Attachment

The snow litters the cold and harsh tundra, bringing along with it a bitter chill and a sharp breeze that picks up intensity here and there. Apart from some rock faces, some mountains, and the two ponies still standing, there doesn't appear to be anything for miles.

Cozy Glow lets her wings take a rest, planting her hooves in the snow with her back to the pony who had been relentless in hunting her down. And for what? To throw her back in Tartarus? To put her back into the stony prison she got out of? To kill her? Why aren't any of the other princesses hunting her down? As far as she knows, this other pink pony is the only chaser.

"What do you want?" she snarls.

No answer.

"We can continue this game of cat-and-mouse until one of us drops dead. I don't care. I'll lose you eventually, somewhere in this world."

Still no answer. Cozy is tempted to turn around, but something in her gut tells her that to face her enemy would mean getting handed a loss. So she stays where she is, and continues.

"You know, getting out of that stone prison was actually pretty easy. I don't know how, though, but that doesn't matter. What matters is getting my revenge." Cozy snorts. "And not for Chrysalis or Tirek. They were useless. I can just as easily try again and be successful the second time. All I need is a little time to plan."

Silence meets her. Slowly, Cozy's body begins to untense as she moves out of fight-or-flight mode. With how cold it is, there's a good possibility that her chaser is beginning to freeze. But she doesn't turn to check.

"Golly, you sure are a listener!" she remarks with a giggle. "For an alicorn, guess that's pretty rare, huh?"

She regrets saying the words the second they leave her mouth. What is she doing taunting her attacker? That'll get her on a fast track to getting hurt for sure. She clears her throat.

"Hey, you wanna keep going? It's been fun seeing Equestria and what pathetic creatures I can start crushing under my hoof! Professor Pinkie said there were yaks up here; maybe we could go and see them?"

The question is innocent enough. The silence, however, is getting on Cozy's nerves.

"Aw, come on! It's no fun having a one-sided conversation. You know what they say about monologuing."

She isn't sure what else to expect. That doesn't mean the straw isn't breaking.

"It's kinda cold, don't you think?"

An eye twitch. And then another. And then another. And then, after a minute, Cozy bites the bullet and whirls around, letting her piercing eyes bear into Cadance with full force.

"All right, I'm gonna ask you again: what do you want? Why aren't you saying anything?! Are you just shutting up in the hopes that I'll spill my future plans to you or something? 'Cause news flash: it's not gonna happen!"

With her facing Cadance, Cozy can now see the alicorn in full. Her entire expression, from her calm purple eyes to her upright ears, is calm. Surprisingly so. No...suspiciously so. Why is she standing there like that? Has she frozen without becoming some kind of a pony ice cube? It's hard to tell behind the eyes. Cozy is a master manipulator, but even she struggles to figure out what her opponent is thinking.

She scoffs. "I don't need the silent treatment, you know. What's stopping me from just flying away right now?" A blink, and then a forceful kick that sends a bit of snow flying. "Rhetorical question. You'd probably just keep chasing after me 'til I collapsed. Isn't that right?"

She knows better than to end her spiels with questions, but still does so anyway. And as she does, she suddenly gets an idea. If her chaser can't be swayed by dangling the proverbial "let's keep going" carrot in front of her, then perhaps a little taunting will do the trick. Something to really get under her fur and skin. Cozy is good at that.

"Golly, I dunno why you're wasting your time here with little ol' me. Don't you have your stupid kid to look after? What's her name...Fury Fart?" She bites her lip and snickers at her scatological joke. "Yeah, that sounds fitting for a filly who's still in diapers. It'll be a long time until she's able to break into these babies!"

She bobs up and down on her gangly legs, flashing a sickening grin to the chaser, who only blinks slowly. To Cozy, that's enough of a reaction for her to keep going.

"And your dopey husband, isn't he a piece of work! It's amazing how that idiot even managed to get brainwashed by Chrysalis to begin with! And you let him into the royal guard?!" Cozy cackles, the cold weather causing a few tears to threaten to leak out of the corners of her closed eyes. She raises a hoof to wipe them away as she gives a sigh. "Bet if Chrysalis were freed like I was, she could do it again. But since she can't..."

The sentence goes unfinished, but doesn't earn any reaction this time. Cozy pouts at this.

"Grogar's Bell made me an alicorn, and that didn't pan out...but if I took your magic, I wonder if I could become one again? 'Princess Cozy Glow' has a great ring to it!"

Another blink. Cozy can't tell if it's a reaction to what she's saying, or if it's due to the cold weather. Given the timing, though, she chooses to believe in the former, which only incenses her more to her delight. More and more, she bullies, insulting everything from the chaser's leadership to her people and all the way down to the other princesses. To her, it's nothing more than insult comedy, never mind the fact that she's the only one laughing. She makes it a challenge to get the chaser riled up by any verbal means necessary.

This doesn't last for as long as Cozy wants to. The weather is a problem, what with the wind lashing against her body and threatening to turn her into an equine ice cube. Soon, she begins to wish she had led the chaser to somewhere in an indoors environment.

"You...are so..." she tries to sputter out, only to suck in a mass of cold air on an inhale that leads her into a coughing fit. Her eyelashes have icicles on them, the tip of her snout is beginning to turn red, and she's beginning to grow tired. She can see that the chaser is still not reacting, instead watching with...is that amusement? Intrigue? She can't tell through all the blowing snow.

I'm going to die here. If I fly away, she's just gonna chase me again...but if I can get to a cave nearby or something, at least...

Even she knows those are false hopes. There's nothing like that around her, and trying to find one would only end in certain death before she even got there.

Though, then again...staying here would end in certain death, when she thinks about it.

She bites her lip and squeezes her eyes shut, regretting that her second chance was wasted on something as stupid as this. Freezing to death in the land beyond the Crystal Empire? Seriously? Not being in the line of fire of a magic blast or messing with the wrong artifact or having her plans for Equestrian domination blow up in her face? Clearly being trapped in stone does something to a pony's intelligence, and she hates it.

Her only hope lies in the pony ahead of her, just staring, with her stupid fancy magic and her stupidly big wings...if Cozy had her horn still, she could probably whip up a simple warming spell. Those existed, didn't it? They had to exist. That pony's probably using one right now, and the thought only makes her angrier. Her anger -- for the chaser, for the cold, for the lost chance -- appears to be the one thing that's keeping her warm, like adding logs to a fireplace.

The more she thinks about that pony using a warming spell on herself, the more enraged Cozy gets. In an effort to dispel it, she tries to charge, only getting one or two gallops before falling over into the snow. With an aggravated scream, she tries getting up again and again, but it's only after the third time that her weak body can't take anymore and stays down.

"Damn it!" she screams, pounding the snow with her hoof as hard as she can, which, by this point, is really more of a light poke. "Damn it, damn it, damn it!"

Her eyes shift to the area ahead of her, and then promptly widen as she gasps.

The chaser is coming closer.

A horrible feeling of deja vu washes over Cozy. To be trapped in stone again would be awful, but to remain trapped here would be like getting a syringe full of friendship pumped into her. If she couldn't live, she'd sooner want to be killed than have to go back to that hell again, so having the chaser ominously stalk over to her feels like a lose-lose-lose situation across the board. Grinding her chattering teeth together, she tries to fly, but finds that her wings have gone numb. With that option shot down, she then tries to get up on her hooves, but finds that she can't even get off of the ground anymore.

"S-Stay away from me!" she screeches. "Don't come any closer!"

The chaser doesn't listen. She continues to walk at a steady pace, her eyes boring into Cozy. Frantically, Cozy tries to slide backwards on her belly, but can't.

I'm a sitting duck.

She doesn't want to give up. Not on life, not on this pursuit, not on her one chance to learn from her mistakes and successfully get all the power she could ever dream of. But by this point, it would take a miracle from something, or somecreature, willing to let her live. If it happened once when she was locked up in Tartarus, it could happen again, right?

...Right?

Her eyes close. She doesn't want to see the chaser come any closer. She buries her face in the ground, keeps her hearing alert, and waits.

The crunching of snow feels like drops of water hitting a cave floor. She's not sure if it's the chaser, or if it's somecreature else.

And then suddenly, she is embraced in warmth.

It's the last thing she remembers before consciousness, and everything else she could ever want, slips out of her grasp.