Aftersound

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Written by: Oneimare & Geka

Preread and edited by: Jay Tarrant, IAmApe, DuvetofReason

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Trial

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Rainbow retreated, darting into the air to deny me any chance to react to her ultimatum with anything but an astonished look. My eyes tried to find her in the night, but she managed to dissolve into the shadows without a trace; not that my magic wouldn’t slip off her enchanted armour anyway.

However, as I sat in the darkness and the initial bewilderment abated, something remained in my mind—not Rainbow’s terrible words, but her eyes. After hundreds of years of reluctant peace and faithful servitude she was cast into the dark of the unknown; left to her own judgement, and suddenly finding herself unable to do so.

Queen Chrysalis could be called many names, few of them flattering, but one thing about her couldn’t be denied—she was a brilliant strategist who knew how to fully utilise her resources. Whilst her shapeshifting power had no match, her deception relied on a much more subtle skill—manipulation; and her ability to read ponies would make a foal of Delight.

From the moment I had the stupidity to set my hoof into the Royal Archives and introduce myself to Thirteen, my piece had taken a place on her board and I had become a part of her complicated mind game.

Five hundred years ago, her goal was clear as the day, but this time I couldn’t even tell what side she was on. What side I was on.

And I had to try to end this match in a draw, with no pieces removed from the board.

Luna’s hunched figure lit up the barren stone with the arcane heartbeat of her horn; translucent threads shimmering around it faded into the nothingness, connecting the Guardian to her Dream Realm.

In that game of chess, she was a wild card. The death of her sister had left a wound much deeper than the once half-imagined betrayal. Not only might it not heal at all this time, such a trauma required not a blast of the rainbow, but years of therapy.

I had but a few hours to figure out how to defuse that ticking bomb.

As if to remind me of that, the magic on the tip of her long horn winked out only to flare with another kind of power—that which moved celestial bodies. The Moon dipped over the horizon and it blushed with the salmon of the Sun’s looming advent.

Knowing that no amount of time was going to grant me an insight into her sanity, I reluctantly drew closer to Luna until, suppressing a sigh, I lowered myself onto the ground beside her.

All of a sudden, she spoke:

“I visited the dreams of your peers.” The predatory eyes squinted at me and I failed to say if they bore suspicion or just curiosity. “It would have been more productive to invite you into my realm, but you seem unable to find peace tonight.”

As I hesitated to comment, the alicorn had lost interest in me, staring into the distance with a grimace and quietly continued, “I’m able to see through nightmares, but witnessing what Canterlot has become has made me doubt my ability.

“I am familiar with the change, I am familiar with being unfamiliar.” Luna mirthlessly chuckled, but the moment of melancholic levity didn’t last. “When I first stepped onto these lifeless rocks, I had yet to learn all the intricacies of the world that had become novel in my prolonged absence. This time, ponydom has taken an even greater leap, though I left it for a spell twice as short.”

“Fall.”

Luna shot me a look both confused and somewhat annoyed.

“Forgive me?”

I met her fearsome eyes unwaveringly, little different from the defiance Wire showed her hours ago.

“Equestria fell lower than any nightmares you’ve ever seen might have suggested.”

This time she glared at the horizon.

“Rainbow Dash’s nightmares offered me a new perspective on that. That, and you both vastly underestimated my ears.”

I froze to my place, afraid to even glance at Luna, but my rigidness gave her a sufficient clue on what I was thinking. Though, in all honesty, my mind was just running wild with panic.

“Fret not,” the alicorn indignantly huffed. “The Crown are neither benevolent rulers nor malevolent ones and it would be quite unwise to bring more calamity and chaos to the city than it already suffers.”

The infamously mercurial demi-goddess bore a much more reserved expression than I expected, yet her clenched jaws and rapid blinks indicated that she didn’t appreciate Rainbow’s insinuations nor my heeding of them.

The silence dragged on and it became apparent that the fuming alicorn was waiting for me to say something; in my defence, perhaps.

“What are you going to do, Princess?”

Frowning, Luna grumbled, “I thought we agreed a long time ago that you don’t have to address me like that.” Letting out a sigh, she added, “Nor do I think I have any right to be called a Princess anytime soon, not after I abandoned my country for so long. If I want to prove that the lives of ponies still matter to me, I will surrender to Queen Chrysalis.”

“What if she decides to kill you?”

“I would be already dead, wouldn’t I?” She smiled wryly, but her humourless eyes found something—someone—else in the shadows fleeing sunrise. “I might have allowed myself to lose my sight, but I can see where fighting Chrysalis has brought me.”

A relieved sigh almost escape my metal thorax, but its fan stopped dead when she added in an icy tone:

“But that doesn’t mean my sister’s death is forgotten. Justice will be served.”

I half expected Rainbow’s shoulder cannons to tear into the midnight alicorn, but the morning remained peaceful, save for the vengeance burning in Luna’s eyes. Soon, even that faded from her gaze as she studied me with unbridled curiosity.

“How did you become a spirit bound to that, eh, impractical set of armour?”

I stared at her, perplexed by the sudden change in her mood, but Luna either ignored my intense look or was really enchanted by my body. Either way, something told me pressing that issue would do no good; however, I discovered myself struggling to explain my situation to someone who had no idea what a memory anchor meant.

“There are many others like you,” Luna muttered, “according to your companions’ dreams.”

Her absent-minded comment rubbed me the wrong way, though I managed to hide it from my voice when I clarified, “Their memories are artificial, while I have Twilight’s.”

Luna, her eyes still fastened on me with an unsettling intensity, silently contemplated the concept.

“Most curious—I’ve never heard of anything like that. But of course, I don’t claim to be omniscient in the matters of magic,” she finally said and thankfully stopped staring at me. “And those artificial memories? I wonder what their dreams would appear to be.”

Once again she denied me solace.

“Speaking of your fascinating entourage… One of them uses a very peculiar kind of magic. Familiar, I would say.”

The warlock, already rendered taciturn by our confrontations, seemed to have withdrawn even further, yet she hadn’t left, keeping to the shadows of the cliffs, blending into them. I expected nothing… positive of a reunion with Luna, but Trixie still carried naivete in her.

“You should thank Trixie—she was the one who prompted us to come to you. I believe she might have been seeking your… judgement.”

The alicorn gave me an inscrutable look and fell silent for a while. When she spoke again, her tone bore a certain nostalgia to it.

“I remember Sombra when he was but a wandering scholar. He came to me a decade after Starswirl’s disappearance, seeking what many others craved—to either repeat the Archmage’s feats of discovery or go further and find loopholes in Harmony.

“His wish to learn the art of dream-walking made me laugh as my cutie mark limited it solely to me. Still, his insistence refused to wane and I amused myself with tutoring him with the theory.

“He ended up teaching me. His advice gave me an insight into how to reach places beyond visible realities, how to find cracks that led… far away…”

She awkwardly trailed off as my eyes burned into her. The notes of pride in her voice infuriated me as much as her admission of sharing knowledge with the stallion that had contributed to Equestria’s downfall.

“What are you going to do about her?” I asked coolly, caring more about Luna’s decision-making much more than what it would entail for Trixie.

“The point of punishment is not to make a nocent suffer, but to make them understand that they were wrong. And her dreams tell me I could learn from her how to truly regret learning what I shouldn’t have.”

The first ray of the Sun blazed across the grey valley and eyelids squeezed in defiance. Still, the deed was accomplished and the girls’ began to shake off the chains of slumber.

Unfortunately, a few hours of sleep on the hard rock barely changed anything and the infected wounds undid the clemency brought by the respite.

At least one filly seemed to actually benefit from it.

By the time I approached Flower, she had been already chatting hoarsely with Wire, groggily blinking the dregs of sleep away.

“How do you feel?” I asked her.

She whipped herself around and winced as her body protested a motion too sudden. Yet the filly’s face melted into a smile.

Sensing Delight’s gaze I consciously mirrored the grin.

“As though I could kill for a TCE ration,” she grumbled, trying to see over my shoulder. “I should thank the Princess for that, shouldn’t I?”

Wire wrinkled her nose, but my attention was on Rainbow and Trixie heading to our little group.

“Can’t see why not,” I absentmindedly commented, then raised my voice. “Though you don’t have to call her Princess—she doesn’t like that.”

Rainbow momentarily met my eyes, but her expression betrayed nothing; not that I expected my hint of Luna’s abdication of the throne to be news to her. I might have made a mistake of thinking the alicorn that had attuned herself to hunting lacked in the hearing department, but I wasn’t going to assume the same about the armour forged by spies.

Delight shot me a brief concerned glance. Either she had indulged in eavesdropping again or was reminding me of my and Flower’s unresolved problem.

“So, when are we heading back?” Wire asked impatiently, oblivious to the silent tense exchange.

“The convoy is going to be here by sunset,” Rainbow announced. As I gave her a questioning look, she lied, “There’ve been unexpected delays.”

Almost sending me jumping, Luna retorted right from behind me:

“We can’t wait so long, the young one here needs immediate help!”

The wild card had been played.

Wire bristled, but again, I watched Rainbow—a muscle twitched on her muzzle. Delight squirmed uneasily, her eye, half-hidden by her ruffled mane, searching for the best escape routes. Trixie’s shadowy face offered nothing, though Luna’s words alluded to another pact made in the realm of dreams.

“What is your suggestion, then?” Rainbow said in a perfectly neutral tone.

“I can teleport us”—she almost imperceptibly stammered on ‘us’—”in a series of short jumps.”

After a few moments of carefully impassionate consideration, Rainbow amiably conceded, “Fine.”

The alicorn’s preternatural hearing allowed no private discussion, but it was apparent without saying it out loud—we needed more time to understand if Luna’s mental state could be trusted and she had just denied us that, perhaps, intentionally.

Luna broke into a measured trot and the stone of the crags shifted, opening the path out of the Badlands. However, the long alicorn legs resulted in her waiting for us before the sandy expanse, surveying the horizon, her huge mane whipping in the wind like an ominous banner.

She turned to meet us, spreading her tattered wings of ruffled, uneven and unpreened feathers (at least they lacked membranes), motioning, “Come closer, my little ponies.”

My muzzle screwed—only her sister could pull that vocative off.

Her horn flashed and the world plunged into darkness.

And from that void, eyes full of malevolence gazed at me.

The moment lasting both the blink of an eye and an eternity finally ceased and the sound of retching met my ears.

Flower was attempting to empty her stomach as she leaned on me. Beside her, Wire heaved but seemed to have bested her digestive system. Judging by Del’s face coloured with a distinct hue, she hadn’t been spared either.

Save for Trixie busy battling her shadow, the girls didn’t seem to notice where or, rather, to what Luna’s magic had briefly brought us.

Rainbow dared to give me a concerned look.

“That wasn’t a teleportation spell,” I deadpanned, trying not to glower at the towering alicorn.

“I learned it from the night,” Luna answered, unperturbed. “It is safe, I assure you.”

She flared her wings up, inviting everyone into their dark shadow.

I clenched my jaws and squeezed my eyes shut, even knowing nothing would hide me from the penetrating hatred.

We materialised on the rim of a dry crumbled stone bowl of enormous proportions exposing the ulcerous womb of the abandoned quarry to the sky. Yet it belonged not to the Edge.

Across the vast sinkhole, Dodge City perched itself, appearing insidiously normal. Then the boiling mirage above it cracked, revealing the domain of madness we’d escaped by the skin of our teeth.

Luna regarded the Junction with more curiosity than concern, admiration even, and in the corner of my eye, I caught Rainbow shaking her head, eyes wide.

I wished my body could emulate gulping.

The next jump showed more mercy to the girls’ vestibular organs, but that let them finally realise that each time we came into contact with something. They kept exchanging looks, but Del shushed the fillies as they tried to speak up on that.

Small metal debris, twisted and singed, littered the patch of rocky ground we’d appeared on. Caked blood darkened by a sooty shell crater. Feathers stuck to that black stain quivered in the breeze.

The bodies, both flesh and arcanium, were gone.

The alicorn let her thoughtful eyes linger on the scene only for the most fleeting of the moments before a pair of great feathery appendages eclipsed the Sun.

Wilted grass futilely tried to tickle my hooves.

We needed to endure only a few more dives into the nightmare that had returned to the demi-goddess’ side, if it had ever truly left.

However, Luna hesitated to raise the standards of the night again.

“I can see a bridge in the distance—I’m not sure I can warp beyond it. Is it safe to approach?”

“No,” Rainbow and I answered in unison.

That earned us a somewhat amused expression from our ferrypony and her wings opened.

The moment the abyss let us out, Rainbow walked away, her weaponry coming to life with its trademark sinister hum.

I dashed after her.

“What are you planning?”

She answered me with a long worried look that turned blank when it shifted behind me.

“What is this all about?” Luna demanded, once again successfully sneaking upon me.

Rainbow turned around, her guns as if accidentally pointing at the alicorn, fear lurking beneath the pegasus’ mask.

Each of us was a wild card in Chrysalis’ eyes.

“The ponies on that bridge illegally settled on it. They knowingly provided false information, resulting in government representatives and our entire operation being put at risk. There’s a high possibility they then disclosed said operation to terrorists, resulting in an armed assault,” Rainbow barked each sentence harshly. “That’s treason and attempted murder followed by multiple minor offences. Their sentence is death.”

“What!?” Luna exploded, her mane expanding with ghastly outlines. “There are dozens of ponies in that village! Possibly children.”

Those ponies were already dead—the gryphons would make sure the betrayal hadn’t gone unnoticed. And as much as I hated it, I couldn’t find it in myself to stop Rainbow from where she was going—we couldn’t risk letting the parasite clinging to Luna back to Equestria if it had any control over her.

The alicorn in question continued to rage, hissing, “You pass sentence upon citizens—”

“They aren’t.”

“Even if they are not, who are you to cast a verdict?”

Luna knew Rainbow was considering executing her, she was aware of why I came to speak with her because of that. But did she realise this right now was nothing but a spectacle with the strings going all the way to Cantrlot, connected to the holey hooves?

“I’m the captain of the Royal Guard, the second in command officer in Equestria, responsible for its security and peace.”

Luna wrinkled her nose in a momentary hesitation and quickly came up with a counterargument, “You have the authority to dispense judgment only during wartime, then. Those ponies deserve a civilian trial.”

This was going nowhere.

“Luna, you promised to surrender to the Queen,” I firmly interrupted them.

She squinted at me, though her malicious expression had no surprise to it.

“So, you have teamed up against me in favour of that murderer,” Luna hissed.

Many different words danced on the tip of my tongue, eager to sting her for her abandonment, for her pact with terrible forces, for her involvement in setting up a tragedy for Equestria long before it caught up with us.

Yet, I managed to not only banish venom from my voice but inject some softness to it. “You’re one step away into the darkness from becoming much worse. We don’t have the Elements anymore, nobody could save you. Please, let it go.”

Luna’s lips curled up, revealing a maw of razor-sharp fangs.

“You are not Twilight Sparkle.”

Hearing it from Luna hurt much more than from anyone else.

It took a lot from me to meet her gaze, to stand the eyes behind her eyes, glaring at me through those obsidian slits into an abyss.

“But are you Luna?”

The question affected her much more strongly than I expected—perhaps, the intonation of my voice, sad, rather than angry, was to… thank.

Luna physically recoiled, glancing betwixt Rainbow and I with a lost expression; her astonished look went over her physique as if she had already forgotten how nightmarishly she appeared. Moisture began to glimmer in the corner of her eyes.

Long tense moments passed as an internal fight went on.

Finally, the raging storm of her mane subdued and she uttered, her voice trembling:

“Fine then.” Luna then took a shuddering breath and added, almost mockingly, “do as you deem right, Captain Dash.”

Except, Rainbow didn’t move—I suspected she’d never planned to, didn’t think it would work out.

Yet, the bridge bloomed with fiery blossoms of death. Out of the swelling clouds of smoke, gryphons burst out, the pink splotches standing out against the grey of ash and metal. The terrorists seemed to pay us no attention or decided against attacking the Royal Guard even if they didn’t realise they also beheld a demi-goddess.

She took a step away from us, staring in disbelief at the display of senseless destruction.

I glanced at Rainbow, her expression no different.

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” I quietly noted; we could freely speak around Luna now, but I didn’t want to include her in that conversation.

“Me neither.” Rainbow scrunched her muzzle and muttered, “Someone must have arranged for that to happen at a very precise time.”

“In the end, how is that better than what the TCE does?”

The pegasus opened her mouth, but as her mind went over every argument she could throw at me, her jaws worked silently until they snapped and she grimaced as if in severe pain. Rainbow squeezed her eyes shut and uttered:

“Because it’s not over yet.”

Despite Luna seething with wrath, she refused to indulge it, no matter how much it would have been justified this time. I harboured little sympathy towards the ponies who had tried to kill us twice, but they deserved better than merciless bombing.

The girls huddled away from us, at a considerable distance; the fillies hid under Delight’s wings. Trixie was stuck halfway betwixt me and them, torn by indecision—common sense won over whatever dreams she believed in; that or the first-hoof understanding of what we had been dealing with brought some clarity to her.

The alicorn lifelessly spread her wings, as if reluctant herself to be the first to delve into the darkness betwixt the stars. Everypony shuffled under her shadow, their heads low. Luna gave the smouldering bridge one final glance.

A gust blasted drizzle into my face, one of many winds running wild and free on top of the Rambling Rock Ridge. No matter how hard the rain tried to plaster manes to the girls’ slumped figures, it failed to wash away the smiles that appeared upon seeing the familiar scenery; the fact that the next jump would be the last also contributed to that.

Luna observed the view of the decaying city with a strange mix of emotions—dismay and guilt. Finally, her eyes locked on the spire of the Sky Palace and a grim resolved sadness became her expression.

However, when her wings shot up with a blast of water shaken from the black feathers, Rainbow spoke up:

“The Sky Palace’s protection prevents any teleportation within its limits.” Her hoof pointed at the city. “Kashmare Industries is the Crown’s allies. They won’t mind too much if we drop on the top of their building.”

Following her armoured limb, I found a neon sign with a heavily stylised goat and a ball of yarn.

Luna nodded and her horn turned the droplets of water into stars that became eyes I would hopefully see never again.

Neon replaced the cold hatred of the otherworldly gaze, and small crystals on the corners of the concrete octagon air-stop lethargically blinked, acknowledging our arrival. Below us, the streets of the Inner City teemed with life. Above us flying carriages hummed, dashing back and forth.

I coughed to bring the attention of the girls, who couldn’t tear their gazes from the brilliance of Canterlot’s rotten heart. Even Luna looked around in admiration, captivated by the display of exquisite architecture and shining colours.

The door betwixt the rasping vents opened into a stairswell that led us into a perfectly maintained corridor of white marble. Unceremoniously leaving dirty hoofprints on the polished floor, we trotted to the elevator.

The mirror-covered walls created a false impression of space that resulted in us making a few tries before we managed to find the cabin.

Delight ended up tightly pressed into Luna’s side, which was driving her to the edge of hysterics. Wire suggested Flower shove her metal hoof up her ass if she didn’t know where to put it, much to the alicorn’s consternation. Trixie had to leave the elevator altogether as her hooves threatened to eat through the floor. Rainbow’s armour kept scraping paint off my body.

When the uncomfortably long ride finally concluded, we spilt into a spacious foyer. Ponies in suits froze midway and workers in front of and behind the counters stared. Silence, save for the din of the street coming through the opened doors and a melodic yet mechanical voice unrelentingly making announcements, took reign over the luxurious vestibule.

“Move along, citizens!” Rainbow boomed menacingly and the entrance hall instantly resumed its commotion almost as if we’d stopped existing.

No rust or grime marred the pristine, clean and beautiful avenues of the Inner City. The ponies for once resembled the dwellers of a future city instead of thugs and vagrants. Even the rare equinoids that obediently followed their masters seemed to have rolled off the production line five minutes ago.

Ablaze with cyan and pink neon, gleaming towers of business centres rose into the sky like a forest of massive glass trees. Entrances, topped with sophisticated names of companies housed inside, bustled with a flow of ponies constantly walking in and out.

As much as we admired our surroundings—the girls gaped at the forbidden paradise without any shame—we got noticed as well.

Some fled from the Royal Guard’s march, but most resorted to commenting from a distance and soon the last stretch betwixt the Kashmere’s headquarters and the Sky Palace turned into a parade.

They called me a heap of scrap, Delight—a whore. The fillies, especially Wire, stared at the pavement with glistening eyes as ponies cried for janitors to throw out ‘the Edge filth’. And Luna struggled to maintain a stoic expression as she was dubbed an ugly mutant, a monster.

Finally, we reached the Swarm’s dwelling—as thick as some buildings, the pressure-tight door had already waited for us, open wide enough to let us in, but not a hair more. Luna even had to bow so her horn wouldn’t scrape the lengths of concrete and steel.

Neither the queen nor an army of changelings met us, a passageway, identical to that of the first level of the Tunnels stretched into the depths of the Sky Palace, empty. At least it lacked the underground’s smell and even had almost no litter, save for lonely piles of dust trying to hide in the corners.

The elevator at the end of that tunnel thankfully was of a cargo type and had a thoughtfully placed plate of arcanium for Trixie to stand on; she rejoined us only at the entrance. However, it didn’t carry us to the top of the spire—we exited into another corridor, a sort of maintenance passage with pipes sticking out of the walls.

Rainbow confidently navigated the passages, guiding us through a series of cramped passes and steep stairs until white plastic started to replace unplastered concrete. Eventually, we came to another elevator with a round cage and glass taking up half of its back wall.

My eyes went wide upon witnessing a massive expanse beyond it—the Sky Palace was hollow inside! A few skyscrapers could fit into the wide shaft.

And then I saw them.

Changelings both leisurely and hurriedly walked around the numerous levels. They talked, they laughed; one of them waved their hoof to us.

Luna had her eyes transfixed on them and I realised that the elevator stood still—Rainbow was watching the alicorn with an expression just as tense, mirroring my concerns.

She let out a defeated sigh and averted her eyes.

The elevator jerked under our weight and began its ascent to the top floor.

A corridor, no different from any other we had traversed already, opened before us, ending in a set of double doors. Only filigree doorknobs stood out on the perfect alabaster surface, subtly hinting at who was waiting for us on the other side.

Whilst my purple aura took hold of one of them, Luna’s cyan grasped another.

We pulled at the same time.

Sunlight blinded me, pouring through the tall windows taking up the walls of the chamber. The spots in my eyes began to form into black silhouettes.

A cutout of a large seat. Above its back—the dark shadow of a jagged spike, a holed twisted horn. Tattered translucent wings refracted the light on the sides of the seat.

A mirthful and unexpectedly hoarse, yet still horrifyingly recognisable voice came from the throne.

“Welcome back.”

Author's Note

Special thanks to Jay Tarrant.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this story so far.

If you notice any mistakes sneaked in through the editing, let me know.

Stay awesome.