Lunatic!

27th day of Frostfall
454 Years after the Defeat of Discord by the Sisters

Bianca groaned. She felt sore, her muscles burning like she’d had to run a marathon. She was lying in a bed, the sheets unpleasantly damp with sweat. Everything stank with the bizarre odor of spices and herbs that she’d never encountered before, a cloying smell like somepony had burned dinner.

“She’s coming around,” an unfamiliar voice said, with an odd accent that made every word seem to end in a hiss. Bianca’s eyes opened and she immediately tried to crawl away from what she saw.

Looming over her was one of the strangest beings she’d ever seen, a pony with an orange coat dotted with green scales, long whiskers curling from its nose. It looked down at her with curious golden eyes, the pupils slit like a cat’s.

“Calm down, girl,” Silver Tongue said, appearing from behind the strange figure. “This is Ryujin. He’s a doctor, sort of.” Bianca looked around. She was in a dimly-lit room, the walls covered in shelves that had obviously been scavenged from a dozen different sources. Jars lined them thickly, most filled with strange powders or liquids. A bundle of sage burned on a table at her side, providing a lot of the strange funk that assaulted her nostrils.

“I don’t have, ah, what you ponies would call a medical degree,” Ryujin said. “And to answer your inevitable next question, I’m a kirin. Half dragon. Not terribly common here, from what I am to understand, and I have spent enough time in your land to be quite sure.”

“He helped take care of me when I was a foal,” Silver Tongue said. “Saved my life a few times when I was sick.”

“I also tried to teach him a few things about medicine, not that he had a taste for it,” Ryujin stepped back and pulled a few of the strange jars down. His front legs ended in talons, almost like a griffon’s, while his tail was a long, sinuous length of scales ending in a tuft of hair.

“What happened?” Bianca whispered. “Where’s Pallas?”

“You should be more concerned about yourself,” Ryujin said. “You were poisoned with crystal thorn venom. Quite a rare poison, especially these days. It is made from-“

“Crystal Berry bushes,” Bianca sighed. “I know. The thorns are a deadly poison, even if the berries are delicious. My mom always warned us to stay away from them.”

“Ah, so you are from the north,” Ryujin nodded. “Truly, it is terrible what happened there. Luckily for you, I have many resources at my disposal, and quartzroot is among them. It makes a wonderful poultice for a poisoned wound. And quite pleasant tea. It is fortunate that I did not drink all of it away, though I admit I have something of a bad habit of hanging onto odds and ends. Perhaps a bit of a hoarding instinct, though I find herbs more useful than gold and gems.”

“Am I-“ Bianca looked at her shoulder. A bandage was wrapped around it, already soaked through with green and brown, the smell of fresh grass and mint rising from it as Bianca touched it. It didn’t hurt, but instead felt numb and tingly.

“You’ll be fine,” Silver Tongue snorted. “If you were really in trouble I’d be gone already.”

“I’d have given you a five minute head start,” said a voice from the other room.

“You’re supposed to stay in bed and rest!” Ryujin hissed. The curtain over the doorway was pushed aside, and a figure stumbled inside, wrapped entirely in bandages like a mummy. “Those burns were bad enough without a silly pony refusing to take an honored physician’s advice!”

“I don’t need rest,” the pony growled. She moved bandages that had gotten into her eyes. Navy-blue fur edging on black showed through where the bandages didn’t completely cover her body.

“Pallas?” Bianca blinked. “What happened to you?”

“Ran into another unicorn who wanted me dead. Seems to be a running theme,” Pallas shrugged. “It was no big deal.”

“She nearly burned to death,” Ryujin countered. “The big one is hurt worse than the smaller and is a worse patient. It is like treating a foal who fears a doctor more than her own injury.”

“You should have sedated her,” Silver Tongue muttered. Pallas stepped up to the bed and knelt next to it, leaning onto it. Her weight made the cot creak in protest as she nuzzled Bianca.

“I did. It was the only way I was able to keep her still long enough to rub salve into her wounds and bandage her body.” Ryujin sighed. “There should be little scarring, despite her recklessness, and if she uses the soap I am willing to sell her at a very reasonable price, she won’t smell like burning hair while her coat is growing back in. She is doubly fortunate that I am well aware of the mystery of flame.”

“Oh here we go again about the mystery of flame…” Silver Tongue shook his head and walked to the doorway. “They don’t need your stories to get well.”

“Aww… does that mean I don’t get a bedtime story?” Bianca giggled. She curled up next to where Pallas was kneeling, running a hoof through what was left of her mane, the edges singed and burned.

“You’re too old for stories,” Pallas mumbled, her voice muffled by fur.

“No one is too old for stories!”

“Fine, but just one,” Pallas sighed.

“I think I know a most appropriate tale,” Ryujin said. “It is the tale from centuries ago, as much myth and legend as history…”

“Know, little ponies, that between the years when the Sisters defeated Discord and the rise of the monster Tirek, there was an age when the world lay still and untamed, when the shining kingdoms of Equuis were mere fancies in the dreaming of conquering kings. The proudest kingdom of the world was Equestria, reigning supreme with its immortal rulers and great might.

Hither came the pony sisters, fresh from their defeat of Discord and flush with purpose. It was a dead world, left wounded in the wake of Discord's defeat. The wind did not blow, fires would not burn, rivers were stagnant in their banks, and the earth shook underhoof as though the bedrock was mere sand.

The only constants in the world were the Unconquered Sun and Everchanging Moon, and they knew that after a long era of rule by the spirit Discord, the land no longer had the power to care for itself. The trickster spirit had so broken Equuis that the foundations of the sea and sky were falling apart. Without drastic action, the world the Sun and Moon had saved would die.

In a great work of prophesy, the sisters discovered that the path to salvation would require new immortals to rise to shepherd the great works of the world just as they shepherded the heavens. They left their lands and first journied to the east, seeking those worthy of the great gift.

One day, the Sun and Moon found an encampment of griffons, a party of hunters and warriors who roamed the steppe of those eastern lands near where the sun rose each day. They approached in disguise as mere mortal ponies, and the conquering king of that tribe bid them join him, curious about what tales the travellers would have.

For three days, the Sun and Moon feasted with the king, speaking of the events far outside his land and being treated as kings themselves, for as vicious a foe as the king could be, he was a generous ruler who was well-versed in the seven ways of honoring guests. On the third day, their merriment turned to a serious discussion.

'You are a fine ruler,' said the Sun, 'But I would ask you this: what would you give your people, if you had the power?'

The king meditated on this for some time before answering.

'I would not give them a home, for we are nomads.'

He meditated more.

'I would not give them wealth, for we take what we need from this land and trinkets would only weigh us down.'

He thought again for long minutes.

'I would not give them glory, for it not something that can be granted by a king but only earned for oneself.'

'Then what would you give them?' the Moon asked.

'I would give them the sky again,' the King decided. 'The air refuses to give wind to our wings, the rain comes and goes and we cannot control it as in the old tales. If I could give my people a boon, it would be that.'

'Then you must fly west,' the Sun said. She was wise in the ways of the world, and knew that traveling that way would always bring him where he wanted to go, and it is for this reason that the Sun rises in the East and flies towards the West itself.

'What is to the west?' the King asked.

'Your destiny, though I know not if it will be for good or ill,' replied the Moon. 'You are a conquering king, and I am not sure you are worthy of what you seek.' And though it was in the nature of the Moon to lie, in this she spoke truth.

'I am worthy of any prize that can be given,' the King contested.

'Not everything is a prize, nor can a prize be given - it must be earned,' the Moon replied.

The king contemplated that for the rest of the night. As the dawn approached, his guests vanished into the darkness, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

When the sun rose, he gave his great spear to his daughter and told her to rule in his absence, then flew with the sun at his back into the still sky.

He flew higher and higher, beating his wings against the stagnant air and struggling for lift that was denied to him. He reached the clouds, and rested for a time, looking in all directions, but he did not see the prize he had been promised, so he flew on.

He continued west as the sun set, and reached the highest clouds, mere wisps of ice and vapor at the very edge of the sky, where the air was so thin that his lungs burned, but he did not see the prize he was seeking, so he flew on.

He flew on into the silent abyss above him, until everything above him was black and he'd left even the blue of the sky behind. He saw many things from that great height, secrets of the world and the true shape of all things. In that cold, only his ambition and desire warmed him, the tips of his feathers turning to ice that remains there to this day.

With nowhere else to go, he flew down, the still air like a wall of steel in front of him, and with the great speed of his dive the sky broke before him with a great sound like the clash of thunder. He landed, and found himself at his home again, having returned to the same place despite only going west. This would have been a wonder to him, but he had seen the world from above and knew the secret path that had led him here across the shape of Equuis.

The sun was rising again at his back as his people came out to see him. He had changed, growing larger than any of his people, his feathers a bright and gleaming green like emeralds, glittering in the dawn light.

'What did you learn in your journey?' the Sun asked, appearing at the same time as the solar disk, among his people where she had not been a moment before.

'I saw how small we all are,' the King said. 'Even my lands are but a tiny corner of the world, and my thoughts were even smaller. I saw that borders are just lines on a map, and that all the struggles we face and everyone I have ever known are invisible to the sky.'

He felt in his heart a longing to see it all as one again, though as a conquering king this was a dangerous desire, which would in the future cause great strife as he tried to create that unity he imagined through force.

'And the wind?' the Moon asked, stepping out of the long shadows that lingered from the night.

For the first time, the king realized that the wind he had felt on his wings when he had descended from the heavens had not abated, his wake continuing across the steppe in an endless echo of his flight.

'It was not a prize to be won,' the king said. 'I see now that the air was stagnant not because the wind was withheld by a tyrant, but because there was no tyrant at all, just an empty throne with no one to sit in it.'

'Indeed,' the Sun agreed.

'It is a responsibility,' the king said. 'One I must bear, because there is no one else who can.'

'Remember, then, that it is a responsibility to all of Equuis,' the Moon said. 'Just as ours is.'

The Sun and Moon revealed their true glory, and the griffons bowed before them, all save the conquering king, who had sworn an oath never to kneel before any.

'Why have you given me this burden?' the king asked.

'As you said, you were the only one who can bear it,' the Sun said. 'You are the Howling Wind, as I am the Unconquered Sun and my sister is the Everchanging Moon. We welcome you as a brother, and bid you join us as we search for the others destined to repair what has been broken in the reign of chaos.'

'I shall come,' he said. 'For I have seen the world's problems, and it is not such a bounded place that they can be ignored merely because they seem distant.'

'That is wiser than I expected of you,' the Moon said.

The three took to the air, the new winds carrying them on their way. In the coming years, the blessings of the wind were given to those who were able to use their gifts, the pegasai, griffons, and others.”

“And that is how Celestia and Luna met Zephyranthes for the first time, and how he became an immortal.”

“Zephyranthes?” Pallas frowned. “That can’t be true.”

“Perhaps it is, perhaps not,” Ryujin shrugged. “The tales of those times are as myth, in this modern era. It is an old tale though, and thus easier to believe that there is some part of truth to its telling. It is certainly true that the Emperor is immortal, and that he is well-known for controlling the winds.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Pallas mumbled, closing her eyes.

“Pray you never do,” Ryujin sighed.