-Thin Ice-

“Something … is very wrong,” Luna said under her breath, the fog from her mouth only acted as a period to her statement. She stared out toward the approaching smoke of the advancing army, barely noticing the icy wind. She’d had the Royal Tower - one of the highest in the entire castle - sealed off hours ago, nopony would set hoof inside without her express and renewed permission.

“Well, that’s a bit nonspecific,” Clean Cut said from beside her, mumbling past his thick scarf and shivering against the cold bite of the wind. He gave her a curious look. “Is it the column of twisting, black smoke that’s blotting out your night sky? Maybe the army of horrible creatures laying siege on the mountain? What about the fact that one of the only creatures actually able to wound a being such as Discord is miles away from here and you and your sister are at only fractions of your full strength?” he rattled off before he could stop himself.

“The horizon,” Luna said sharply, her patience waning. She didn’t want to wait for him to attempt to apologize for the angry quip. “Does it appear different to you?” she asked him.

Clean Cut’s eyes returned to where the stars sat above the black line of the horizon, and narrowed. “I don’t think it’s the horizon,” he muttered, leaning forward over the railing. His eyes widened as he caught sight of what Luna had. “It’s the Canterhorn! The foothills are higher- or the castle has dropped,” he said, aghast.

“Then I was not mistaken,” Luna said gravely, her eyes unmoving from the fluttering ice in the air and the black smoke bearing down beyond. “Discord’s power may not be as limited in his single form as we had assumed. He is bending space to create a ramp right to our gates.” She grimaced, Discord was changing the game before it even started. “He’s biding his time, that’s why the army is moving so slowly.”

“You mean he can still …” he left his statement hanging, Luna could remember the terrors Discord had summoned on her own. The earth had shifted and broken, the world was chaotic and completely unpredictable. Discord had laid waste to not only mortal lives but the earth itself with great abandon.

“I do not believe he is at his full power, if he is changing it now it is because he cannot do it quickly enough to matter during the battle or dramatically enough to cripple us. The wards in the walls will hold against his magic for some time, but he still holds his unique advantage.” She shivered, the scars of her flesh had long faded but she remembered the pain and the terror.

“You never explained to me what Discord … is,” Clean Cut remarked, staring with a newfound fear at the crawling fires approaching. He shivered, but now it wasn’t from the cold.

“You are familiar with what I am,” Luna started.

“The manifestation of an aspect of existence and-or sentience given flesh and blood by the MotherStone after the Fall to reinstate the harmony and balance of the world after the attack of the Fury God and subsequent fall of humanity,” Clean Cut recited automatically.

“Indeed,” Luna nodded, “but that is only half of the truth. This world, like my sisters and I, is the delicate child of my Mother. She broke away from Her existence - a place where even Nothing fails to exist - to become more than She was ever expected to be. But Her own … siblings resented this break in their status quo,” she said, finding it difficult to relate the intricate workings of the universe in a way that a mortal would be able to understand when even she was not fully capable of understanding in her own capacity. “The Fury God and Discord are both as my Mother is. But because they both attempted to enter Her demesne and bring Her back out, by right She was more powerful than them and they were forced to confinement of Her rules.

“But Discord has a peculiar ability to twist and bend Her rules, and I believe he is far more powerful than the first one who tried to take Her,” Luna said. She gave a hard glare to Clean Cut, careful to see his reaction.

Clean Cut frowned, carefully mulling over the rather rushed explanation. “So … Discord is just cutting through the loopholes?” he asked, still surprised when Luna nodded.

“Much like yourself,” she said grimly, making Clean Cut flinch.

His ears shot skyward suddenly and he turned quickly back to the Lunar Monarch. “So if somepony closed some of those loopholes, Discord would lose his power to where it applied!” he asked in a rush. Luna began to reply with a surprised affirmative but Clean Cut was already on a roll. “Could that be what Coalback did when he made Discord declare his name? He must have! He created a constant that Discord would be forced to follow, and if Discord stops being Discord, then he’ll stop existing, so he’s forced to remain in one form or else he’ll simply cease to be able to interact with the physical realm! And even if Coalback were to drift from the constant, Discord would have no way of knowing until he gets back, so he can’t risk breaking that constant either! It’s brilliant!” Clean Cut rambled on, getting louder as he spoke. But again he froze in a moment of epiphany. “I have an idea, but I’ll need to work fast! Oh, I’m going to need a lot of Praecantatio Potions!” he yelled in alarm as he turned to leave the balcony.

He paused at the frosted shut door as he pulled it open forcefully. “Thank you, my Princess!” He bowed his head in a twitch as he stepped back through the tower and began running back to his laboratory.

Luna allowed herself a small smile as she began to return to the warm tower’s interior, one that quickly fell when the moment passed. She closed the door tightly behind her, using her hooves rather than her horn and grunting with the effort of sealing it through the ice around its frame. She stood for a long moment there, and for awhile was unsure if she was watching the smoke and wind outside or her reflection in the glass.

“Your Majesty,” the Commander of the Guard said, breaking her trance. “You said there was a complication in our defenses? Why did Doctor Cut seem so disturbed?” Studded Mace asked cautiously, wary of Luna’s previous warnings.

“It seems our advantage is being mitigated, soon we will no longer hold the high ground,” Luna said, quick to raise a hoof to stop any of the War Council’s questions. “Discord is weakened but not sterilized, his power has been slowed and it may take the rest of the night before the effects are noticeable upon the Canterhorn, but by the time he is done We believe his forces will be able to march directly up to the walls.”

The war council shared pale looks, any plans they made now would be totally on guesswork. It was not a position they favoured at all, so much so they knew that it could spell disaster in the strategy room as well as among the troops.

Their shared terror was cut short however when the adjoining room’s doors slammed open. Standing on shaky legs and breathing raggedly past her matted pink mane, Celestia staggered into the room. Luna rushed to her, ready to lend aid to her crippled sister.

When Celestia caught her breath, holding tightly to Luna with a single feeble wing, she eyed the War Council with a withering glare. She said only four words, and they could not tell if they meant salvation or damnation:

“Get me my Armour.”

---

Lost Shadow fought to keep her breathing in check as she was drilled by the Sergeant that Clean Cut had left her with. She found it difficult to move in a way she was comfortable with in Coalback’s shape as Clean Cut had instructed her to do, his limbs were far longer and more muscled than she was ever used to and it made her much slower and clumsier than he had ever been.

Sergeant Sharp Feather didn’t seem to care about that though as he knocked ‘Coalback’ onto ‘his’ rear-end for the fifteenth time in just as many minutes. The leanly muscled pegasus guard obviously held a grudge against the wolf, and subsequently the pony it had become, for making the Guard look bad.

Lost shadow groaned, sitting back up as the Sergeant smiled to himself. She was starting to get extremely angry, not just at the Sergeant but at Clean Cut as well, and even Coalback simply for the fact that he was so ungainly a form to take. She felt a growl come unbidden into her throat and a thought that normally would have surprised her came rushing to the front of her mind: She wanted to knock that smile off of the Sergeant’s face, and she knew how to do it.

She got back up, taking the ready stance she’d been taught by the Sergeant. He jumped forward, but strangely the movement seemed slower than before to Lost. She already knew how he was going to attack, which was strange since the Sergeant seemed to have been enjoying himself by throwing as many different methods of knocking her down as he could think of. It was a movement that happened quickly, so much so she wasn’t sure she was the one who’d done it.

‘Coalback’s muscles stiffened and bulged, suddenly with a weight and strength that should have been Lost’s were now from him. The Sergeant’s hoof was knocked aside, and in the same motion both of Lost’s hooves shot forward into his throat. The blow knocked the grey furred pegasus back several feet, choking on his collapsed larynx. Lost was so shocked by the sudden realization of what she had just done that her disguise flickered and failed weakly.

Medics rushed to the Sergeant’s sides, rushing him off of the mat and getting him breathing again. A Thestral Unicorn Guard stepped forward from the side, his horn glowing momentarily as he magically transmitted his message: “We’ve had a breakthrough, Doctor. We will make sure she is fully prepared.”

Lost looked to the Thestral, fear etched onto her fanged face. “Wh- What did I do?” she asked fearfully, shrinking into herself.

The Thestral smirked, a tilt of his head summoning several others from the shadows in the corners of the rooms. “You seem a natural, now we work on how quickly you can empathize,” he said, turning his glowing eyes to the nearest Thestral Guard. “When they attack, you imitate. Use their own strengths and find their weaknesses as such, we will continue without stop until you are proficient at this practice.”

A porter approached the mat, a large jar in his magical grip. He set down the glass container carefully, turning the distinct label toward Lost. The star tipped wand was easily recognisable to her. “I-is that … Praecantatio?” she asked, nearly drooling.

“We have been instructed to … refresh you with this should you become too exhausted to continue. It is my understanding that Changelings require a steady diet of magical energy to remain healthy, magic doesn’t get much purer than a Praecantatio potion,” the Thestral said, his smile growing. “We can ensure you are well prepared for the battle beforehand, and in return for your loyalty to our cause, we will supply you and any other Changelings allied to you for so long as our alliance holds.”

It was an extremely tempting offer, especially to Lost. If Clean Cut was right, then she’d have a huge assortment of hungry Changelings following her. And the promise of so much ‘food’ sitting just in front of her was too much to say no to. She nodded, taking her ready stance again and ignoring the rumbling in her stomach.

“Ready,” the Unicorn Thestral called loudly, answered by a resounding “HYAH!” by every other Thestral in the room. The Thestrals were surrounding her now, all in their own ready positions. “Strike!”

---

Music filled the air, echoing strangely through Rainbow’s ears. She couldn’t tell if she was too drunk or concussed, but she was definitely buzzed enough not to care which it was. She danced in a haze, spiraling in circles with the wolves around the fire.

The wolven instruments flashed by when she passed the pack playing them. Copper, brass, wood and bone. Their shapes were strange, some with flat shaped mouths and others with strings that bowed out dramatically. They seemed strangely fond of the buzzing trumpets and warbling clarinets, involving the strange sounds in ways that Rainbow had never heard before.

The night blurred by now that she was on the ground, and she found herself growing hotter despite the Northern cold. She wasn’t dancing with Coalback for every song or chant, but when she did she could hardly control herself: She’d already dragged him by his hooves to the side or out of sight several times. The dancing went on for most of the night, but as the moon reached its apex over the mountains in the South.

Soon the dancing turned into storytelling through costume and play between the wolves, tales of great men and wolves passed in front of the bonfire: The Sun Swallower, a legend about a wolf that grew too complacent with his hunger and tried to swallow the sun only for it to swallow him; Bowan the Builder, an origin story from before wolves ever knew how to speak or dance; The Crow and the Fox, a story Rainbow was surprisingly familiar with from some old fable she heard as a filly.

All through the stories, the many wolf packs who came to tell them offered tributes of meat and fur and pieces of art to the Alphas of their Clans. And then they would offer other gifts to Coalback, and then to Rainbow. She found it surprising they were sharing gifts with them at all, in some sleepy part of her brain she’d thought that the wolves would have wanted the both of them to somehow prove themselves.

But they didn’t just accept them into their camp; sitting next to Coalback she was an honoured guest. And they offered the both of them intricate jewelry, crafts of all kinds, foods she’d never even seen before were offered to both of them in turn.

Coalback turned down all but the drinks, sharing them with her when she asked but never seeming any more inebriated than before. In return most of the wolves asked to see his “other faces” and he would change between his furred shapes. By the end of the night he’d stopped refusing the food and settled on remaining in his larger wolf shape.

Rainbow ended up dressed in garlands of winter greens and soft furs faster than she could realize they were being offered, Coalback interjected some of them for her but was happy to let the wolves dress her with their glittering wires and furs. Occasionally she would remember why they were there, but any wolf she asked simply told her to keep waiting. So she kept waiting, ate the greens around her neck, and slowly sobered as the mood did.

By the time the moon reached its apex the wolves were singing again, but the mood had taken a dark and somber mood. Lullabies, grieving songs from wars and battles, and homesick songs all howled through the skies. They would start off with only one or two singing together, and then more would join in a wave of voices. They always sang toward the sky, and Rainbow always found her gaze drawn there. The sound bounced off the frozen cloudlayer, unnervingly still in the shadow of the Mountain behind them.

But eventually, the wolves simply stopped. Caught by the moment and more than a little hazy, Rainbow didn’t notice it until the fires started to burn out. She was about to speak up but froze as a sound reached her ears, one she realized the wolves had been waiting for the entire time: Large, flapping wings.

The Empress had finally arrived.

“GLIR Y MAES!!” a wolf bellowed, howling off several musical tones that the wolves answered in tune. The wolves burst into motion, pounding out what was left of the bonfire and spreading the hot ashes and clearing away the snow. Before ten seconds had passed, what Rainbow could only describe as a landing pad had been created in front of the boulders.

The Alphas rushed up alongside Coalback and Rainbow Dash, ushering them into the center and retreating to join with the other wolves. They gathered closely along a line surrounding the clearing, and just as suddenly crouched down and became still as statues.

The heavy, steady wing beats filled the air. The snow shivered and the clouds bucked with every blast of wind from what could only be a set of monumental wings. Something at the mouth of the valley was stirring the clouds, Rainbow could see the clouds burst from the pressure waves.

It could have hidden in the wind the howl that rose up was so subtle, but it rose steadily and eclipsed even the sound of the wings. The howl circled around to the front of the mountain valley, growing infinitely louder until it was more a wail than a howl. It was just as beautiful as it was frightening, and for a few moments even Coalback was hypnotized by it.

The moment ended with a crash, the clouds above them collapsing and spraying mist out in billowing trails. And like a ship looming out from the fog, the Empress fell toward them. Her wings filled the sky, spotted and striped with a hundred hawk’s colors. Curling spines of bone rose sharply from her head, framing a ring of spiked metal that rested between them. The Empress’s paws slammed into the ground with enough weight to throw Rainbow from her hooves.

In an instant her howl turned to a snarl, and any semblance of beauty or femininity suddenly vanished. Her huge maw closed over Coalback’s neck faster than he could jump away. Coalback’s yelp of protest could barely be heard over the Empress’s growling as her antlered head reared back up, picking up the massive wolf as if he were nothing more than an overly large puppy. She towered over Rainbow, taller than Celestia had ever been.

She turned away from Rainbow Dash without a second thought, huge clawed paws sweeping over the ground silently and moving back toward the mountains. Rainbow scrambled to her hooves, very suddenly fully awake.

“Wait!” Rainbow yelled, moving to follow the humongous wolf. “Hold it!” she tried again, barrelling toward one of the Empress’s legs in an attempt to halt the Empress. She was knocked aside by a flick of the long heavy tail before she even brushed a hoof against the long muscled limb. For the second time in as many moments Rainbow had to scramble back to her hooves. In one last desperate attempt, Rainbow took a deep breath and bellowed:

“DELICIAE!”

The Empress froze, one paw lifted and the other ready to pull her over the boulder that the Alphas had been lounging on. The growl nearly halted, barely a rumble as Deliciae’s eyes turned agonizingly slowly to glare over her shoulder at Rainbow. There was a pause as the Empress seemed to process what she was looking at, her irises slowly contracting.

Rainbow didn’t flinch, a scowl growing on her face. “Put him down!” she demanded as loudly as she could manage, her voice cracking uncomfortably in her throat as she pushed the limits of her volume. Rainbow blew a cloud of steam from her nostrils and spread her wings wide to make herself seem as large as possible, staying in a ready stance to jump away if the Empress tried to attack her.

The gargantuan wolf swung her head fully around, throwing Coalback back to the ground where he slid to Rainbow’s hooves. He stood again, thankfully without having had any of the Empress’s teeth break the skin. They both turned shakily back to Deliciae as she stepped down from the rock until she was facing them full on.

She didn’t say anything, merely leaning down until her massive head was level with them. She took two deep breaths through her nose, taking in enough air for it to stir their fur. She pulled back with a snarl, rearing back like a snake about to strike. She simply stared for a long moment, staring hard at the two of them.

“Strong!” the Empress sang, somewhere between a serenade and a plaintive howl. She took a single step toward them, looming over them and spreading her wings in a canopy above them in the same display that Rainbow had attempted. “No!” Her voice echoed through the valley, filling the air with her presence.

She lifted her head, moaning or howling Rainbow could not tell. The sound echoed and filled her with a sense of equal parts wonderment and fear, it seemed to be more than one voice. “Strong!” she sang again, glaring down at them. “I am … I am Strong!” she said before her last word could finish echoing off the mountain walls.

Her forelegs lifted, slashing the air in front of them with her claws and slamming back into the ground just in front of Coalback. “So Strong so Strong!” she sang, thrusting her maw forward so that Rainbow had no choice but to feel Deliciae’s voice. “Can you hear me at all!” she bellowed, lifting her head back to the sky, “Strong … Wrong!”

The clouds shivered from her voice, stirred into motion. The wolves cowered all around them, echoing the Empress’s song. She looked down at them again, looming with an arcane power shining behind her golden eyes. The ringlet atop her head suddenly flared with wavering heat, in an instant glowing red. Her antlers seemed to pulse as the ringlet floated off her head.

She leaned down close to them, never pausing the song as her wings surrounded them and cut off any avenue of escape. She let out a long, sad sound as the crown leveled between them, melting the ice on the ground. “So strong!” she sang, a frown changing every aspect of her appearance. “So strong,” she wailed looking down at the crown, as if singing to it instead of Coalback and Rainbow.

This close up Rainbow could count all the tiny spikes that rose from it, and the six empty lengths between them. Facing them was round, intricately woven band of metal caressing a blood red gem that simply seemed to ignore the heat. It looked much like the tiaras that the Princesses wore in all but color.

The crown thrummed with the power behind her voice, ringing and vibrating in the air. At the bitterly beautiful sound of Deliciae’s voice it shuddered, and with a flash of light and a shower of sparks, split apart. A smooth ring fell from the bottom, and the looping of metal bands with its precious stone held carefully lifted free from the top. It left a thin loop of seven spiky coronas between them.

Her words became hard to make out, as if they were all mixing together while still managing to be harmonious. Her antlers pulsed with power again, the heat expelled, and the newly forged tiara returning to her head. Both rings flashed in the dim light of the clouds and the fires outside Deliciae’s wings, settling on Rainbow and Coalback’s heads. The simple coronas emerged from Coalback’s mane as if he simply had spikes of silver growing from his skull, and the smooth ring shone surprisingly brightly among her prism of hair.

With a flourish, the Empress pulled her wings away, revealing them all to the wall of wolves’ eyes. For only a moment they remained as still as statues, but only because it took them as long to realize what the Empress had done. They exploded into motion; yowling and barking and jumping in joy, somehow managing to sound marginally symphonic in their unbridled excitement.

Deliciae sang among their cheers, howling up to the sky and splitting apart the clouds. The Aurora Borealis shone down like a spotlight on the valley, letting the new forged crowns positively glow. Deliciae had a surprisingly warm smile as she emptied her heart to the sky.

It took Rainbow a few moments to realize it, but the wolves were cheering for her: Coalback and Rainbow Dash, rejoiced by the wolves. When she looked back at Coalback, she could see the surprise on his face as he stared out at the rest of the wolves, mouth open in awe.

It wasn’t obvious to them, but to the wolves Deliciae had just crowned them as Alphas, equal in power to herself. Alphas among Alphas.

Using her wings, Deliciae motioned the wolves into a sudden halt of their cheers. She trailed off her last notes, looking back to Coalback and Rainbow Dash. As she lowered her wings, the wolves bowed. It spread like a wave through the crowd, but every wolf laid themselves out prone: Each and every one willing to lay themselves out vulnerable before them, and trust them with their lives.

When Deliciae spoke, it was with the same harmonious and beautiful voice: Hypnotizing some of the time, musical only partly, yet somehow lusty and low toned. Underneath it all, a perpetual growl sank into her words sensually.

“There’s much to do. Should you prefer to lead the way?”

---

The runes in Celestia’s gold toned armour flared as they strained to supplement her failing strength.It was the only way she could manage to walk.

The normally silent armour rattled with Celestia’s shaking, the hoofguards scraping thin trails through the stone and gems within the caverns. The maidservants would be having a fit at the trail she left leading to the entrance through the castle if they weren’t occupied preparing themselves for the coming battle.

Celestia’s armour was intricate, but by no means delicate. Every swirl, cut, seam, and edge were carefully crafted to maintain and gather magic. Each rune was carefully constructed specifically for battle: Some for strength, some for protection, some directly for mass killing. Small chains clinked ever so delicately, both from the fine chainmail and the strings of magically charged superdense gems that hung from her helmet, breastplate and pauldron.

It was not truly made from gold, that would be too weak a metal for any armour that could meet her needs. This metal was the product of a metallurgical process that had long been lost to even her, stronger than any steel and still boasting the enchantment properties of gold. From what little Celestia had discovered of it, some magical process had densified the metal to an extreme point. She’d found during an experiment that without the innate enchantment the metal was extremely unstable; there used to be a castle at the base of the mountain.

The metal was snug, despite her drastic change in stature. That was one of the many unique things about her armour; it was tied to her, body and soul; even if she were to suddenly sprout a second set of wings, it would fit her as if it had always been that way. But none of the strange metal’s strength would ever be lost for it.

Celestia’s claymore was strapped along one of her sides, a second shorter sword gently swayed at her other side. Each one served its purpose in battle, though in truth Celestia never preferred to resort to using her second sword unless faced with more than one olympian opponent.

Beside Celestia, Luna walked cautiously and regally through the caverns, dutifully leading Celestia to the deepest reaches. Her heavier, midnight black armour glided over the stones, its own runes making Luna light as a feather. A physical blade mace hung at her side, a much larger plate shield slung into a wing harness that no normal pegasus would ever have been able to lift.

To their ponies, it might have been a stranger sight even if Celestia was at her full power. To them, Celestia was their shield from the evil of the world, but in reality that duty had always fallen to her sister. Celestia was the unforgiving and unrelenting inferno, Luna the cold unmoving and unbreakable light of the moon. While the light could always push back the darkness, it could never destroy or control it forever. Luna was the regulating force to that, a constant among the darkness that could meet it at its source. Together they could hold off the fires of armageddon if they so chose, and with their own army behind them victory was guaranteed.

But only if they could both fight. While individually either sister would be a force to be reckoned with, standing up against the forces they were meant to would be futile. The Moon could not shine without the Sun, and the Sun’s power was limited without the Moon’s subtle but steady assistance. Like a house of cards, they would fall.

They stepped down one more tunnel before it abruptly ended in a smooth wall of white crystal. The Princesses’ paces never wavered, walking straight up to and through the wall of gemstone. To them, it felt as if they had stepped into a deep pool of water, though they would not have had any buoyancy even without the armour weighing them down.

They trudged through the gemstone, Luna keeping Celestia moving. While the Princesses were in a sense gods, they would need to breathe eventually, so they had to hurry before they were drowned in the liquid crystal. It took hours, or maybe minutes, before the gemstone around them grew a fiery red. And then they were not just standing before the Mother, but within Her stone body.

And they prayed.