The Fall of Morninglight

(( This entry is dated December 9th of last year ))

These last few days have seen a whirlwind of activity around castle Astur; the guard is very visible since the attack and the rattle and squeak of arms and armor once again fills the main hall. Outside, several tall watchtowers have been erected in the courtyard to oversee the bridge and the steep slope of the mountains to the south, and the pass to the north, where the Great Road enters Ardennes, is likewise patrolled.

My departure from castle Astur is just as restricted as the citizenry are from entering currently, and while this does not make me happy on both counts, it has afforded me quite a bit of quiet solitude with which to study the vagaries of certain problems.

And time to recover.

My physician tells me I will be right as rain in a few days, and that he can find no lasting injury from the Changeling attack I was subjected to, which is good I suppose. The bite I received on my foreleg had been seen to, and well bandaged, and it was really the only lasting pain from the ordeal. Luckily, Zealous had some field remedy he had acquired from his time up north that involved common daylilies… The application of said remedy has a bit of a bite to it, but it seemed to ease the pain and prevented infection, so my physician has allowed me to once more be mobile around the castle.

Zealous’ skill is to be commended. He attributes it to a lifetime of patching up his brother; I likewise attribute it to the medicine of practice, versus the practice of medicine.

So I have been biding my time; healing and studying in the great room of the castle, enjoying both the view of the snowy hills through the tall leaded windows, and the warm fire in the hearth.

But, my time has not all been a warm hearth, hot tea, and a good book… The night before last was spent discussing the tale Lieutenant Concord returned with from the Forbidden City north of Equestria, the creature he met there, and the talisman he brought back with him.

Yes, it does exist just as in the tale, and it is now in my possession.

And it is well and truly evil…

I dare not physically touch it, for even having it in the castle I can hear it whispering to me, telling me of how my guard is turning against me, or how my ponies no longer love me, and how it can assure these grievous problems are set right if I merely allow it. Simply place it around my neck and all of those who seek to do me harm will be bound to only lavish praise upon me.

I feel it is driving the Changeling attacks, trying to force a state of unrest to weaken my resolve, to give it a moment of weakness to exploit.

That is how it works, you see; it seeks out those who lead others and corrupts them, and by this spreads the curse to those who follow them. It expands the will of the one who bears it to encompass those who follow and it feeds upon their adoration to empower it, and in turn the followers begin to feel a hunger for love as well – seeking to take it from others to replace that which has been taken from them by the curse.

The form is merely a corruption that facilitates the feeding, but the curse itself is insidious – and well beyond anything I have ever encountered.

And in that regard the talisman must be destroyed.

So, while I cannot fully comprehend the spells at work in this curse, for they are well beyond my abilities - disrupting the spells and destroying the talisman are mere foal’s play. It is a thing easily done.

But, as the form is merely a corruption, I surmise that if a changeling were wearing the talisman as I destroy it, it will revert the changeling to the form of a pony. Even the hive-born Changelings are based upon ponies, hence the reason their basic shape mimics ours. In this my supposition is that if a hive queen were to be wearing it, and the curse centers around the corruption of the will of the followers, its destruction may well revert the entire hive that follows the queen.

So the plan is simple – as I must destroy the talisman, why not attempt to free a hive of its influence as well?

This is where miss Silvermane comes into my arrangements. If she wears the talisman as I break the curse, it should free all of the Changelings she holds sway over. And this is an added good to an act I must perform no matter what.

The issue is that the Talisman does not want to be destroyed, and it will try to use miss Silvermane to prevent my acting upon it… And it is frighteningly powerful.

If it were any Changeling but miss Silvermane, I would not even risk the conflict. I would simply end the existence of the talisman this instant, and sleep all the better for it this evening – for it is helpless without a host. But, she has already bested her nature to attempt to broker a peace for her kind. And I this I feel she has the ability to not be an easy tool for the talisman to use, for while it is extremely powerful, it can also be defeated – as Lieutenant Concord has proven when he relinquished it to me.

In this I trust her to not aid the talisman against me without a fight, but I do not expect this to be an easy contest of wills – for either of us.

As the evening drew to a close and the Lieutenant went on his way, I was left to once more ponder the directions my decisions were taking me…

The next morning, yesterday morning it would have been, I met with the current leader of the Ardennes weather team; a younger colt, sharply dressed in a uniform that seems to be part of his office. He presented quite the stack of documentation to me and spoke of not quite being sure to report to now that the Empress herself was in residence. I asked who he typically reported to, and that is where we got into the discussion of his being relatively new to the position here in Ardennes.

Three things of note came from our discussion; one in that I need to speak with the Ardennes mayor and ensure we are both clear on expected duties, another that I officially requested the night of the 21st to be clear and cloud free for the midwinter event, and the last that I extended the Royal Commission for the local weather team another year… It is far too soon in our relocation to be shopping for weather team proposals, so as I have heard no complaints about the current team, I opined that there is nothing here that needs fixing. In a year’s time we shall revisit this decision and see if it held merit.

Following the meeting with the weather coordinator, I had a bit of an impromptu meeting with miss Somniloquence. The once-analyst seems to be quite taken with her new career as the president of the local bank.

Our discussion was little more than a follow-up on our previous meeting. Goldfleur seems to desire to dabble in war bonds now, and I was pitched everything from loans to advanced arms and armor from his company’s research and development works.

Frankly, as the discussion had little to do with finance and more to do with the war effort, I forwarded miss Somniloquence to Captain Imperious and my aide, Praefectus, as this is more within their bailiwick than mine.

While we discussed this, the chimney sweep arrived and was being looked after by Zealous, and the next topic miss Somniloquence wanted to discuss was of a more private nature… So I escorted her to my study where we resumed, away from the stomp of armored hooves and the discussion of readiness plans.

In short, she merely wanted to apologize for her research into the Changelings possibly leading to the situation we all find ourselves in currently. I tried to assuage her fears regarding this by explaining that we both based our research upon Changelings who had, somehow, come to find coexistence before we even knew they were here. So only seeing a hoof full of what turned out to be truly odd Changelings skewed our view of the whole. In effect, we found a single flower to be quite fascinating and worthy of study, but neglected to realize there was an immense field of poisonous flora all around us.

While we discussed this Zealous entered and explained that a local colt had reported seeing Changelings in a nearby cave, and he sought my permission to depart immediately with his brother to visit some justice upon them. I agreed on two conditions; that the castle would be secure in his absence, and that Lieutenant Spark, who was also at castle Astur, would be dispatched immediately to town to deliver word of this discovery to the 13th Legion.

He agreed to the conditions and departed, leaving miss Somniloquence and myself to finish our chat in a quickly quiet castle.

Once we finished and she had left to return to town, I moved back out to the great room with a fresh cup of tea to resume my study into the spells I will employ in a few days…

The Empress' great room within Castle Astur

A few hours passed before Lieutenant Concord was once again before me. He came to ask me if I recalled a meeting with Lieutenant Spark that morning, to which I answered that I had not.

He immediately cautioned me that it appeared a changeling was assuming the forms of local ponies, and as this took familiarity to accomplish, it was obviously a local Changeling.

This was dire news as it appears now that our conflict is on two fronts, one with an external enemy, and one with an internal enemy.

Zealous returned from the nearby caves whilst we were discussing this, and they both discussed the implications of this briefly before it was decided the best course of action was to simply lock down the castle. While I am not in agreement with this, as I do not want to be isolated from the citizenry at a time like this, I was eventually convinced to lock the castle’s doors and limit access to a select few ponies.

After this Lieutenant Concord departed Zealous examined the bite on my leg. Once he was satisfied and had pronounced that I would live, he also departed on his rounds. For my part, I took advantage of the momentary lull in caretakers to escape castle Astur and fly into town…

My goal was a simple one – to oversee the lighting of the winter fire pit in the park. A few ponies showed up, the fire was lit, and it will hopefully stay burning through spring, as is the tradition. And, once the official-ness had been dispensed with, I decided to take a few moments and take in some night air…

And that was when a strange hooded and cloaked pony approached me…

I am typically wary of anypony who keeps themselves hidden in such a manner and will not even give me so much as a fake name by which to call them. But this fellow had an air of one accustomed to dealing with Elders such as myself and his cloak was adorned with lunar court symbolism… And his odd way of not directly facing me when he spoke reminded me of a pony I knew years ago – one who lived on the outskirts of Trotsdale.

I had no way of proving this point to myself, of course, but it did put me at ease enough to continue to converse with him for a few moments – until others arrived to enjoy the fire as well and he moved off into the shadows.

Mostly out of curiosity, as he departed I mentioned that I would return to castle Astur within the hour, and if he were to meet me there, I would endeavor to answer his questions.

And sure enough, somehow completely unseen by the guards this cloaked pony was waiting for me as I entered the great hall. So, assuming that if he wished ill of me he had wasted his opportunity, I bid him enter the great room, warm himself by the fire, and ask me his questions.

He simply desired to know everything about the crystals found in the Leylands to the north of the Empire, the crystals that Baron Goldfleur has taken such a shine to…

And I do mean everything…

So, over the course of the next hour I explained all that I knew about the crystals, and he offered very little in the way of any information about himself. I did manage to glean that he was from Canterlot, as he had specific knowledge with regard to locations and events that only one from the white city would know.

When he was satisfied with the information I had given, he politely excused himself out of the rear door to the great room and vanished into the frozen night on leathery bat wings…

Ultimately I shall pen a letter to Captain Imperious to see what he knows of my mysterious visitor and his desire for such complete knowledge of such an obscure topic.

So, with his exit and my acquisition of a fresh pot of tea, I settled in once more to resume my study – which is when Relic Silvermane appeared in the hall.

The remainder of the evening was spent chatting with her with regards to the talisman, the curse, and what we hope to achieve with regards to herself and her hive. And in the end I do believe she understands the gravity of the situation, including the fact she may become a weapon against me - and yet still desires to move ahead with the plan.

She is exceptionally brave, for herself and for her followers, and I shall do my utmost to ensure nothing unexpected happens.