hall and waited for their food. Shining seemed mildly distracted as they waited, growing increasingly agitated.
"Shining, what is it?" Twilight finally asked, as her brother began staring intently at a dark knot in the grain of the table with a pensive expression. He looked over to her, still worried and weary looking.
"It's... I mentioned the Sun's Blade is coming with us, correct?"
"Yes."
Shining glanced away for a moment. "Do you know who the current Sun's Blade is?" Twilight thought a moment, drawing her mind out of the moment and back to the many books and ponies who'd mentored her over the years. The memories came to her.
"Yes," she said simply. "Ghostblaze, correct?"
"That's the one, yeah. She's accompanying us on the journey." Shining sighed and let himself slump down onto the wood of the wide table before him. It was a rather informal pose, and it looked rather silly to see her brother in his guard armor take it. She had the urge to laugh, but she didn't. "I... Well, just-" He cut himself off. "Sorry, I'm stumbling for words here. But, Twilight, don't get too close to her." Twilight. He used my full name, she thought.
"Why?" Twilight asked.
"Do you know anything about her besides that she's the Sun's Blade, Twilight?" Twilight thought again.
"Princess," she heard herself asking. It had been months ago, after the ceremony for her friends and herself, after quests had left, honors been done, ponies headed off to eat and chatter to themselves. Discord had been just defeated. "Why don't you ever just, well..." She remembered herself pausing, the idea of what she was about to ask becoming more and more a pointless bit of unpleasantness after a victory. "Yes, Twilight?" Celestia had said, in her ever-comforting voice. Smooth. Twilight felt like the soft wisdom of that voice almost told her the answer to her question. "Well, um... Princess, why don't you ever kill enemies like these? Celestia had been surprised, Twilight could tell, eyes widening for a moment, an odd twitch running through her lips that betrayed either amusement or disgust. "...An odd question, Twilight," Celestia had said after a moment. Twilight had flustered and tried to apologize, but the Princess had dismissed her concern. "No, it was a good one. Odd, but good. And in answer, I do, Twilight. Not enemies like Discord, or enemies like Nightmare Moon. Neither of them are an immediate danger to the citizens of Equestria. Both of them would give you a duel that, in all truth, is rather fair, and both gave you a firing chance." Celestia had given a strange, weary smile at her pupil then. Twilight remembered the smile vividly. It was tired, yes. But it was also happy. "It's dangers that threaten my ponies directly who I'm sometimes forced to destroy."
"Oh," Twilight had said. "I... I can't really see you killing anyone, to be honest." Celestia had chuckled.
"Well, I rarely do. Certainly not recently. My Blade is not so lucky. Or perhaps she is. She has an odd zeal about the matter of justice." And then the princess had given a small laugh, said that maybe they could talk about such things on a less celebratory occasion, and excused herself to go get a cupcake from the desert table set at the side of one of the halls being used.
"She's killed, and she's passionate about justice," Twilight said, internally chastising herself for not having more knowledge of such a key political figure. Shining's eyes seemed hollow as he looked at her.
"Both true, I suppose," he said, as though it were a confession more than a mere statement. "Though I don't think there are many ponies who would describe the second quality of hers in those words."
"They're the princess's words," Twilight said, with a mildly defensive tone.
"She happens to be among the few who would," Shining said back. Twilight was glad to see him smile a moment later. "Ah, our food."
The plates on which it lay were hovered out in the telekinetic grasp of a middle-aged mare neatly garbed in the simple white sanitary cloth shields of a chef. The meal looked delicious; a vegetable soup, which was giving off a tantalizing odor, a chunk of bread, a small bowl to the side of salad... "Thanks!" Twilight said to the mare.
"No problem, Twilight," the mare said cheerfully. She'd been around long enough to have cooked for the mare before, when her presence in the castle was a more unusual thing for a day to not have than have. "Enjoy, you two!" She gave them a warm smile, and then she departed back to the realm of the Canterlot kitchens.
Both ponies dug in as she left, without complaint. The food was delicious, and it successfully tore the two away from the trivialities of discussing their travel party. Both simply enjoyed the process of fulfilling their hunger. After draining perhaps half of the soup he'd been given and his entire roll of bread, Shining turned back to his sister, mouth half full. "Twili, though, just stay away from her. She's a dangerous-" Shining swallowed. "-mare."
"Okay, Shining, I'll stay away from her," Twilight vowed between bites of lettuce and other greens. "But I don't see how she could be worse than any of your guards. The Sun's Blades have always been honorable, noble figures drawn from the best of the guard."
"This one was recruited from a prison," Shining said. Twilight pondered on that during her next few bites. Ah. That does speak volumes.
"...The princess still chose her," Twilight said. Shining nodded.
"True," he admitted again. "So she does have a least one pony giving a positive word about her. Against only hundreds of ponies willing to give a negative."