Hockfall

Governor Pool was visiting a resident that morning. He was not dealing with a complaint, or trying to win their vote (the election was a few years off anyway), he simply wanted the resident in question to return to work. He needed him to return to work. Captain Cone was the only Knight among the captains of the Hockfall Guard, and though he was moderately incompetent, every other orderman beneath him was even worse - so Cone would have to do.

In what was probably an abuse of his authority as governor, he had Cowlmane lead him to the house's basement via the Underbridge. It stank down there, and was slippery underhoof, and chilly to boot, but he suspected that if he had come to the front door, the occupant would not have answered. Breaking it down would have likely caused a little too large a disturbance for the governor's liking. No, this way was better.

Sapwood Cone was snoring heavily and did not wake as the two intruded on his bedroom. Pool wrinkled his nose at the perfume of body odour and whiskey that assaulted it as he crossed the threshold. Still, he followed his assistant in and noisily cleared his throat.

Captain Cone acted precisely as Pool had expected him to. He blinked his eyes blearily and sat up slightly before he even realised who was there. The governor began speaking before he could even protest.

"Captain, it pleases me to be able to inform you that Laird Highpine departed yesterday afternoon for Stalliongrad. He is travelling by carriage, so we expect him to be gone for several weeks. Months, even. Subsequently he presents no threat to your person for a substantial period of time. As such I expect you back at work this afternoon."

Cone gaped at him. After several silent moments, he managed to string together a sentence. "But - I - I thought you were going to give me the sack!"

"Most ponies sink into depression after that is confirmed, not before." The governor looked pointedly at the pile of empty bottles beside the bed before continuing as professionally as he could. "Besides, for an unemployed stallion to take such a drinking habit is inadvisable. It's quite unsustainable."

"The governor cannot discharge you on the grounds that the mission you led was a catastrophic failure," Cowlmane chipped in. "Not because it wasn't, but rather because he cannot officially acknowledge that such a sortie ever took place. Your pay has not even been docked; it would show up on our records. We are rather hoping that your performance will pick up now that you are better aware of your failings."

"Don't make me regret this, Captain," the governor advised as they turned to leave. "The Laird will likely forget this incident while he is away, but I can always remind him." Pausing on the threshold, he turned and waved a hoof towards the stunned stallion. "Oh, and send a telegraph to Miss Marsh, will you? She went to visit her mother in the High Fets after you started drinking. I hear she was rather distraught when she left. Perhaps if you scrub up well enough she'll take you back."

The bedraggled Captain Cone could only stare as the governor and his aide swept from his bedroom, the robbed pony almost stumbling on an empty whiskey bottle as he exited.

"Beinn Greenforest Brewery," he remarked. "Don't tell the Laird. He'd rather you bought Slateshore."

Cam Hall

The princess was bent over her books, studying. AJ couldn't tell quite what from where she was sitting, but from the width of the tomes and the sheaves of notes the alicorn had made, she guessed that it wasn't something she'd be interested much in.

Growing up, she'd been too busy with her farm chores for school. She skipped class many a time, especially during harvest when she was needed the most. Granny Smith had never approved, but the farm was where Applejack belonged. She'd learned that in Manehatten. Sometimes the mundanity of her fate galled her, but the hard work, the fruits of her labours, and the family surrounding her were enough for her to be satisfied with life, for the most part.

She'd dropped out of school for good not long after she turned fourteen. A bad harvest was what forced her out of education, though Granny Smith hadn't been the one to make her drop out. Unwilling to see the farm fail, Applejack had sneaked back home from town many times, working in the north orchards whilst the others were in the south, hoping to keep it secret from Granny. When the school caught on and told her family, she got warnings from both, but it had never put her off. The farm stayed in profit, and the trees stayed healthy, while AJ stayed out of the schoolhouse. She'd never studied anything as wordy as what the princess read now.

She wondered if bookishness ran in Twilight's family.

"What're you grinning at?" Princess Songbird asked, looking up at her. The filly was sat in the middle of the carpet in front of the fire, while AJ sat on the sofa nursing a mug of cocoa.

"Nothin', sugarcube," she replied, still smiling. "You just keep on at it."

The little princess scowled. "It's hard," she complained. "It's all talking about how to do magic, and not much on really doing it."

Applejack chuckled. "Well, if you wanna be the best, you gotta get into the details. If ya don't want to do that, maybe it's not what's best fer you."

That was the wrong thing to say. The foal looked away angrily, glaring at her book. "It is what's best for me. See my cutie mark?"

AJ did. It was pretty hard to miss - a sunburst with a crescent moon layered atop it. Everypony agreed it implied Songbird had great magical potential, but Cadence said her daughter was incredibly worried that that power hadn't manifested itself yet.

"I'm going to go to Aunt Celestia's school, I just have to study for the entrance exam. Aunt Twilight was six when she got in; I'm nine and they don't take applicants over twelve. I'm running out of time."

"Three years is plenty of time yet, darlin'." The farmer desperately tried to think of something more helpful to say, worried she might have upset the filly. Songbird was good at hiding when she was upset, she'd learnt from the last time they met. "Twilight said most unicorns have a kind of magic that they're best at. Maybe you just need to find yer own speciality?"

"Maybe." The little alicorn sighed, a strand of her pink-and-yellow mane falling in front of her snow-whit face. "Only Celestia can cast solar magic though. And the same for Luna and the moon. That's what mama says."

"Well, maybe yer about to change all that. Or maybe that's not what your mark means at all." AJ took the mug in her hooves and downed the rest of her drink. "You've just gotta figure it out for yerself."

"I guess."

"You'll find yer way, darlin', Ah promise. Everypony does."

The Palace of Night and Day, Canterlot

"Thank you for your report, minister. The crash of the Mistrider was a tragedy, I know, but the Governor of Hockfall has already requested that the inquiry be conducted by local authorities." Princess Celestia sat opposite Equestria's Minister of Transportation at a marble table in the palace gardens. "Under national law, I'm afraid he has full right to do so without interference from Canterlot."

The minister, a brown unicorn stallion with a locomotive cutie mark looked highly unimpressed with that. "You mean a small-town nopony wants us to ignore a matter of national importance? Airships transport over half a million passengers a week in the Heartlands alone."

"I understand that, and would be much happier myself if we here in the capital could involve ourselves, but the law is the law."

The minister across the table bristled. "As you say. Princess, if I may remind you, my party is committed to amending the Democratic Treaty. It's matters like this where you should be able to involve yourself in political affairs."

Celestia sighed internally. I helped write that treaty. "As you say. But still, it is the peoples' will that matters. Not mine." The Treaty had been signed not long after the Time of Chaos, in an attempt to reconsolidate the nation and deal with the resurgent threat of the Order of the Bloody Cross, who blamed Celestia and her Sister for Discord's brief reign. The Treaty limited the Princesses' political power outside of times of national crisis, and broadened the Equestrian democracy from having a single, central legislature into a wider federation.

After that the Knights had integrated themselves into the system, going underground and trying to set the people against Canterlot. The threat had been diminished for the meantime, so Celestia had thought little of it, but while she was looking away the Order began to manipulate the populace in a much more dangerous way - making them believe she was their enemy instead of simply trying to tell them so.

And the worst part is that if I repeal the treaty and start to arrest their leaders, I become to them the tyrant they claim me to be. She sighed.

"Princess? Is everything alright?"

She flashed a smile at the minister, and he relaxed almost instantly. "Yes sir, thank you. Matters like this... Tire me, that is all. When you've spent as much time watching politics as I have, things like this become incredibly petty. Oh! That reminds me," she exclaimed, a memory of a law long passed returning to her. "The Mistrider was constructed in Liverypool, wasn't it?"

"I believe so, Princess, yes," the minister said, frowning.

"Well, then, I believe the Braytish have the right to send some ponies to at least aid in the enquiry. Check the Mechanical Safety in Vehicular Construction Act of 768."

"Yes, your Highness. Will that be all?"

Celestia smiled again. "Unless you have anything else to say, then yes, I believe so."

"Then I shall take my leave. Thank you, your highness." The stallion rose, and bowed before leaving.

Unbelievable, Celestia thought. I understand the law better than our own legislators. Clueless politicians, misguided citizens, impotent rulers... Equestria was a giant mess, and only the Princesses and the Knights seemed to realise it. All any of Canterlot's socialites could tell you about Reignssia was that some ponies went hungry. Manehatten's businessmen would tell you it was a bad place to set up shop, Bayston's engineers that it wasn't worth their time to maintain the trainlines there - none of which helped improve the capital's standing with its impoverished, oppressed citizens.

If I could arrest Count Iceheart and all his men, I would. Celestia clenched her teeth at the thought of the stallion who had murdered so many of her spies in the past. But he won't go down without a fight. Send too few troops, they die and I become responsible. Too many and we open ourselves up to an attack from another chapter.

"Princess Celestia?"

"Hm?" She looked around to see her secretary, Lore Landing, standing behind her. The old pegasus academic was getting on in years, but she was by far the most competent pony Celestia could remember filling her post.

"You have one more appointment this afternoon - the delegates from the Society for the Liberation of Reignssia are here to see you."

"Ah. Send them out to me please." Celestia wondered if she'd been subconsciously thinking about the appointment when her mind had turned to Stalliongrad. She'd only been there once since Iceheart's father died, and he had been so full of himself... What she wouldn't give to see him sent down... Hold on.

At the sound of hooffalls behind her, she rose and turned. "Good morning, gentlecolts," she said, shining her radiant smile once more.

"Your highness." The two Reignssians bowed, before moving to the table.

"Tea?" The Princess offered, pointing to the white and gold tea set in the middle of the table, but both of her guests declined.

"No thank you, your Highness," said the elder of the two stallions, in a thick Reignssian accent. "Ve would much rather get straight down to business." The younger nodded his assent.

"As you wish. What may I help you with?"

"We need a firmer response to the oppression within Stalliongrad," the younger colt replied. A Heartlander, Celestia knew him to be Summer Springs, born to earth ponies who had escaped from the Reignssian capital not long before his birth. "I can't understand why something hasn't been done yet. The military siphons food away and blames you, yet - to be frank, Princess, by doing nothing, you make it your own fault."

Celestia's smile fell. "I know," she said, heavily, "but there really is very little we can do. The army tells the Tsar to block any royal visits as risks to my security. They arrest diplomats on false charges, and kill any undercover agents we send in."

"Princess," the first pony insisted. "With respect, the populace believes the army to be defending them and the Tsar their enemy. Why not expose the army as the true enemy of the people?"

"You know the truth of that, Iron." Iron Works had been a factory labourer who escaped the city in a cargo wagon. Escape may not have been the right word - ponies were free to enter and leave Stalliongrad of their own volition, but tickets were expensive, and storms and breakdowns frequently struck passenger trains - too frequently for Celestia's more suspicious side. The only hope most ponies had was to take the wilderness roads, and they were dangerous at the best of times. "I can expose their army, but I cannot stop them from wreaking havoc on all of Reignssia when I do. Nothing I can do would help - and I will not risk war in Equestria."

"Perhaps war would be for the best," Iron Works grumbled. "Princess, liberating Stalliongrad would improve the lives of millions."

And risk millions more when the order mobilizes. "I'm sorry, gentlemen. I understand your concern, I - share it. You know its true when I say I care for all my little ponies, not just the ones here in Canterlot."

"Then do something," Summer Springs pleaded desperately. "Not all of us are going to live forever, Princess."

I would love to tell them I may soon have another alicorn to aid me, Celestia thought, I really would, if it would give them hope. But instead all she could say was, "I know. Please, believe me when I say that I know that. I will keep searching for a solution, gentlecolts - but we will not find it today."

Stalliongrad

"...A web of lies, I tell you!" the stallion was shouting. "This regime, this army, this whole city - built on lies and deceit, slaughter and treason! The truth has been kept from you by..."

Red Axe turned his head away, looking back to the breadline. The queue seemed longer than usual today, and the biting cold was only worsened by the resumed steady snowfall. He stood ankle-deep in the stuff, but managed to keep himself from shivering.

"The Princesses care for you, but your own leaders turn them away! Gold, food, medicine... The generals take it all for themselves! I've seen it..."

"Won't somepony shut him up?" someone behind Axe hissed. "He's making a scene."

"And he's talking bullshit," another added. "If the princesses cared, I wouldn't be standing out here just for bread."

"Maybe I'll shut him up myself," growled a third. He waved an angry hoof, but didn't seem to want to leave the queue.

The mad stallion was stood in the middle of the street, shouting and waving. His accent was distinctly Canterlotian - which didn't go down well around here. Canterlot was a rich city, and home to the princesses who lavished their attention on it.

"Hey, southerner," Axe called, trying to keep his voice calm. "Stop talking, OK? I don't know where they told you that the princesses want to help us, but it's just not true. Speaking up like that is just asking for a hoof to the face."

"Is that so?"

Oh no. The colt from the Heartlands moved towards him, a manic look on his muzzle.

"Wagons pull into the Stalliongrad depot every day, loaded with supplies," he ranted, uncomfortably close to Axe's face. "I used to work at the Ministry of Transport in Canterlot. I've seen the figures, I know the food is there - so why are you waiting for hours to by an eight-bit loaf?"

Flecks of the southerner's spittle were landing on Axe's face now, and he angrily wiped them off as the crazy pony continued to complain. "Everypony knows that there's corruption in Stalliongrad. Everypony says it starts and ends with the Tsar. But I know something more - the army is controlling the Tsar!"

"That's ridiculous." Axe raised a skeptical eyebrow, then turned away as the queue moved on, but the deranged colt followed him.

"It's true!" he shouted, and Axe bristled. The labourer had been trying hard to keep his temper, but with the colt constantly in his face and the crowd growing restless around him, he wasn't sure he could stay calm much longer.

"The Tsar and the army keep us safe from the princesses!" he informed the southerner. "If it wasn't for them, Canterlot would have run this city into the ground long ago!" Calls of agreement came from the crowd around him, and for a moment the stallion seemed to lose face. "Go back to Canterlot," Axe told him, firmly. "There's nothing here for you."

The southerner licked his lips, nervously and his voice dropped to a whisper. "They won't let me leave," he hissed, desperately.

"What?"

"There he is!"

The shout came from down the line, and both Axe and the madman looked around at once. Two guards raced towards them, clad in the longcoats and peaked caps of the Reignssian Army. The fervor on his face giving way to panic, the southern stallion turned, starting to bolt, but the soldiers were quicker than the civilian. As one of them grappled him to the ground the other glared down at him imperiously, before turning to Axe.

"Was this pony troubling you, sir?"

"I-" Axe began, but stopped, nervously licking his lips. "He was making a lot of noise. Officer, why did you... Ah..."

"Knock him down?" Axe nodded. "This stallion has been making trouble all over town this morning. He was detained at Stalliongrad Central Station trying to board a train back to Canterlot."

"What was the problem?"

"His return ticket had expired." The other guard hoisted the southern stallion back to his hooves and began to lead him away. "He was taken to the ticket office so the railway company could sort something out, and he thought he was under arrest. He slipped out and he's been running around town heckling ponies since then. He was throwing rocks at guards in the Market Plaza earlier."

The labourer was confused. "Why would anypony make that kind of mix up? He must have known what was going on." The guard just shrugged.

"Maybe he's delusional or something, I don't know - I'm just here to round him up. We're going to go and try and get him back down south, where he belongs." With that, he turned to catch up with his departing comrade and their captive troublemaker, leaving an uncertain Axe behind. The city would be safer without the lunatic's lies - but he could block out the mutters behind him.

"I wish the Guard would buy me a ticket south."

"Did you hear what he said about the army?"

"Hey! Idiot! You're holding up the line!"

With a jolt, he returned to his senses, rushing forward to close the gap before somepony jumped in before him - and the moment was gone. Whatever the truth was, it didn't matter any more. He was just another stallion among hundreds, waiting for bread.

Manehatten

Hotels, motels, shops and galleries. Museums and libraries, nightclubs and bars, some more salubrious than others. Newspaper stands, bagel stands, one-night stands, one-pony bands. Bus stops, trolley stops, hold-ups, corner shops. Buskers, shoppers, workers, bankers, bureaucrats, police ponies, pilots, socialites, creatures from every walk of life plied their way in the city that never sleeps. Manehatten was the biggest city in the Equine world, and that had daunted even Pinkie Pie once. But no more.

She sauntered down Fifth Avenue almost carelessly, weaving between beleaguered-looking ponies with practiced ease and patience. A grinning young colt passed her without noticing her. A beleaguered-looking older mare in a suit didn't see her either, but she ducked out of the way and let her pass. An anxious looking father herded three foals ahead of him, and gave her a thankful smile as she curved away.

It was not just ponies either - griffons from the Eastland eyries strode sleekly past, cardboard coffee cups clutched in one claw. Zebra and antelope were dotted around the flow of technicolour horses, and everyone, smiling or not, stepped aside as mighty buffalo dominated the concourse.

As one of the shaggy brown behemoths rumbled by her, mooing apologetically, Pinkie turned and ducked into the subway, keeping her teeth tightly clenched around the handle of her paper bag as the crowd jostled her on every side. At the bottom of the stairs, she stood to the side of the tunnel and put her the bag in her mouth down, before reaching into her saddlebags for a white muzzlemask. The trains down here had smoke filters, but they weren't perfect and she didn't like breathing in the icky dust. She couldn't carry the bag in her mouth with the white gauze on, so she hooked it onto her tail instead.

As she stepped back out into the flow of ponies, a familiar face fell in beside her. Light brown coat and dark brown mane, Soothing Hooves wasn't an eyecatching pony to anyone who wasn't looking for him, but Pinkie Pie nearly jumped when she realised they'd crossed paths.

"I thought you were working in the morning today!" she exclaimed.

"What?" he asked, looking at her in confusion.

"I said," she said, pulling down her face mask, "I thought you were already going to be there!" But it was no good. Her co-worker still couldn't hear her over the echo of hundreds of hooves of the tunnel walls.

"I have no idea what you're saying," he admitted, though Pinkie could hear him fine. "Did you get a present for Skywriter?" Slipping her mask on, she nodded. "Great! I - uh, watch where you're walking, Pinkie-"

She didn't. Instead she went crashing into a solid mass and went sprawling on the cold tiled floor.

"Omigosh!" she blurted, pulling her mask off as she leapt to her hooves, looking around for who she could have collided with. "I'm so sorry! I wasn't looking where-"

"Pinkie," Hooves cut her off. "You're apologising to the ticket barrier."

Pinkie wheeled around, confused to see instead of an angry-looking pony, an inanimate chunk of metal with a mildly perturbed staff member stood next to it.

"Oh Celestia!" she gasped. "That's so embarrassing! I'm so sorry," she burbled up at the railpony. "Normally when I do silly things like that I do it deliberately, so it's funny and everypony laughs, but that time nopony knew it was-"

"Lady, please," the stallion cut across, gruffly. "I gotta queue buildin' up." He gave a pointed glare and Pinkie turned to grin worriedly at the line of angry ponies behind her.

"Sorry," she said again as Soothing Hooves dragged her through the gate, handing the railpony a hoofful of bits as he went. She followed him, cheeks still red with the slight shame of her mishap, as they started down another flight of stairs to the station platform below. But she was careful not to follow him too closely - for keeping her gaze fixed on him was the very reason she had crashed in the first place.

Elsewhere

"Down here?"

"Yes, milord."

"You're certain?"

The soldier shuffled uncomfortably in his thick cloak. Guarding a cave in the white wastes was no cozy city gate, no warm outpost cabin. The wild winds did not rise here, as they never fell. They simply always blew. Even down here, deep in the ice, the wind managed to find its way in, turning the frozen caves into something even colder than that. "On me honour, milord."

"Hm." Count Iceheart nodded curtly. "We'll see about that. Get yourself back above ground and get warm. Make the most of it - if you're wrong I'll see the fire up there will be the last to ever warm you. Or have you changed your mind?"

The threat did not even faze the guard. He was used to them by now, and had learned quickly the importance of diligence. "No, milord, the casket is in there. I unearthed it with me own two hooves."

"Good to hear. Dismissed." Iceheart entered the smaller cave alone. His horn flickered with ice-blue light, refracting from the frozen walls to illuminate the cave in a glimmering glow, but he did not care for the spectacle he created. He only cared for what lay at the end of the tunnel.

He knew what others only guessed at. As long as Celestia remained in Canterlot, her royalists would fight his Knights to a stalemate. So while generals in the Heartlands and petty Commanders across the world drew up countless battle plans only to ball them up and throw them away, Iceheart did not look for new strategy. He looked for a new advantage. Not the Elements of Harmony, hoping to control them was vain. Not new political influence, by now anypony not already under the Knights' cloak of lies would never accept their leadership.

And lies, of course, were what they were. Iceheart knew it, even though some of the other Commanders did not. There was no truth in them. That oafish brute Highpine believed he would liberate Equestria from the tyrannical alicorns despite living on the very edge of the Heartlands and seeing its prosperity for himself. All of Equestria could have that kind of fortune, if their leaders would just accept it.

Iceheart didn't want fortune. He wanted power, and his family had spent generations turning the unwitting masses into a potential army for him to control. All he needed now was something to arm them with. Something that would tip the balance of power in his favour.

Something that now lay in a chest, still half-frozen in the ice at his hooves. Something that had lain hidden for centuries - and for good reason.

Iceheart grinned as he gently eased the box open. In was not a pleasant smile to behold - it was knowing and malicious. The biting winds now blew in his favour. When the moment arose, they would carry him all the way to Canterlot - and would sweep up anypony who got in his way.

It was time for war to return to Equestria.