Lineage

With all the things Luna had trained me to deal with, forces weren’t one of them.

“You won’t be in command of your own army for a long while,” she’d said. “So let’s focus on making you a formidable fighter before a formidable commander.”

Because of that, it was my father that decided to make plans revolving around the extra forces he’d brought as well as organising our own rag-tag group of criminals into something decent. Well… as decent as a bunch of untrained drunks with rusted swords could be. So it was up to the Financier, the Working Girl, and the War Hero to decide what our course of action was with myself taking up the role of a common chess piece instead of a king or queen. I preferred it that way, honestly. Less pressure.

I decided to visit Twilight while I had some spare time, having not seen the little genius in five years had made me wonder what she’d been up to in that amount of time. I knocked on the door to the room she’d picked, waiting several seconds for a response.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Richter,” I answered. “You got a minute?”

“Of course,” she nodded. “Just make sure you shut the door quickly when you come in.”

Puzzled as to what she meant, I entered and swiftly shut the door behind me, learning her reasoning behind the request was because she was sat at her desk completely naked.

“Well,” I nodded. “That’s a pleasant sight if I’ve ever seen one. How’ve you been, beautiful?”

“It’s great to see you again,” she smiled, standing up and walking away from glowing apparatus on the desk to give me a hug, squeezing her voluptuous form against my chest.

“You too,” I nodded, giving her a kiss on the cheek before she backed away, thankfully making no attempt to cover herself up. “What’s with the nudity?”

“Oh, I started sleeping in the nude a while back,” she shrugged. “I’ve only been up long enough to freshen myself, and since I wasn’t going anywhere I didn’t bother dressing before getting to work.”

“On the shiny thing?” I asked, nodding at the glowing kit on the desk.

“Not just a shiny thing…” she said, beckoning me over to the desk. As I stood by the desk, I spotted what was making all the light: a small, silver ball with three holes bore into it, rotating gently inbetween four crystals positioned in a pyramid shape around it.

“A shiny thing that might just give us the biggest breakthrough in archeological history,” she said, already sounding giddy as it is.

“Can I take a seat on the bed?” I asked. “I know when you get like this you like to lecture for a while.”

“Go ahead,” she nodded.

I did so, and was pleasantly surprised when the little sex bomb decided to straddle my waist and snuggle close to me as I sat down, eagerly explaining what she’d discovered.

“You remember Illvana, yes?” she asked.

“The Highmoore Queen?” I offered.

“One of the Highmoore Queens,” Twilight corrected. “She’s been eagerly helping us rediscover what happened to her people after Ifrit destroyed her city. Through her information, we managed to learn that the Highmoore were indeed an empire that spanned all across the world, explaining the architecture of the ruins that have been found over the years.”

“So they’re a confirmed civilisation now?” I asked.

“More than that, through campaigning and politics, we’ve reinstated the Highmoore rule over their lands and given them a place in the Council of Nations,” Twilight explained.

“All that for one person?” I asked. “Seems a bit strange.”

“That’s because there isn’t just one Highmoore Elf left,” Twilight smirked. “That’s the best part… we believe that there could be a thousand of them left, hidden away for so long that even they’ve forgotten where they are.”

“Is that possible?” I asked.

“It seems so,” Twilight nodded. “Illvana took a sphere, much like the one here, from her castle before she left. The sphere will glow as long as there is another maintained sphere like this itself in a Highmoore city. And since it’s still humming like a bee, we know that there’s still Highmoore around. The only problem is, we don’t know which city it’s coming from.”

“Surely you can just trace the source of the energy, right?” I asked.

“Normally, yes. But the spheres have been covered in so much warding and disruptor magic that even Celestia can’t track it,” Twilight said with a shake of her head. “The Highmoore were a semi-nomadic civilisation, always moving from country to country under the instruction of their Mother Goddesses and their capital cities moved constantly over the years. Our hypothesis is that since nobody has seen the Highmoore moving around and since the Mother Goddesses have abandoned the world, thus not giving the remaining Highmoore any more instructions to move, we believe that they’ve made a permanent residence in or around their last known locations.”

“Then why use disruptor magic on the spheres?” I asked. “And what are the spheres for?”

“Locators. They’d activate them, and every sphere that was activated elsewhere in the world would shine a map on a wall that would blink wherever the specific owner of that sphere was at the time. It was how they were able to know where they were and stay in contact with another. But the location transmission only locates them when activated. You can’t trace them when they’ve deactivated.”

“So, being activated and functioning are two different things?” I asked.

“Yes… how do I explain it…” Twilight said, scratching the back of her head. “Think of it like a lantern with oil in it. When it’s lit, or activated, it illuminates things, but when it’s not lit, there’s still oil in there that means it has the potential to be… no… that doesn’t work as well as I thought… uh… does that at least help you understand how it works?”

“Yes, my awkward little genius,” I nodded, petting her on the head. “Activated means it shines out for all to see, but functioning means it’s still there.”

“Great… where was I again?” she asked more herself than anyone before snapping her fingers. “Oh, right! Anyway, since nobody’s ordering them to move and we can tell that they’re still around, it should be as simple as sending people to look in and around the last known places they were inhabiting… that was easy enough to understand, right? I didn’t confuse you?”

“Not any more than usual,” I shrugged, wrapping my arms around her waist and hugging her closer. “You can take a breath now.”

“Thanks, Richter,” she giggled, snuggling into my neck. “Have… have you spoken to Shining?”

“Yeah, he’s upstairs planning with Khalifa and Alexander,” I nodded, feeling the mood drop slightly as we brought the subject up. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah… I’m fine,” she nodded, solemn but not sad. “I think it’ll be worse for Cadance than it’ll be for me. I’ve already had to cope with losing my parents twenty years ago… but Cadance has never lost anyone before, especially not someone as close to her as her husband. Did he tell you what he wanted you to do?”

“He did,” I said, tracing a circular pattern on her dark skin.

“Do you think you can do that?” she asked, looking at me in the eyes.

“I… I hope so,” I sighed. “I’m just worried about what’s going to happen to Mom.”

“Me too,” Twilight said in a heavy tone. “Celestia is gonna have to keep a close eye on her. This might be traumatic enough to release her Nightmare Form.”

“Seriously?” I asked in disbelief. “I thought that was just anger that did that?”

“Not entirely. Anger’s a better accelerant, but any sort of emotional turmoil can help power it up,” Twilight said with a shake of her head. “Alicorn need to keep themselves in check constantly, need to have complete control over themselves at all times, or risk being taken over by their Nightmare Form.”

The two of us fell silent for a long moment, Twilight simply resting herself against my chest and syncing her breathing with mine. Neither of us wanted to move and were content to just sit and wallow in misery for as long as we needed to. I made a move to lie down on the bed and Twilight seemed to want to as well, making myself comfortable on a pillow while Twilight merely lay atop me as the two of us drifted off to sleep, slowly coming to terms with the inevitable loss of a family member.