CoCoBA Episode 20: Train

Coco's Bizarre Adventure, Episode 20: Train

Despite the best efforts of all involved, it was threatening dawn by the time the last of the group had boarded the Friendship Express. It sat a good few yards outside of the station, unceremoniously halted in its progress down the mountain, the frontmost of its seven cars already angling downwards against the grade of the slope.

Scootaloo came last, alone. As she approached she looked away from the windows and out onto Equestria itself. The land stretched out up to a hazy horizon, the odd hill and distant forest obscuring any true glance at the Frozen North, but she could feel its presence chilling the air just beyond the eye's detection.

What she could see, in abundance, were the evenly spaced outcroppings of jet-black rock on the tracks, craggy spires like massive talons bursting from the ground, the smallest about a story and a half tall. She knew from experience that a little ways away from the peak, they evened out and became infrequent, but unless Coco had been very modest up to now there was no way for them to do something like pick the train up and move it over one of them.

Which just meant she didn't know something, really. She shrugged at the grimness of the landscape and pulled herself up onto the train proper - she had to stick one hoof over the edge at a time, without the help of a platform. As a filly she hadn't liked trains very much; they were too loud to hear yourself think and too fast to race with, a constant reminder that she wasn't up in Cloudsdale, but the feeling only came back to her after she'd come into the doors, and only then as the ghost of a memory.

Moondancer was sitting in the aisle with her back to the doors, hunching over a selection of lit candles and bits of chalk. Several of the seats closest to the door nestled stacks of title-less books, three or four high with dirt worked into their time-wrinkled jackets. The unicorn didn't turn around, and Scootaloo kept quiet.

Muffled voices came from the next car down, so she headed for it. The door opened quietly after she removed the friction from the hinge, and she made her way across a small walkway over the firm industrial bolt of the car coupling. On the other side, the door was already open, mingling conversation and the night air.

"The Shades are dandy," Cheese said. "Perfect for s'mores and scavenger hunts. Not so good for ballroom dancing and hanging out at the arcade."

"I've heard they're haunted by vengeful spirits," Coco said, conversationally, and the filly paused in the doorway.

Cheese waved her off. "That's all for tourism."

Scootaloo let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding, and then Cheese continued, "The ghosts just stay in their trees unless somepony bothers them."

Coco finally noticed her, and the mare's eyes lit up. "Scootaloo! You're okay!"

She was, mostly. When Coco got out of her seat and gave her a brief, sisterly hug, there was something about it that reminded her of Rainbow, and she let the knots in her wings distract her as she drew Cheerilee's sunglasses down over her eyes. Coco peered at them curiously, but said nothing.

"We did good," Scootaloo said, matter-of-factly, and then headed for a seat of her own. "What's next?"

Coco answered. "We've got to get the Alicorn Amulet back from somepony who took it. Sombra's sending ponies after it, and they have Diamond with them already, so we'll be racing them to get them both back."

Scootaloo realized that there was a certain emptiness to the car, and that Diamond wasn't off in another one preening her mane or something. She frowned. "And it's all in the Hollow Shades?" She wasn't very versed in the Shades, since they weren't a major city, but visitors from around that area had always talked about them like the Everfree outside of the Everfree.

Coco's face grew uneasy. "No, it's been taken to Manehattan. But even if Sombra can figure that out and get a message to them, I think the two ponies who have Diamond will think it's in the Shades anyway. One of them read my thoughts, somehow, and they know what the Map used to say, so they'll probably take that as the real location."

Scootaloo chewed on that for a moment, and then shook her head. "What... happened, in the last few hours?"

Coco smiled patiently.

* * *

The train started moving just after the sunrise, with no fanfare or attention. With the whistle disabled only the ponies close enough to the edge of the city could hear it moving, and they were mostly too asleep to register that the great turning of wheels and axles was anything out of the ordinary.

"But what kind of a Stand user could stop Sweetie Belle from looking at a whole city?" Scootaloo asked. That detail alone had stuck with her, something that made her feel suddenly and concretely unsafe.

"Could be the Amulet," Cheese said, staring out of the window abstractly as the world started to crawl along beneath them.

"I've seen the Amulet before, when this traveling magician pony came back to Ponyville to fight the Princess..." Scootaloo trailed off when she saw the looks the other two were giving her, and then laughed awkwardly, "It was before she was a Princess, of course. But it was just a necklace. It made her magic a lot stronger, and she took over the whole town, but it didn't make her that strong."

Coco tapped a hoof against her chin and thought about that. "Maybe it has a different effect on Stands. Or the pony behind it is gaining power from something else."

"Cutie marks, probably," Moondancer called from ahead of them, not turning around. "She reported blank-flanked adults in the streets, whoever has it might be harvesting their harmony like Tirek did. Now stay in your seats! But don't get comfortable yet, we'll be walking if this doesn't work!"

The train's movement finally became steady, just in time to tip down the mountainside, and then the wheels started turning for real. As they approached the first crystal outcropping, Moondancer's magic gripped every open door in both cars and shut all of them with a single definitive whipcrack, and then Scootaloo's ears twiched with the absence of the wind.

"Does anypony know what she's actually about to do?" Scootaloo asked.

Coco smiled. "Magic was never a strong subject for me."

"They actually made you learn magic in sch-" Scootaloo started, and then everything warped. Suddenly she and Coco were several hooves apart, as the train car split itself in two straight down the middle. The tracks sped by underneath, and the gap widened enough to allow the jagged tower of rock through - and then suddenly they were lurching back forward.

Not expecting the sudden reattachment, Coco and Scootaloo both fell forward onto the floor, face-first. The filly was still trying to wrap her head around what kind of magic the unicorn was doing when Cheese's voice rose over her thoughts.

"Two more incoming!" he called, perched on his seat and looking out of the window again.

｢Go Zone｣ immediately grabbed Coco, lifted her up like a pony-sized sack of potatoes as Scootaloo tried to get as far from the center of the car as possible. They sat down beside each other, and then there were glued by friction just for safety's sake.

The next time it happened, the car's separated further, and without the shock and the wind in her ears Scootaloo could notice the grinding and protesting of the train itself. It was being ripped apart and put back together somehow, like wearing down a jigsaw puzzle.

Up close and personal, the black spires were jagged and nasty. There wasn't an inch of smooth surface on them, just a kind of geometrical certainty that made them branch off into tinier protusions like tree branches or stalagmites. The surface was a glassy onyx color that reflected the inside of the train in a kind of passing, dirty-green light, and Scootaloo felt as if she were in the Everfree, being watched by somepony.

The two came together for only a few more seconds, only long enough to brush against the tracks like a hoof on a lover's cheek, and then they were thrown apart again for the next one.

Coco studied these outcroppings, hoping for some key into the mind of her enemy. She hadn't forgotten when she'd first seen them in her mind's eye, in the final dream that had been forced on her - but clearly they weren't much of a solution to somepony trained in magic. There was something mesmerizing about them that made her feel queasy about staying near them for too long, but for the most part they seemed like needless, mindless brutality.

When they came together next, she felt the force of friction lifting from her body, and breathed easier. For all of this, Cheese hadn't turned or moved an inch from his seat, keeping his eyes out of the window like a foal on a trip, but finally he turned around and sat normally, looking content with himself.

At the same moment, the doors opened again, and the atmosphere of magic across the cars lifted like a thick burning smell evaporating from a room.

"Everypony okay?" Moondancer's voice came, softer this time, as the mare herself trotted in through the door. Her hair was whipped around by the wind - the train was still on the tail end of picking up speed, just leaving it's downward momentum and heading out onto the tracks proper.

Coco nodded, looking no worse for wear. Cheese was relaxed in his seat now, and flipped disinterestedly through a magazine of some description - the front bore no title, only pictures of mares frolicking at the seashore.

Scootaloo, still a little rattled, asked. "You do magic like that all the time?"

Moondancer smiled sheepishly. "I'd been thinking of how to use the trains for transporting goods for a couple days, but nopony would be able to perform most of the incantations unless they had a cutie mark that specialized in spellcasting."

"So you have a cutie mark for magic, like the Princess does?" Coco asked, and wondered what it would look like if a pony other than Rarity had a cutie mark for generosity.

Moondancer coughed. "It's not all that, really. A lot of unicorns have cutie marks that make them good at different schools or types of magic, it's just about the specific spells it makes them good at. Twilight's good at everything, which is how she got to be a Princess. I'm..." she paused for a moment, and blew air out of the side of her mouth, "I'm best at magic that takes a while to set up."

"What else can you do?" Scootaloo asked, leaning forward a little.

"A little enchantment and illusion if I have to. My magic's never been great at attacking ponies directly, so I was lucky to have a lot of ponies defending me back in Canterlot."

"And now you have more ponies defending you," Coco said encouragingly.

"Yeah, but it's not like I have much to teach any of you. Although..." Moondancer suddenly turned abstracted, and stared into the middle distance for a moment, before shaking her head. "I'll have to do a little reading. But there are some things I'd like to tell you about, while we have a few minutes."

"We're going to be on this train for another couple weeks, aren't we?" Scootaloo asked, feeling her wings clutch at the realization.

"I'm trying for sooner, but in theory yes. We won't be able to restock on fuel, so if the train stops moving for any reason we'll be wasting time starting it up again. Not to mention that it's a big moving target for anypony who thinks it's not a part of their side, so you should probably keep away from the windows when you're sleeping."

While the others were talking, Cheese lifted an eyebrow and turned the magazine vertically. Coco frowned at him mildly and gripped the corner with a bit of cloth, pulling it out of his hooves and across the aisle. She meant to tuck it away under a seat while the filly was still gulping and thinking about train marauders, but the sideways page caught her eye; it was some kind of comic strip about a stallion in a giant burgundy helmet terrorizing a beach party.

Cheese squinted across the car at her out of the corner of his eye, hooves crossed over his chest, and Coco tossed the magazine back over. He caught it expertly, and Moondancer pretended not to notice what had just happened.

"So, what's the hubbub with the Amulet?" Cheese asked, all business. He'd encountered a few magical items in his day, many of which hadn't enjoyed his company, but none would've been important enough to make all this fuss over.

Moondancer thought. "The Alicorn Amulet is... complicated. Most of the history about it isn't in the public eye, and I've only been able to research it for a few days. All of the primary sources seem to be in legends somewhere. But it's clear why Sombra wants it."

She looked around for another question, but all eyes were on her, and she realized that none of them had really felt the impact of the return of the Crystal Empire. To learn that a piece of old legend was real always caused an upheaval in academic spaces, a storm of retractions and reprintings and I-told-you-sos that made it impossible for anypony who kept up with more than a few journals not to catch onto it. Waves of interviewers and folklorists had descended upon the Empire, until many were simply turned away by Princess Cadance's own edicts.

"Alright," she said. "I'll have to take a few breaks to keep the magic running before we get onto safe ground, but I'll tell you the story of King Sombra."

* * *

Sombra was originally a unicorn and a mage, in some small and unremembered town along the coastline of Equestria. His early life, for all anypony could tell, was spent sojourning and taking magic lessons, which he took to very well. His talent, ultimately, was his unsurpassed magical control, which allowed him access to his magic past all punishment and rational thought. If his temper was ignited, he was dangerous beyond reason.

His era was much less peaceful than most, and life in those days was determined not by war, but by an endless series of skirmishes with neighboring kingdoms. The griffons, minotaurs, lions, and half a dozen other species regularly tried to carve up the countryside and take it for themselves, or to pillage the smaller towns in order to make some kind of political demand from the Princesses. Whether it was his own town that was put in harm's way or some other that he cared about, or simply a fit of boredom, he took to battle like a fish to water.

In siege or conquest, alone or in armies, he roved the land and expanded Equestria's borders, stamping out the other creatures and eventually scaring many of them over the oceans. Without teachers to filter what he learned any longer, he was able to scavenge the remains of libraries and personal collections, taking in magic he hadn't used before, inventing more as he went.

Soon, he no longer scared or attacked his enemies, but enslaved them, stealing their willpower, their hearts, their minds, and anything else he could get his hooves on. And as time went on, and his magic grew, he began to doubt the benevolence and wisdom of the Princesses who would allow such dangers to remain in Equestria peacefully. Believing that the best policy was to take the fight to ponykind's opponents, and set the species up above all others, with unicorns above the rest for their proficiency at magic, he appeared in the court of each Princess and tried to convince them to follow his plans.

Celestia did not take kindly to his proposal, believing that her subjects needed chiefly to find a way to live in harmony. She rebuked him, gently, and sent him on his way, escorted by the royal guard - and when he fought back, desperate to change her mind with some errant bolt of magic, he was barred from Canterlot.

This was no great deterrent. In the night, he stole away into the court of Luna, disguised. But the Princess of the night was quick to see through his illusion, and when he made his proposal to her she balked at him and cast him out herself, believing that the ponies her sister looked after needed to become tolerant of the less bright and beautiful aspects of the world. When she removed him, she placed him under a spell of her own, such that he would place himself under exile, and leave the kingdom of his own accord.

And so he did, first heading as far south as possible, into the domain of the hippogriffs. He was more than disgusted by them, but was now so convinced of the disease in the ranks of the royalty that he beseeched the queen of the hybrids to stand with him and make war with weapons and magics of his devising. She refused, and when he again turned violent and desperate, they did not have the might of the alicorns to defend themselves. After the devastation that followed on that day, the kingdom of the hippogriffs withdrew across what became known as the Badlands, and have had terse relations with mainland ponies ever since.

Whether by walking the coastline and avoiding detection, or through some other contrivance, Sombra managed to travel alongside Equestria without entering it. A number of towns were destroyed in his journey northward, and he must have noticed the relative peace that they were now enjoying, even as he dipped into other kingdoms and experimented with new ways of burning and melting and evaporating their subjects.

By the time he reached the Crystal Empire, he was no longer quite a pony himself. His abuse of magic beyond his ken had charred and twisted his horn, his eyes would glow and give off green smoke even when he wasn't channeling his energy anywhere, and his wounds in battle had been healed over through sheer willpower, leaving him a lumbering, frightening pony to behold. And although he was allowed entrance in from the Frozen North, he was not given an audience with the Princess of the Empire.

Princess Amore, the originator of the Crystal Faire, had brought unprecedented harmony to the ponies of the Empire. She may have been the pony who cut and fashioned the Crystal Heart, helping to drive the great Storm which was once the Windigoes out of the Empire's territory and further up past the mountains. Whether she was or not, however, she was a beloved and kind ruler, working to ensure that the Empire could expand throughout climes that regular ponies couldn't tolerate.

Amore had received word from Celestia and Luna, who had learned of Sombra's attack on the hippogriffs and could guess his next plan of action. And so Sombra was stalled, and granted every kindness and luxury her staff could afford, and kept as content as reason would allow - but he never gained his audience.

With the Crystal Heart in place as a beacon of harmony, Sombra's magic was weakened, and he wasn't able to make a show of force to intimidate the ponies around him into submission. It was Amore's hope that, with nowhere left in the world to run and nopony to ally with, the unicorn would allow himself to become a subject in her Empire and simply fade into obscurity as a minor wizard of the court.

She badly underestimated him.

The Crystal Empire was older than pony history could record, existing at least as long as the founding of Equestria. Raw forms of magic tend to crystallize naturally when they're left alone for a long time, so it's been theorized that the Empire formed overnight in the wake of some massive magical discharge, ponies and all.

There was originally some argument about whether crystal ponies were really alive or simply constructs, but their ability to use fine magic requires intelligence and skill that no construct has ever displayed. Whatever they're the end result of, they've always been a withdrawn people, containing most of their lives and worries to the four walls of their single city. There have been no recorded crystal pony adventurers, thrillseekers, warlord or conquerors - it is simply their lot to remain at home and maintain the advanced levels of magic which course through the Empire.

But it's been stated in no uncertain terms that the Empire has a dark side. Something, maybe a lot of things, has been kept inside of it. Whether they were imprisoned inside of it, or were simply further side effects of the Empire's foundation, is unknown - but they were unable to roam freely for as long as harmony moves freely through the streets.

Under the cover of his magic, Sombra descended to the lowest points of the city, down through dungeons and sewers and deeper rooms that had laid untouched since the founding of the Empire. Down there, in the cavernous reaches of the under-city that played neighbor to Tartarus itself, he disappeared.

For three days and nights, he was nowhere to be seen. When word spread of how far down he had gone, many ponies simply gave up on him, knowing that he was beyond saving in his lust for magical power. Amore hung her head in mourning for him, knowing that he would not return, and corresponded with the other Princesses to explain his fate.

On the third night or the fourth day, he returned, bursting from the ground and cracking the pavingstones in the center of the city. He was no longer a pony at all, but a wraith, some half-living thing that dealt only in magic and suffering, and he struck at the Crystal Heart before anypony could stop him. It blackened and dimmed, and he cast it out of its guarded hold, destroying the center of the Empire in one swoop before secreting it away to continue to hold off the torrential storm of the North.

Amore confronted him as quickly as possible, demanding that he should listen to reason and call off his conquest, which could never come to pass for as long as Equestria stood. When he gave her no response, she brought to bear the entire magic of the Empire - but without the Heart, even that was sickly and weak. Her best strike simply passed through his shade of a body, and with green smoke billowing from his eyes he gripped her horn in his magic and tore it out.

Amore cried out, and fell limp in shock.

Twisting that magical conduit and its connection to the Empire, he lifted the crown that she had worn upon her head, and smelted the two in the air, binding them together with dark magic. To be the ruler of a principality in those days was entirely about power, and Amore had gained a title on par with the alicorns by controlling and wielding the combined harmonic might of the Empire. Harnessing that same magic, Sombra was able to give himself a physical form once more, and control the Empire in totality without conscious effort.

During this time the crystal ponies could feel his wishes, and at times could glimpse his very thoughts, and whatever had once driven him was now gone. Sombra no longer wished only for the protection and safety of ponykind, as they had felt when they allowed him shelter in their palatial districts and secret gardens. Now his thoughts laid only in conquest over the rest of the world's kingdoms and the enslavement of those beneath him.

Because of the pedestal it set him upon, it became known as the Alicorn Amulet. He wore it as part of his armor, constantly, as he worked to train his armies and overthrow the Princesses. When news finally reached them that Amore was no longer ruling the Empire, the two swiftly took the sky and descended upon the enslaved populace of the Frozen North.

Sombra had woven enchantments and tricks, but he had believed he would have more time. He was only interrupted thanks to Amore's daughter, Fioritura, who had braved the rest of Equestria to deliver the news as fast as possible, apparently making the journey faster than any pony recorded since. And without time to properly prepare for a siege, he allowed himself to be challenged in direct combat.

Even in his original state, he would have been a force to be reckoned with for the Princesses in those early days. With his command of the Empire on top of that, it was impossible for the Princesses to simply banish him using the Elements of Harmony - for he wielded as much of harmony's power as they did, if it pleased him. Celestia struck for him with the peace-sword Clarent, which she had used only for knighting and ceremony for many decades, and the blow was true, but passed cleanly through his head as if he were made of vapor.

Sombra brought much of his Amulet's power to bear in the first minutes of the conflict, although it hurt the Empire and its inhabitants, and not all of them survived his initial volley of attacks. The sky darkened with disharmonious magic as he sprayed vitriol and raw mana into the sky. Celestia's wings were pierced by his attacks, and she was wounded for a time, falling out of the sky. But while her sister fell, Luna swept in and drove forth the spear of night that legend calls Rhongomiant, striking him directly in the chest of his armor.

The metal was unpierced, having been the one thing he'd spent the most time preparing, and he threw her backwards in his magic, splitting the staff of the night-spear. Luna, too, was weakened from the fighting - she had not been in combat for some time, having grown used to the armies of the night and the peace that had grown in recent years. In that moment she called out across the Empire, beseeching the ponies to relinquish their false King as a master and to aid her and her sister in his defeat - but her cries fell on cowering and pained ears.

Lumbering forward, he pursued her as she went to her weakened sister, and the two spoke in low voices, murmuring words of comfort.

He reached out in his magic and called down a mighty thunderclap of force on the two sisters. A blast on that level wouldn't damage them too badly, but it would weaken them enough to make them malleable. He had put a great deal of thought into controlling the minds of the alicorns, considering them almost a challenge for his newfound skills in dark magic.

But the spell he called for didn't come. The Empire did not answer to his beck and call.

Snarling, he turned about on the ponies nearby, who were frozen and watching, demanding their magic and threatening pain and torment to those who opposed him in favor of the Princesses. And this moment of unreasoning rage was his undoing, for his eyes were so full of black magic and blacker hatred that he couldn't see that his subjects were not disobeying him until it was too late.

On the ground, where Luna had struck his armor, laid the Amulet.

He clambered for it without dignity as the two Princesses finished speaking the names of the Elements and rose into the air, eyes aglow. His armor clattered around him as he became incorporeal again, once more a shade, and when he snatched for the Amulet his hooves passed through it ineffectually.

The beam of Harmony struck him as he howled, and his form was cast out of the Empire and into the great storm, in the hopes that it would be enough to contain him for a time.

But Sombra was a creature of great and unwavering magic, magic which knew no fear or fatigue. And as he disappeared, he called on the greatest part of it, enough to make his ill-gotten Empire disappear alongside him. Whether this was prepared in advance or a feat of unimaginable spellcraft is unknown, but the Empire vanished, and all of its ponies left with it, leaving only the Princesses, the Amulet, and the dead among the frozen wastes of the north.

And so the roof of the world was quiet for a thousand years.

* * *

It had taken a couple of sittings over a few hours, punctuated by holding very tightly to the seats as the black spires intruded on their cars, and Scootaloo only realized gradually that the story was over. "That's it? Nopony knows where all his power came from after he went under the Empire?"

Moondancer nodded, and cleared her throat so she could go on talking. "Princess Cadance didn't want ponies disturbing the Empire's underground looking for trouble, so she chose to maintain peace using the Crystal Heart. Most of the crystal ponies found her edicts very wise - although that's partly because she's Fioritura's descendant."

"Then is the Empire going to crawling with monsters when we get there?" Scootaloo asked.

Coco answered this time, thinking. "Sombra wouldn't destroy his own headquarters. If he's still not able to enter into Equestria, then it's the last place he can give orders from for now. What he wants is to get his hooves on the Amulet."

Moondancer nodded. "Great minds think alike. But I think that whatever he did to come back already gave him enough harmony to become solid again. He just wants the Amulet so he can control the Empire without thinking about it and move onto bigger things."

"If it's so powerful, how's Trixie the only pony who used it?" Scootaloo asked. "She's not exactly the sharpest magician in Canterlot." For a moment she wondered where Trixie was - probably in her cart heading for the border, or through the Badlands. She hoped, idly, that the showpony hadn't been attacked by some rogue Jupiterian.

"It draws all of its magic from the Crystal Empire, so for the last thousand years it was just a tacky necklace," Moondancer said. "It was stolen from the Princesses' care by a very ambitious jewel thief a couple of centuries after they got it, and ever since it's been tossed around shady markets and backwoods deals."

Cheese walked over to the far end of the car and peered through the window. "Anypony else noticed we've got somepony on our tail?"

That shut everypony up. Eyes turned to windows, but there was no sign of movement outside except for the passing of trees and the transforming curve of the horizon.

Cheese listened at the door, hmming to himself like a kid playing doctor. "At least... two, and one of them's way jollier than the other. They just opened up one of the doors and closed it again."

Moondancer's voice was soft, trying not to disturb the air. "We've got a couple more kilometers before the next crystal. I won't be able to help if we don't deal with them by then."

The car fell silent as the landscape rolled on around them.

｢To Be Continued｣

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78yioWJhUJA[/embed]
[Rush - Something for Nothing]

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/328442/20/