Login

Winter Storm

by Snake Staff

Chapter 1: Prologue: Twenty Years

Load Full Story Next Chapter

Shining Armor

Twenty years.

Twenty years it’s been since the night I was almost killed. I confess that I don’t remember much of what happened during that night. I recall leaving the ball, going to the greenhouse to get away for a while, and then… my memory goes blank. Cadence told me what happened, though. She said that Lady Rose Quartz used some kind of weird mind-altering magic on me – tried to make me kill myself.

Apparently, that ticked Cadence off so much that she took it on herself to round up her aunt for backup and track down the perpetrator that very night. And kill the mare personally. I think that was premature, myself. One thing you learn, first as a guard, then as a prince, is that procedure is important. She should have been brought in for in-depth questioning, and then given a proper trial. That way, we could have determined what exactly was going on, and exposed any conspirators. As it happened, anypony that worked with her got away scot-free. I know Cadence can get emotional when dealing with threats to those she cares about, but I would have thought Princess Celestia would have known better.

I know Lady Quartz couldn’t have been acting alone. I may not know as much about magic as Twily, but even I know that an earth pony can’t muster the kind of mind control you need to make a pony kill himself. I even asked my LSBFF just to be sure (after she got done hugging me and asking if I was alright). There have to have been more in on that. But Cadence insists that there weren’t. Very odd.

Something’s been off with my precious princess since that night.

I’ve been with my wife for over four hundred and fifty years by this point. I know her almost as well as I know myself, or at least I like to think I do. Cadence hasn’t been quite the same since the day I came close to a second death. Don’t get me wrong, she’s as loving and sweet to me as she ever was. It’s just that she’s been… nervous. Distracted in the performance of her royal duties. Jittery, I think. When she’s putting on her makeup in the mornings, I can see from the bags under her eyes that she isn’t getting enough sleep. I’ve taken some of her work off her plate to try and let her rest easier, but she still doesn’t seem any more relaxed.

Something’s been on her mind for all this time, and she won’t talk to me about it. No matter how hard I push, no matter what I say, she always insists that she’s fine. When I ask her what’s worrying her, she says that nothing is. If I try to bring up the matter of whoever’s left behind from that assassination plot, she assures me that she got them all and not to worry. She’s not as good a liar as she thinks she is – at least not with me.

I’m worried for her.

I’ve had my best guardsponies go over the scenario again and again. The idea that it was the work of a lone earth pony mare is something we can all agree seems absurd, but now that she’s dead, we can’t pry any answers from her. I’m afraid that somepony is somehow blackmailing or coercing my wife. I don’t really understand why else she would so vigorously deny obvious facts to me. She’s always confided in me when she feels troubled. Well, there is one reason I thought of, but I already checked to see if she was a changeling doppelganger. Nope, she’s alicorn through and through. So somepony must be making her fear like this.

I don’t know who they are or what they want, but Shining Armor is not about to let his princess suffer.


Cadence

Twenty years.

For twenty long years I’ve worked with a guillotine (Prench invention, ghastly thing) over my husband’s neck. My adoptive aunt, Celestia, believes Shining to be a threat to the ponies of the Crystal Empire for as long as his soul is attached to a golem body by dark magic. While I will concede that it has drawn the occasional spirit in our direction, there hasn’t been anything that the love magic we share and the Crystal Heart aren’t amply capable of handling. I believe Celestia seriously overestimates the risks.

But my opinion no longer matters.

“Auntie” Celestia made that abundantly clear that night, when she pounded me into so much paste during our fight. She’s so… powerful. If I’m a demigod, Celestia is a full-fledged goddess walking the earth. If she had wanted, it was within her abilities to end me on the spot, end Shining and his “threat”, and absorb our kingdom into her own. I think she would have done it too, if I hadn’t shown her my project. I never wanted my Shining Armor to suffer forever in an unnatural body of animated crystal. That’s why I work, then and now, to create an alicorn form his soul can inhabit. Then we can be properly together again.

Celestia proved amendable to bargaining, at least. She wanted my research, my silence, and eventually, my children. It grieves me every time I think about it that I’ve sold my future alicorn foals to her to raise and warp in her own image, but what else could I do? I’m not strong enough to fight her, and I’m not delusional enough to believe that there’s any place we could run where she couldn’t find us, given time. But all that got me was a stay of execution: Celestia still believes Shining is a threat to the well-being of the ponies of the Crystal Empire, only relenting with the opportunity for greater gains. If I can’t produce results within whatever timeframe she judges appropriate, she can still kill Shining. He lives every day with an invisible ax above his head, ready to drop whenever my aunt decrees.

And I can’t even tell him a word about it.

Can you blame a mare for being a little nervous?

He sees through me, I know it. Damn this geas – magical contract that I’m bound under unspecified penalty to uphold – to Tartarus. I admit I’m not entirely sure what exactly counts as telling a pony, but I am sure I don’t want to trigger it. The last time I saw somepony break one of Celestia’s spells, she lost almost her entire memory. Didn’t know who I was, where she was, or anything at all about my aunt. If that happened to me…

Besides, I can’t tell Shiny the truth – not now, at least – because I know how he’d react. He’s a bit too bold in defense of those he loves. He’d march right up to Celestia and confront her head on. He might even challenge her to a duel. And – not to speak ill of his not inconsiderable magical talent – he would get unceremoniously crushed. Celestia would pound him into a pulp if he was lucky, or decide that he’d become too “dangerous” to live if he wasn’t. I can’t risk that. Not until I succeed, and have some time to tutor him in alicorn-style magic. Then… then, maybe we can confront her together. But not now. Not now…

I need to hurry. I still don’t know how long I have left.

Don’t worry Shiny, I’m coming.


Celestia

Twenty years.

Twenty years it has been since I finally worked up the nerve to act against my foal of a niece. I regret deeply what happened between us – I know, better than anypony I think, what it’s like to be betrayed by one close to you. But it had become clear as crystal that Princess Mi Amore Cadenza had chosen the welfare of her husband over the welfare of her kingdom. If she had had her way, Shining Armor would have continued to draw darkness to himself until one day he drew something too powerful to be easily repelled, something that could bring fire and ruin to the Crystal Empire and its thousands upon thousands of innocent ponies. I had to act. It was for the greater good.

I was sloppy, I admit. I let my heart – my ongoing affection for my adopted nephew – influence my head, and set out using the quickest and simplest means to dispose of the prince that I could find, without bothering to adequately cover my tracks. I should have used multiple proxies and an illusion spell to create a false trail to a pony that never existed. Then I would not have been tracked down so quickly. But what was done was done, and Cadence came to kill me in vengeance.

But she was hardly the first to try and end my life, nor has she been the last. I defeated her, and finally that foalish mare told me what she should have from the beginning – that she was working on a means to create a soulless alicorn body for her husband. The potential good that could be done by the offspring of such union (Luna and I being products of another) outweighed the continued risk. So, I gave her time.

But Cadence is disappointing me. I’ve given her two decades in which to work on her solution, but thus far I am seeing little in the way of concrete progress. There are plenty of platitudes in her reports, but not very much practical advancement toward her goal. I had hoped she would discover something about the process of alicorn creation – which even I confess I do not fully understand – but I can see little that she has achieved beyond proposing, testing, and then ruling out various theories. If work continues at this poor pace… I’m not sure how long I can continue to risk the safety of thousands of ponies for a chance at future gains. I do not like this risk-taking. I normally prefer to play my cards more conservatively – after all, in the worst case scenario I can simply wait for a change in the political situation. Gambling with ponies’ lives in this manner strikes an ill chord with me.

And speaking of the political situation, I find myself called once again to play the role of peacemaker between mortal belligerents. Prance, an independent nation of ponies, and the Gryphus Empire have long held competing claims to a group of uninhabited rocks called the Senadas lying far off their coasts. They weren’t important until a few weeks ago, when substantial deposits of powerfully magical gems were discovered in the waters surrounding them. If current estimates of their numbers are correct, control over these gems would offer a substantial economic and military edge in a dispute to anypony who wanted one. Naturally, everypony and their grandmother are now eager to get their hooves around these treasures. Some of the more aggressive factions in both nations are calling for outright military occupation of the Senadas to claim the resources for their respective countries. More sensible sapients would prefer some sort of diplomatic solution. And guess who they’ve invited to play mediator?

So, once again, the short-sighted mortals are on the verge of killing each other over a deposit of shiny rocks that will be gone in a few decades, and the adults have to step in and tell everypony to play nice.

An alicorn would know better. An alicorn would realize the stupidity of sacrificing lives – truly irreplaceable treasures – to acquire a temporary boost in power. But mortals rarely look beyond the century they live in, much less further on down the line. Is it really worth it, in the end, to create thousands of widows and orphans, to stain relations between nations for generations to come, to grant the wendigoes a feast of pain and misery, just so they can acquire a few gems? Of course not. But that’s proven a lesson that has to be taught, again and again and again and again over my many years of dealing with such things. I am very tired of having to explain this over and over to successive generations of egotistical fools.

But I will be patient. With any luck, the day will come soon when I no longer have to deal with such petty fools they call leaders. When mortal governments are a thing of the past, we can all learn to share like civilized ponies do.

So I will wait. Hopefully, it will be over soon.

Author's Notes:

So it begins.

Be ye warned that this will not be updating quite so fast as its predecessor.

Next Chapter: Duty Estimated time remaining: 6 Hours, 47 Minutes
Return to Story Description

Login

Facebook
Login with
Facebook:
FiMFetch