It was little more than a short, wide crack in the side of the mountain. Quite unassuming by all appearances. And yet, the company of windigoes had brought Lily and Sky to this point and halted before it.

“And this is…?” Sky asked, his voice a mix of expectancy and disbelief.

“This is where we shall enter the realm of His Majesty King Icevein,” answered the commander.

“Seriously?” came Sky’s response in a higher pitch. “You’re gonna tell me that the entrance to the kingdom of your glorious king is just a crack in the base of a cliff?”

The commander’s eyes drew into narrow slits. “You expect me to forget the look of my home?” came his cold response.

Lily looked over at Sky. He was eyeing the commander suspiciously, as if he were trying to determine the truth behind the windigo’s actions. Lily already knew what Sky was contemplating. He may not forget, but he just might lie about it.

Lily’s subtlety was lost on Sky. “It’s no secret that you guys don’t like me much. And keeping that in mind, this sure looks like it could be a trap to me.”

“You dare to accuse us of lying?!” the windigo shouted. “We may be enemies, but we have our honor!”

Sky didn’t back down. He leaned forward and raised his own voice. “Then prove it!”

“How dare you demand something of us! I could end your life before your next breath, pegasus!”

Lily cringed at the thought. Even Sky seemed slightly taken back by the sudden blast of reality. “Look,” he said, apparently trying to calm himself, “I’m sorry about the outburst. You guys have a way of…getting under others’ skin, if you catch my drift.”

The commander lifted an eyebrow, but said nothing. Sky continued. “If I could ask just this: if you would go first, commander, the two of us will follow without question.” He glanced over towards Lily. She smiled and nodded back to him. I understand that the windigoes are constantly prying at our defenses, but he’s got to keep a cap on his emotions. She quickly cast a small calming spell in the surrounding area. Several of the windigoes perked up and looked around as she did, but none of them, from what she saw, looked her way.

The commander floated down before them to the cavern entrance. “I will go first, then. And you will see that the windigoes keep their word, even to a pegasus.” Lily couldn’t help but notice that he had ceased saying “pegasus” with such an emphasis on his distaste for them. She wondered what it meant.

The commander floated inside the opening, and Lily and Sky were quick to follow. They walked side by side for a while, before the cavern narrowed and forced them to fall into single file. “I’ll go first, Lily,” Sky said. “I wanna see this 'king' for myself.” But she knew enough about Sky to realize what he really meant. If things turned ugly, he wanted her to have a shot for the exit. Granted, there were dozens of windigoes following behind them, but at least she’d have one less body to have to get past.

The commander led them steadily on through a winding passage that extended further than Lily had expected. There were openings to side caverns (or at least, what she assumed were side caverns) all along the tunnel, but their guide never deviated from the main path.

Suddenly, a blast of cold air blew past Lily’s face. She shut her eyes and turned her face away but kept up her steady pace of walking. As the wind ceased, she opened her eyes to see Sky standing a short distance ahead of her with his head back, gazing upwards. He was standing in what seemed to be an opening into a much wider space. Looks like this is the end of the tunnel, she surmised.

She straightened up, trying to peer over Sky’s head, but there was little she could see for certain. “Hey, Sky, can you move forward? You’re kinda blocking the tunnel.”

He jumped a bit when she called his name, then turned to face her, his eyes wide in shock. “Uh…sure. But you might wanna brace yourself for this.”

Her eyes grew a little bit. Sky had shown almost no sign of being surprised since she first met him. Seeing him in this state of shock was…disconcerting. Cautiously, she approached as he vacated the cavern mouth.

She entered into a very spacious opening. She stopped dead in her tracks, suddenly understanding what had caught Sky so off-guard. It had done the same to her.

It was a vast audience chamber, with balconies upon balconies extending up and around the entirety of the cavern. In the middle of the chamber, four thick pillars of ice rose from the floor and extended straight up and out of view. The walls, pillars, floors…everything was hewn from immense blocks of ice into the perfectly crafted and immaculately smooth fixtures she saw. On the opposite side of the chamber, raised perhaps fifty feet into the air and stationed to the wall by a single immense pillar that ran up the wall to meet it, stood a wide platform, intricately designed with etchings and carvings that gave it a cold, silent splendor. And in the center of the platform rested a tall, equally grand seat.

No…a THRONE.

The hall seemed to shimmer in a light all its own, casting blue-hued shadows in all directions from the pair of ponies that had just entered, but nothing else. Then, with a sudden realization, Lily’s jaw dropped as she saw the source of the ambient light.

Windigoes. Their eyes glowed like thousands of shimmering sapphires that extended up and up, further and further into the darkness of the roof of the cavern. They were above her, around her…they were everywhere.

She turned to Sky, who was apparently just as stunned as she was. “Sky…there must be hundreds of them. Maybe thousands,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

Sky nodded vacantly. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

The commander had floated to the center of the hall, hovering just in front of the large platform. “Your Majesty, my patrol found these ponies trespassing upon your lands. We were prepared to eliminate them, but they claimed to have a message for you. I determined that their demands were worthy of your attention, and have brought them before you.” With that, he floated back to the ground, returning to Sky’s side, but never turning his back on the throne.

For a few moments, nothing happened. Suddenly, a pair of bright windigo eyes flashed into view before the throne. The ethereal form of a windigo became visible, its mass twice that of any other windigo Lily had seen up to that point. Its eyes were so bright that they seemed to leave streaks of light (or perhaps steam, though that didn’t make much sense) behind them as they moved back and forth.

A voice so deep and strong that it seemed to shake the entire hall boomed forth. “So, ponies, you have come to my realm. What is this message you have for me?”

Lily winced as the King’s voice echoed off every surface. Sky stood erect, but unmoving, beside her. His eyes were glossed over, as though his brain had shut down and simply refused to function.

One moment passed. Then another. The silence was agonizingly painful. Finally, gathering her wits (and what courage she could find), Lily cast a small calming spell on both she and Sky.

A light murmur passed through the chamber, like many hushed voices talking at once. Sky blinked once, then again, and seemed to be awake after being drawn from a trance.

A deep chuckle filled the air, followed by the King’s deep, bellowing voice. “Are you impressed, my dear ponies? My halls are the splendor of the north, as I’m sure you’ve no doubt determined by now.”

Sky looked up towards the throne, his familiar look of smug determination having returned. “Your Majesty, I have seen many wondrous things, but it is no exaggeration that this chamber of your realm has taken my breath away in a manner that I had not experienced before.” His voice was strong, but it seemed little more than a squeak compared to the mighty voice of the King.

The delay in the King’s response was short, but noticeable. “I see that you are a pegasus, which My people look on in enmity,” he said, though his voice was deeper and softer than before. “It must be a thing of great importance to drive you to the halls of your enemies.”

Sky shook his head. “I do not look on the windigoes as enemies, even if they see me as such,” he began, a hint of sadness seeping into his voice. “It is my desire that the ponies of Equestria and the windigoes be able to live in peace. Perhaps that will be achieved one day,” he continued, casting a quick glance back at Lily, “but that is not why I came here.”

The King seemed to lean forward, looking genuinely interested in Sky’s message. “Say on, pegasus.”

Lily swallowed the lump that had been forming in her throat. This was it. Sky was about to tell the king of a colony of hundreds of windigoes that somewhere within his realm, a very dangerous impostor had taken refuge, plotting its revenge and conquest of not only Equestria, but also of anyone else that stood against it. The King had seemed surprisingly cordial and reasonable enough up to this moment, but such a charge could change the situation dramatically in no time.

She felt Sky’s apprehension and nervousness as small tremor in the air. She used her magic to exude a soothing feeling around him, when suddenly, it hit her.

I can feel his emotions?

She had barely any time to entertain the thought. “Your Majesty, I will not act as though I know how you maintain your realm. But I will tell you this: it is my firm belief that a very dangerous impostor has infiltrated your realm and is taking refuge here from those that seek it,” Sky explained.

The silence that followed was even tenser than before. “I assume that you would be one of those that would seek to find this…impostor…for whatever reason?” King Icevein asked at length.

Sky nodded. “I am.”

“And does this creature pose a threat to both your land and mine?”

“It does. And I also believe that it is here among us as we speak.”

A ripple of hushed whispers made its way around the chamber. The thought of an impostor in the windigoes’ own realm was apparently not a popular idea.

“Here? Among us in this room? Can this thing become invisible? I see no other way it could elude detection for so long,” the King replied, a chuckle accompanying his deep voice.

Sky shook his head. “It found something better. It’s a shapeshifter.”

The King’s laughter stopped dead in the air. The squadron of windigoes that had followed Lily and Sky into the hall neighed loudly and moved to block every exit out of the chamber. The gathering of windigoes filling the balconies no longer tried to hide their discomfort as they began to cry out loudly. Finally, the King’s shouted in a voice so strong that the entire cavern shook.

“SILENCE!” He glared down at Sky with fury burning in his eyes. “Are you trying to tell me that a changeling has entered this realm?”

Lily was shaken from the King’s outburst, but she found that she was still standing on her own four hooves. She was suddenly aware that her tail and mane felt like they were standing on end. Looking up at Sky, she noticed that as he stood his ground, a light seemed to be glowing from beneath the wing flaps in his coat.

“No, Your Majesty.” Sky’s voice was calm but strong. “This is something far more dangerous than a changeling. I have fought it before, and I barely survived. But more than its combat prowess, I fear what it could do with its ability to change bodies.”

The King’s voice was level again as he spoke. “You refer to the possibility of a misguided conflict?”

“That, and perhaps more,” Sky replied, looking alertly around the room. The windigoes had calmed down again, but the tension in the air remained. “I believe it has used the form of not only a windigo, but also of certain ponies in the nearby village to cause dissent and anger to rise among its residents. This, of course, brought your subjects to the village to feed on those negative emotions. But the ponies of the village were bound to become suspicious of these occurrences, and it would only be natural to pin the blame for such strange happenings on those that have never really been on friendly terms with Equestria.”

The King lifted an eyebrow as he began to piece together the puzzle. “Tensions would rise between the colonies, perhaps leading to a breakout of a conflict, which would escalate into a full-scale war. I see. But how would that benefit this impostor?”

“This creature feels a strong hatred for the ponies of Equestria, and I think that it will use whatever means necessary to exact its desire for…‘revenge,’ I suppose. And even if the ponies were to emerge victorious from such a struggle, it would undoubtedly leave them weakened, and ripe for the picking, so to speak.”

“Quite an elaborate scheme,” the King admitted. “And yet, you have no proof: simply a guess that this impostor is here among us. Can you prove that?”

Lily’s chest tightened. She saw Sky bite his lip. They both knew that they didn’t have any proof, and that they only way that they were going to get it was to ask if the King would let them search for it. And Lily had heard and seen enough to convince her that it wasn’t going to happen like that.

“Or perhaps the better question: what are you asking me to do about it?” the King asked, an unpleasant chill creeping into his voice.

“Your Majesty, if I could simply have permission to search this room, I’m sure that I would—”

“No,” the King replied shortly. “You make a fine case, but in the end, it all weighs upon one very big ‘IF’: is the creature really here? And I should like to think that if you could have proven this, you would already have done so.”

“But King Icevein…”

“Enough. You will stay here for the night, under guard. Tomorrow, I will make my decision concerning you.”

Lily felt deflated. After having come so far and trying so hard, this was how it was going to end? In failure?

She looked over to Sky, whom she expected to look as dejected and defeated as she felt. Instead, she found that he was intently gazing at a point off to his right.

“Water…the water’s coming from…” he muttered, slowly lifting his head, as though he was following line of some sort from the ground up.

Lily looked at the floor where Sky had been looking, and, to her surprise, she noticed a small puddle of water. She cocked her head in confusion. It’s too cold for the ice to melt, so why…?

The guard that had come up from behind her moved in front of her and gestured for her to make for a corridor on the far side of the chamber. She glanced up to the throne, where King Icevein was seated again, looking only slightly disturbed by their message. She was about to call out to him when a lightning-fast blur shot in front of her, stealing her breath away.

The guards wailed in their high-pitched voices and took off in pursuit, leaving Lily alone on the floor. The blur (which was Sky, of course) was flying perpendicular to the ground, leaving the guards in his wake, skimming the edges of the balconies as he shot towards the roof of the cavern. Suddenly, he stopped at one platform and landed with so much force that she heard the balcony creak as he struck it.

“You!” she heard Sky shout. “It’s you!”

The guards were not far from the stage by now. Sky’s form was barely visible, but his voice rose clear over the outraged shouts of the windigoes. “You know, you almost got away with it, but you made one little mistake. Windigoes base their entire existence on the cold.” The guards were nearly on him. “And here you are, breathing fire-heated air in a cavern made of ice? Did you expect it to not melt at all?” Lily saw Sky turn back to where the King hovered above his throne as the advancing guards blocked his path. “Your Majesty, I’ll stake my life on this! This is the impostor!”

Lily held her breath. Please, please, please…

And then, all of Tartarus broke loose.

A mass of black mist erupted from the balcony as Sky took off before he was engulfed. Streams of yellow and orange flames burst from the cloud of impenetrable darkness, melting entire platforms and shattering pillars and decorations. Windigoes were tossed in all directions, and many of the others took to the air in panic. And after all that, a wave of dread unlike Lily had ever felt before slammed into her, literally knocking her flat onto her stomach as her mind reeled.

Daring to look back up, she saw that the black cloud had dispersed, but it had only revealed a monster more terrible than the blackness. It was a four-legged creature with a lion’s head at the front, what appeared to be a goat’s head rising from its back, and a snake’s head at the tip of its tail. All three heads wagged back and forth, snarling as the creature walked forward upon the remains of the balcony toward the place where Sky Streak hovered in the air.

“Congratulations,” the Chimera hissed in a strange compilation of voices. “You found us.”