Path of a daughter

An armed pony opens the train door for the Queen, revealing a group of soldiers wearing gold-foiled Royal Guard armors already fanned out with their spears held tight. However, after three days of constant sleep on the train that turned out to be some kind of a military transport, the Queen is calm and collected enough to sense that worry emanating from the guards which is creating an invigorating ambience for the fear-eating Nightmares.

“Move along, please!” says a grey, eye-patch wearing earth pony in his forties keeping an eye on the Queen personally. While he isn’t bearing any official insignia, every single armed pony on the train has been obeying everything he said during the trip.

“Easy, Solid Steel,” says the Queen’s father, pushing through the soldiers crowding the open section of the train car, “Seeing a bunch of goons just itching to poke those spears into somepony can’t be comfortable,” as he passes the Queen, he smiles at her, “Don’t worry. If they want to have a go, they’ll have to go through me first, and I know enough about the Royal Guard to recognize recruits with only a couple months under their belt,” he steps outside, making the guards back off and fan out wider, takes a deep breath of the cold, mountain air in the earliest grasp of winter, and says, “Never thought I’d see this place again, never thought I’d miss it.”

The nervous guards who grip their spears tighter the second the Queen’s gaze slides over them aren’t what’s making her stand still…

***

The Canterlot mountain is riddled from top to deep underground with tunnels from old mining operations, but not only that. Despite what the tourists are told, ancient magic helps hold up only the castle itself. The rest of the upper city is supported by enormous pillars underneath it, buried at an angle into the mountainside and, most importantly, building-sized hooks made of reinforced and magically treated concrete inside the mountain itself lining the inner radius of the city. These enormous constructions are normally accessible to the inspectors via the sewer system. However, a sufficiently sneaky and insane pony could mine into the secret areas through some of the unstable, old tunnels, risking a cave-in way before doing any damage to the infrastructure.

The three dozen Nightmares who survived the mining operations and the infiltration have finally finished setting up plastic explosives provided by their griffon allies, and report to the Queen via their mind links.

We’re ready.

“Set off the timers in thirty seconds and retreat into a safe distance. I’ll report it in,” the Queen mentally broadcasts her orders before turning a vial fastened to one of the charges around. Supposedly, this chemical reaction is a timer which will set the bomb off, which will in turn start a chain reaction detonating all the others she set up over the holding hook.

Thankfully, the mental communication isn’t obstructed either by the solid material around her nor the immensely powerful shield protecting both Upper and Lower Canterlot from Nightmare Moon’s armies. The only problem is the distance, but with how much fear there is everywhere in and around the besieged city, the Queen is in no danger of running out of power.

“3378, report to General Grim Sky that we’re setting off the charges in twenty,” she sends the message out.

“Remain within safe distance with the spare charges just in case something doesn’t work out,” 3379 relays Grim Sky’s answer.

The Queen flees back into the tunnels, counting:

1… 2…

10… 11…

12-

Her changeling instinct shuts her hearing off just as the first hints of a shockwave of pressurized air reach her, and her experience with surviving explosive spells of unicorn wizards makes her dive for the floor.

The rumbling and tearing of concrete and solid rock as if the entire world was being violently ripped in half paralyzes the Queen, and only the sight of the floor and ceiling starting to crumble under her drags her out of the shell shock for long enough to scuttle deeper into the mountain in pure panic, trembling, crying, and bleeding from every orifice with every cough forced by the inhaling in the resulting cloud of grime and dust. Something internal caused by the shockwave, likely. The worst part, though, is the sudden absence of almost all mind links she was directly connected to for the operation.

No, the worst part is the sudden gust of wind when the crumbling stops and the Queen can see everything from the clear sky, the golden magic shield surrounding the twin cities, the Nightmare Moon’s armies outside of it, and the rubble of the upper city tumbling down the side of the mountain directly on the defenders and the refugee camps surrounding Lower Canterlot.

As the tiny ponies below recover from the blast, they start trying to escape through the protective barrier and quickly realize it’s not going to happen. Some flee along the edge, some begin fruitlessly bashing their hooves against it, some just start praying. Unicorns responsible for keeping the barrier up try to end the spell and collapse from the magical feedback of such a monumental collective undertaking stopping so suddenly. None of it matters, though, as the avalanche of masonry eventually lands and paints the golden shield, which was supposed to protect them and instead became their prison, with raised clouds of grey dust and red mist.

Darkness falls as the moon eclipses the sun and the shield finally fades because there’s almost no one left to keep it going, and Nightmare Moon’s army charges the few remaining defenders of Canterlot crawling out of the mix of rubble and fleshy paste left behind by their friends and families to fight their final fight.

The Queen doesn’t join the fight, sitting at the open edge of the tunnel and hugging her knees. Three out of thirty-six Nightmares made it out.

Did the griffons really underestimate the power and timers of their explosives, or did they try to double-cross us?

***

She doesn’t let a single emotion show, and follows her father onto the platform, decidedly paying no mind to the Royal Guards slightly lowering the tips of their spears. The upper Canterlot train station is a simple, two-track affair full of decorative pillars supporting a metal and crystal roof above. The station in the lower city was massive in comparison, serving both for cargo and passengers, while the ponies occupying this one are almost all unicorns who have clearly never seen hard work, and ones wearing exceedingly expensive-looking clothes on top of that.

“It’s strange to see Canterlot so full of life,” she says, looking directly up through the ceiling, enjoying the fear-laced cold air rushing through her nose and down to her lungs as if it was a draught of water after a hot day, this time represented by the stuffy air of the train, “It’s the first time in my life that I can see the sun, and the first time in months that there isn’t overcast gloom or complete darkness, dad. Not including our landing on the train.”

“Blazing Light, just call me Blazing, Blaze, anything like that,” the unicorn’s voice immediately turns nervous, “I’ve been thinking about our situation and I realized that, since the portal seems to have sent you to a specific point in time roughly a day from where and when I landed and you’re twenty, I’m about five years older than you. I’m as far from dad material as one can get- what is, umm, she doing? I’m not used to mares sniffing me, or doing anything other than yelling ‘get away, creep!’,” he steps away when he notices a Nightmare stretching her neck towards his blond mane with her head tilted sideways in curiosity.

“5 is from one of my many clutches. She didn’t mean to startle you, she’s just curious about her grandfather,” replies the Queen.

“Stars above, I’m a grandfather too?” Blazing rolls his eyes.

“Way more than that,” says the Queen, “Any time any of the army deployment needed bolstering, they captured enemy combatants and used some of us to hatch reinforcements in days. Since we were split between all combat fronts, not even I have any idea who is from which generation aside from the firstborn and my own clutches.”

This seems to calm Blazing down a little, and he lets 5 approach and put her head on the back of his neck.

“Leave the family reunions for later,” orders Solid Steel in a friendly but firm tone once all the Nightmares have been herded out of the train by the soldiers.

As the escort of soldiers and guards surrounds Blazing Light and the Nightmares, the bronze unicorn-changeling hybrid gets going, and the Queen follows.

“What’s going to happen now?” she asks as they enter the white, open streets of Upper Canterlot and feel the cold wind on their faces.

“That depends,” Blazing shrugs, “I’m returning from successfully saving a second version of The Crystal Empire from an evil warlock king -that’s where the train was taking us from- and I’ve never met this dimension’s Celestia before, but I doubt she’ll be insanely evil or anything, so I’m expecting a looot of questions all both of us. Speaking of which - how come you’re the only one talking? Is it a Queen thing?”

“I think so,” the Queen nods, “They can talk, but opening the portal to this dimension was… costly. Thousands of us sacrificed whatever little of their energy was left in their bodies so that I could cast the spell, but I had no idea how badly that would damage our hive mind and how much knowledge we would lose. I could barely remember what a train was when the portal spat us out here, and I can talk because I was personally doing it a lot while discussing strategy at the war room, relaying orders to non-Nightmares, or giving reports. Even that-” she points to a cart passing by, “I can sense that most of us can’t recall the word ‘cart’. It’s going to take us some time to recover, but once we are strong enough to use our mind links consistently to share information again, we’ll be re-learning a lot of things we once knew.”

“Hey,” Blazing smiles at her, “If you need a place to rest and recover, Equestria is the best. Aside from the occasional world-ending threat passing through. Once you get used to those, it’s all lush forests, great views, and fresh air. Unfortunately,” he raises on the tips of his hooves to see over the tall guards around the group, “It looks like right now the ponies think we belong to the bad guys category. It’ll pass.”

“Everyone is staring, and I can sense a lot of fear,” the Queen raises her head as well. With her, the Nightmares, and Blazing being fairly short, the members of their military escort are like a tall wall of solid muscle and steel around them.

“Can’t blame them,” says Solid Steel, leading the group, “The invasion happened only over half a year ago.”

“What invasion?” the Queen shoots her father a puzzled look, “The one you saved this place from, or…?”

“Riiight, you’re from that far back in time and Chrysalis’ invasion didn’t happen in your reality,” Blazing shakes his head, “Bet they’d trade a night spent in changeling cocoons for what happened to them instead.”

“We lost a lot of good ponies,” says Solid Steel darkly, “No matter, from what we know we assume the vast majority of changelings died, and they won’t be a problem in any perceivable future, but the mental scars remain,” the grey earth pony shakes his head, “Nevermind. What I’m trying to say is that it would make things a lot easier on the general public if you and your kin, as changelings, could transform into ponies.”

“We can’t do that,” the Queen shakes her head. That’s a lie, albeit only a technical one.

“Huh?” Solid Steel shoots her a surprised look. So does Blazing, immediately sensing that something about the Queen’s statement was way too careful.

“We can transform parts of our bodies, mostly for a specific use in combat. We can harden our carapaces or grow spikes and blades, but we can’t just observe a creature and fully transform into it like changelings can. We weren’t made to be infiltrators, Nightmare Moon made us to be weapons.”

“Hmmm,” Solid Steel rubs his chin, clearly not persuaded. Blazing, however, comes to the Queen’s aid by saying:

“That might be my fault. Nightmare Moon didn’t make Nightmare changelings out of real changelings. She made them using me, and I’m kind of a weird hybrid due to whatever spell Chrysalis used on me. That’s why you can use unicorn magic while changelings in general can’t,” Blazing suddenly laughs, “Easy way to confirm that - how do you guys feel about flying?”

“We can fly, but it’s generally very uncomfortable,” says the Queen.

Blazing sighs, his legs starting to wobble at even the thought of height.

“Yep, they’re mine…”