Six Legs was tired. He had been selling goods for the past several hours, but it was more than that. This was a different kind of tired, the kind where you want to just lie down and never get back up. In a few more days he hoped the ancients would allow him that.

He stood to the right of the stage watching the play. He didn't bother trying to climb the steps to the higher seating. Years of dirty looks and spit had taught him his place in the moose hierarchy. While he couldn't say what the top of that pyramid looked like, the bottom was reserved for ponies and the cursed. That was the reason Six Legs traded with the ponies in Luna Bay, There was money to be made and it was honest work. On top of that, it was the only place he'd ever been to where they treated him better than a dog. It was the place where he had met Snap.

The bundle hanging from his left side let out a small hiccup. Six legs turned his head and shifted the bundle of blankets with his mouth to reveal the drowsy face of a calf. She had been stumbling around his booth all day on those gangly legs of hers and had worn herself out. He gave the calf a few gentle licks before she yawned and settled back down to sleep.

"she's more red then she ought to be" he thought to himself. with calves getting darker as they grew, he figured she would probably be the same color as a bloodwood log when she was full grown, but those eyes, they shined a color Six Legs didn't have a word for before he met Snap. "Aquamarine", she had called it. That was where the sleeping calf had gotten her name.

when the Snap had gone into labor, Six Legs became a rabid animal. The midwife of the village they were in had refused to help them because of who they were. Six Legs had threatened to crush her skull. When the calf was born he had been outside the barn they were staying in, waiting for the villagers to arrive with torches and pitchforks. When he asked how his family was the midwife answered " She... she was too big, but she has bright eyes, like her mother's mane".

The terrified midwife had fled the barn soon after the birth. They named their daughter Bright Eyes.

A gasp from the audience brought Six Legs out of his thoughts. He re-bundled Bright Eyes in the thick blankets she'd need to make it to Luna Bay and turned back to face the stage in time to see a unicorn being pulled offstage by magic. At least it looked like magic, though he knew unicorn horns tended to glow whenever they did magic. The bigger question was if this was the pony who was paying him to take her to Luna Bay, and she had just left the stage, why did she want to stay until the end of the play?

"But the oasis inside the Fang Mountains was not left untouched by the last blast of power that escaped the Heart of Darkness", cried a voice Six Legs was too far to the right of the stage to see, though from the voice he could tell it belonged to a wolf.

" As the creatures of the oasis slept they were changing. The deer nearly doubled in size, their coats grew darker and their spiked antlers became massive battering rams. The diamond dogs grew thicker pelts and longer claws arms and snouts. The pegasi also grew thicker coats with darker more muted colors, their feathered wings were replaced by leathery membrane and their pupils became catlike slits."

Adult members of the three groups came onto the stage for the first time. these three were locals somehow chosen to represent their respectful groups. The big bull moose on stage smiled and took a quick glance across the crowd, stopping to flex his muscles and grunt at a few cows in the audience, showboating the same as his other two counterparts. after a quick sideways glance the moose cleared his throat as though her were about to speak, instead he turned his head and launched a mouthful of phlegm at Six Legs. While the spit didn't have enough force to make it all the way, the idea of it did, as several other bulls in the audience snorted and laughed.

The old wolf running the show walked from the left to the right side of the stage, only stopping to give the bull a quick bop to the snout. the bull gave a surprised snuff and glared daggers at the wolf, who ignored him and continued walking.

"The transformations affected every creature in the oasis. The trees lost their green leaves and took on shades of red yellow and orange, earning the forested regions the name Everfall. Crops became less effected by the cycle of day and night and seemed to grow at all hours. even the woodland creatures grew larger and had heavier pelts. but the most shocking change to the outside world was that the changed pegasi and diamond dogs began to eat meat as well as plants."

" The outside world was so shocked by this news that Equestria distanced its self from the area. the creatures of the region soon realized that they were so different from their former species that they couldn't even call themselves by their former names. And so new names were adopted, the changed deer became moose. the changed diamond dogs became wolves and the changed pegasi became thestrals."

Six Legs had ignored the taunt from the stage before, but the story being told ate at his very core. He had seen how deep the differences between creatures went. it was those differences and his own stupidity that had killed Snap less than a year ago. He should have stopped their relationship before it went to far. If he had been a thestral it might have worked out, but he wasn't. He was a moose, massive and stupid. Bright Eyes was small for a moose, but had been too big for a pony. After Snap had given birth she never recovered. Snap Apple hadn't lived to the end of the month.

Bright Eyes brought him back to reality. she wiggled in her bundle, letting him know that she was awake. She always fell asleep when he walked, so he shifted his weight between his left and right to seem like they were moving, hoping she would fall back asleep. The motion also waggled the two calves legs that hung from his right side. patches of his dark brown coat were missing all around where the small hooves rubbed against his sides.

When Six Legs was born the midwife had told the family that one calf had absorbed the other. there weren't many crimes worse than killing a child, but in his father's eyes there was nothing more evil than what Six Legs had done, and to his own brother no less. His parent's had abandoned him on the bone road soon after. He had been raised by a potion maker who found him among the skeletons. She hadn't taught him to brew potions, but she had taught him about family. The day Bright Eyes was born he swore to the ancients that his child would have a better life than him, and he was going to make that promise a reality as soon as they reached Luna Bay.

The shifting hadn't worked, so he moved the blankets to let Bright Eyes see what was happening. This would be one of the last times they would be together and he hoped that maybe she would remember something good. she smiled up at him and began to chew on the corner of the blanket.

when he was looking after Bright Eyes he had missed the story about how The Night Kingdom was named and how its distrust of Equestria had continued, things every moose calf was taught in school. but the old wolf continued.

"It was years later when a great terror would spread across the land. One of Equestria's old gods, Discord, the god of chaos, seized control of the southern lands and then set his eyes on The Night Kingdom."

A massive roar tore through the amphitheater. Bright eyes let out a terrified peep and tried her best hide her head in the blankets like a turtle.

"Discord was a terrible dragon. He was taller than The Windy Gate, with rows upon rows of teeth the length of a thestral's leg, 100 pairs of antlers stretched from his head to his tail and armor made from the bones of the other old gods."

As the wolf was talking, a truly horrible creature seemed to be rising from the left side of the stage. the creature was a massive puppet. while much smaller than the Discord in the story, the teeth were still as long as a moose's hoof and it had maybe 5 sets of antlers. It had a fearsome dragon like shape and was covered in a white clay with a spatter of red paint meant to represent bone and blood. All in all, It was extremely well built and it made Six legs wonder if that had been a good time to Bright Eyes to be watching.

Now, Six leg had traveled farther than most in the kingdom, and he'd heard three different versions of what Discord looked like and even he wasn't sure which one seemed more realistic. The Night Kingdom version was certainly told to scare the young ones, but the version he'd heard in Luna Bay was even stranger, horns, antlers, hooves and talons, how could something even move with that many different parts. the only thing he knew for sure was that the seals on White Coat Island had to be wrong, there was no way Discord was a giant lobster.

Before the old wolf could continued his story, another actor walked onto the stage. She was dressed in deep blue armor with a crown. she had a pair of shining black wings that had to be made of crow feathers, far better made than the cardboard worn by the foals in the early play. Even though the horn that protruded through her crown was splintered at the tip, the actress carried herself with a level of poise unseen anywhere in The Night Kingdom. Six Legs had seen the statue of the princess at her castle in Old Capital and was suddenly proud that one of the last times he would see his daughter she would be seeing this. He Knew that in Equestria she would learn all about Princess Celestia and Nightmare Moon, but tonight she would learn the true story of Princess Luna, the immortal sovereign of The Night Kingdom.

Author's Note

Well, here we are chapter 5. man, this thing has really blown up from the originally planed 3 chapters and it's still not done yet. Don't worry though, there is a plan. At this point I can definitely say that there will be one more chapter and then an epilogue.