Wild Moon

Chapter 5

The long and short of a legend

"I'm tellin ya, Dusty, we shouldn't be here..."

"No one's been here in decades, Stoney, no one's gonna care now."

The whispered disagreement refused to echo in the decrepit stone halls of the abandoned castle. The facility had long fallen into disrepair; surely anything of value had already been pillaged. Walls had crumbled, windows open to nowhere, floor and walkway pocked with new growth defying the pony-made structure and finding light here and there to let them grow. Storms and snows fueled the weeds and molds that made the structure barely a memory, the half-destroyed statury crumbled out of recognition.

In the hollow halls rang two sets of hoofsteps - sharp strikes of a fully-grown earth stallion and the patter of his tiny brother as they explored the remains with morbid interest. "And we had t' come at night," The taller groused. "You a bat or somethin, Dusty? I can barely see a hoof in front o' my face."

"I can't jump that high or I'd show you," the smaller snapped and he trotted ahead. "I can see just fine. There's a moon out, you know."

"So we're walkin under the Mare of the Moon?" came the nervous inquiry.

"Stony, I swear you're scared of every shadow and rustle you hear."

"I'd be less scared if I knew what was causin shadows and rustles, Dusty..."

Despite the smaller's bravado, his voice rarely rose to normal volume as they continued to explore. "So what's so special about this place anyway?" The larger finally asked aloud.

"Something about royal treasure," The smaller replied as he nosed at a door. "This place was a temple or a castle to Celestia. Wonder why it was abandoned."

The taller pony turned to reply but spooked as the dilapidated door his brother poked at collapsed noisily. He reared and wheeled for the exit.

"Sandstone!" The smaller shouted after his brother as he galloped outside. He took a few steps to follow, stopped, and looked back to the entryway he had disturbed. He looked back and forth twice before shouting after his brother again. "I hope the Mare in the Moon saw that!! I hope she drops out of the sky right on the rocks in your head!!"

He could hear his brother still galloping. "Doubt he heard me," the smaller muttered before entering the room he disturbed.

The tiny blue earth zebra marveled as the entryway yawned wide into a grand hall, with a ceiling that barely remained to contain the stars and a waning moon. The moonlight added jagged shapes from the nearby overgrown gardens, as cracked fingers of branches and crooked remnants of walls left many bizarre shadows on the remaining room. The floor was mostly intact, save a couple of aggressive weeds and a few dangling bits of vines that had crawled through the windows and spread about the floor. The tiny pony tread carefully, hoping the plant life was all that lived in that chamber.

"STONY??" the little one called after his brother one last time before heading further into the room. His ear twitched in approval as he heard the heavy hoofbeats of his big brother returning, seemingly faster than when he left.

"DUSTMITE!!" Came the panicked reply. The smaller wheeled, only to be tripped over by the taller zebra, whose momentum sent him careening into the shadows and crashing into much less solid structure. Dustmite was staggered from the blow, but he fared much better than his brother who topped a nearby pillar.

"Sandstone, what the hay is wrong with you!??" the smaller zebra demanded of his brother as he shook the blur out of his vision.

"A moonshadow....." the larger zebra whimpered. "You cursed me, Dustmite - we might both be cursed....."

"'Cursed'? In this old ruin??" Dustmite skedaddled up to his big brother to try and pull him clear of the debris. "No... ugh... curses.... here.... ungh..."

Sandstone shook his little brother and most of the pillar off his back, "Well SOMEthing dark flew over me when I was ... leaving..."

"So some owl spooked you some more? Nice.... when the clouds clear we should be able to see what else is in this chamber."

As if responding to Dustmite's request, the clouds above parted, and the waning moon cast both its light and shadow to the chamber. The light brightened a far wall, which displayed two circular altars - both taller than Sandstone and several feet in diameter. The first altar appeared the more elaborate - two circular platfoms, crowned with a short pillar topped with a cracked, moldy, but still mostly spherical stone. Shooting out from the pillar were five haphazardly pointing arms, each topped with smaller rocks that had images carved into each one. Neither zebra could make sense of the sculpture and neither could reach up to look closer at the stones to see what they were or what they meant.

The second altar, while seemingly in similar disrepair, had chunks shorn away as the ceiling and walls behind it had collapsed. Dustmite approached the second one carefully, noting that the damage almost resembled stairs. He could see cracks in the base, but in the poor light he could make out carved shapes in the sides. Running a hoof over one of the forms, he guessed somepony important had been represented there.

"The Moonlight isn't enough," Dustmite grumbled. "I wanna know whose castle this was."

"So we should come back in the morning, right?" Sandstone asked a little too quickly.

"We're not coming back in the morning," Dustmite replied, irritated. "We need to find out more about this place before we get back on the road. Hoofington's still a few days out, and we've got business to tend to there as well."

New hoofsteps caught their ears. "Company...." Sandstone whispered.

"You know the drill," Dustmite whispered back. The larger zebra slipped between the taller altar and the far wall to hide as Dustmite dropped to a sitting position. He hoped "big brother" would remember how this works.....

The hoofsteps slowed as they neared the chamber. Dustmite tried to curl up a little tighter before their new visitor arrived. He wanted to look, but meeting the eyes of the newcomer might give something away.

"Hel-looooo....." came a soft voice from the hallway.

Durstmite dared a peek, but shut his eyes again when he heard Sandstone shuffling from his hiding place.

"Hel-looooo," the voice repeated as the figure finally emerged from the shadows. A filly, Dustmite's ears told him. Why would someone come here alone? Then again, who would come here at all? Dustmite didn't move.

"I know I heard someone in here," the sing-songy voice called again as it closed in. Dustmite dared another peek - this time he could see her, a pale yellow pegasus with a flowing pink mane, looking around in the nooks and crannies of the main chamber. "Come out, little one, I know you came this way....."

A cue if Dustmite ever heard one. He whimpered.

"Oh!" the pegasus filly was startled by the new sound. She wheeled, leaving the ground in one defensive motion. "w-who's there?" she whispered. Again Dustmite whimpered; she landed, walking in a slow circle before spotting the poor colt curled up at the base of one of the altars.

"Oh, my," she breathed as she hurried up to Dustmite. "Are you hurt? I didn't see you there…"

Dustmite opened one eye. "huh..? somepony there..?" he whispered, "I'm scared...."

"Of course you are," the pegasus reassured him, "this is a scary, scary place... I'm only here because I lost one of my animals in here."

"There's something else in here?" Dustmite panicked.

Sandstone took that as a cue and leapt from his hiding place. "RIGHT HERE!" He roared, stomping his hooves and gnashing his teeth.

The pegasus screamed and launched out of the ruin before Dustmite could even act "scared" with her. He looked up at Sandstone, who made another distorted face before the two fell head over hooves in laughter.

The two colts slowly regained their composure, though Sandstone would send his "little" brother into new fits of laughter with more mock-scary expressions or flopping his head about, making his eyes wobble and cross. Dustmite couldn't take any of it seriously, and Sandstone preferred this kind of laughter from little brother. He settled himself nearby as Dustmite rolled around on the floor, hooves twitching as he tried in vain to catch his breath from his hysterics.

Sandstone pushed up to all fours. "We need to get moving, little brother. You said we still have a couple days' travel to Hoofington..."

Dustmite took a moment to shake himself out. "Resting here wouldn't be bad, but we've got a lot of ground to cover."

"But then you wouldn't get your answers about the altar," a third voice casually opined.

Both colts responded.

"Probably wasn't important anyway," Dustmite replied off-hoofingly.

""We might be back this way in the daytime," Sandstone said with a shrug.

Then the two colts looked back at each other. "That wasn't you?"

The two then slowly turned toward the two altars. Their new visitor, apparently a black and gray unicorn, somehow balanced himself across the arms of the haphazard statue that adorned the first altar. His deep blue eyes had a faint glow to them, as if reflecting the moonlight pouring down from the waning crescent directly above. He regarded the two colts a moment before sliding down to the ground and standing before them, taller than Sandstone but not quite as broad.

Sandstone's magenta eyes widened in fear. "moonshadow..." he whispered.

"Who wha?" Dustmite countered. "Weird that we got another visitor in here. Thought this place was completely abandoned."

Sandstone trembled, speechless before the unicorn. The newcomer smiled faintly at this response- did this stallion truly know what was before him? No matter; the smaller one needed more convincing.

"I heard your laughter," the unicorn began, "And it pleases me that someone does not fear the night as so many others do. They whisper secrets and mumble prayers, fearful that the shadows could misinterpret their words. Tell me, are you pleased with your deed?"

"Yes!" was Dustmite's ready answer. "Oldest trick in the book!"

Sandstone couldn't get his mouth, much less his voice, to conjure an answer. The unicorn continued. "Rare do I hear a normal voice in the night, so I might have to reward this... hmm, how shall I do that...?"

"Don't kill us...." Sandstone stammered.

"'kill' you?" the unicorn snorted. "Not interested in such things. You seem clever enough, think of a better answer."

Sandstone took that almost as an order. "Can you teleport us to Hoofington?"

Dustmite bucked Sandstone in the knees. "Scaredyhorse."

Sandstone crumpled, but scrabbled back to a standing position. The unicorn nodded. "Have you a better answer, small one?"

Dustmite walked right up to him. "Do you know this place? What was it?"

The unicorn seated himself to meet Dustmite's sharp stare. "Long ago this place was a castle... believed to be a prior residence of Celestia and her sister."

"That's PRINCESS Celestia!" Dustmite corrected.

"*Ahem* yes, 'Princess' Celestia... but she was not alone."

Sandstone started to calm. "She had a boyfriend?"

"This place was an ancient castle dedicated to the 'Royal Pony sisters', I would assume it meant Celestia and her sister Luna..."

Dustmite almost asked a question, so the unicorn paused. When the little one decided not to ask, the unicorn continued.

"Few know that these royal pony sisters had brothers as well. You see, while the sisters moved the sun and moon, they had brothers that helped things along. One of the brothers - Aphelion- actually assisted in the transition of seasons and the rise and fall of tides by his fine-tuning of the moon's position. Another brother - Cepheid - did the same for the sun, making sure that the seasons remained constant.

"Then there were the 'assistants' to Celestia and Luna, Solaris and Umbral. Solaris shared in Celestia's duties of moving the sun, and their taking turns lessened their burden. Luna and Umbral, however, split their duties in different ways." The unicorn then looked up to the moon looking down. "Tonight, Luna isn't quite looking our way, she will in a few weeks' time. But her brother, who fills in the rest of the moon, leaves a dark 'slice' of said moon almost every night. One night each did Luna or Umbral work alone, but the rest of the time they shared in their duty."

"Never heard of em," Dustmite dismissed.

"And the mare in the moon - Nightmare Moon - she's always gonna be up there, right?" Sandstone shakily queried as his head lowered and his ears drooped.

"Were she to return, she might need some able-bodied and sharp-witted ponies such as you to help her regain a hoof-hold in this world."

"how do you know all this? You making this up?" Dustmite's doubts amused the unicorn.

"bet this unicorn's from some cult." Sandstone muttered as quietly as he could. But it was not quiet enough, for he was indeed heard.

"'cult'?" the unicorn repeated. Sandstone shrunk back. "CULT!?" the unicorn protested as he rose to his feet. He watched the stallion cover his head with his hooves. "What you call 'cults'," The unicorn insisted, "are nothing but herds who actually REMEMBER! They know that Celestia could not control sun, moon and seasons alone no matter how many books were written! She has no RIGHT to claim all this power and this balance must be restored!"

If Sandstone wasn't trembling so much he probably would have fled. Dustmite was scared too, but wasn't about to run yet. "And if she's so powerful that she can raise the moon on her own," Dustmite countered, "why would she need some scrub ponies like us?"

"I saw what you did to that pegasus," the unicorn answered. "Perhaps your size and your innocence could be tested in another location? And your brother... 'sandstone', was it? You need confidence to go with the strength you already have."

Sandstone stopped trembling at the revelation. "Strength?"

"You're physically strong," the unicorn observed, "we just need to toughen that resolve. And you, little one, what would it take for someone accused of running a 'cult' to convince you that your cunning is an asset to be properly utilized?"

"I don't think you're some cult leader," Dustmite replied, "but we do need jobs. And lotsa bits. And a roof over our heads."

Sandstone looked back and forth. "We don't know this pony from any other unicorn, Dusty, how do we know he can do that?"

The unicorn trotted from the altar and stared Sandstone square in the eye. "And what would it take for you to trust me?"

Sandstone gulped before he spoke. "Your.... your name?"

The unicorn stepped back, allowing the pale gray stallion to breathe some relief. "You may call me Lapis. And in our jouney back to my abode, I will explain everything. You will both have the option to walk away, but please hear all my words before you choose."

"We've got work waiting in Hoofington," Dustmite deliberately pondered aloud, "and we miss out on some money if we don't go."

Lapis levitated a pouch of bits to Dustmite. "Will this cover your time and trouble to miss out on that mission?"

Dustmite nosed open the pouch and made a quick count. "Sold."

Sandstone nosed around the bits himself. "We're your ponies, Mr. Lapis."

Lapis smiled faintly. "That was easy, now wasn't it? Come, we have much to discuss."