Eclipse

Eclipse

Chapter 4

A Past Not Forgotten

Eclipse woke to the sound of Cadence's voice, he couldn't make out what she was saying over the ringing in his ears, but she sounded worried. His body felt like it had been covered in gas and set on fire, then beaten with a wooden bat. His vision was too blurry to fully make out his surroundings, but he could tell he was still in the old apartment complex. That's when a sound, not Cadence, not the ringing in his ears, but another sound, like a...... a....... siren? Eclipse jumped to his hooves, quickly realizing how bad an idea that was, as his vision began to swim and he started to get light headed. Falling back down to the ground to see a pink filly laying next to him. While he couldn't fully under stand her over the ringing, he thought Cadence had said something like “Don't stand .......... need......... rest......... lay down..................police are here......” He didn't like it, the police were here, so it was only a matter of time before they found them, they weren't going to get out, before he lost consciousness he managed to utter out two words to cadence; “I'm sorry.”

Then next time he woke he was in a dark, small space, lights moving around on the other side of...something. Everything was still blurred, but he could here muffled voices, he couldn't make out what they were saying, and straining to here them just made his head hurt more. So he just allowed him self to pass out again.

“Eclipse? Can you here me? Eclipse?” A voice called out to him, he recognized it as Cadence, but it sounded so far away, like she was standing at the end of a long tunnel. All he could see was black, not a light to be seen, just a void of nothingness. Slowly, a light began to form, it was far away, but so bright it hurt to look at. As the light slowly grew he tried to shield his eyes. It was then he realized he could not move, he tried to call out to Cadence, but when he opened his mouth to speak, no sound came out. He could do nothing but lay there in the light as it grew stronger and stronger, until all that was once black was white.

Slowly Eclipse's world took shape, blurry and bright at first, but slowly dimming and coming into focus. Once Eclipse could see again he saw he was laying on a rather uncomfortable bed, looking up at a broken and cracked ceiling. “Oh, you're awake.”

“C-Cadence?” Eclipse said, Slowly starting to feel better. “What happened?”

“Well, after you tried to break out of the collar you undertook a rage-shift.” Cadence said calmly, as if rage-shifts happened on a regular bases. In truth rage-shift's are extremely rare. They only happen to alicorns with a remarkably high ability for magic. They happened when the alicorns emotions feed into their magic, amplifying it. This causes not only a large boost in magical energy, but quite often a physical change to the alicorn. The emotion that causes  the rage shift depends largely on the alicorn, their personality and what they find most emotionally compelling. For Eclipse, it had been the thought of letting Cadence down.

“Wait, what?” Eclipse asked, making sure he had heard Cadence right.

“You went into a rage-shift, your body was engulfed in flame, it was kinda cool.” Cadence replied, still sounding surprisingly unaffected by what had happened.

“Me? A rage shift?” Eclipse asked, his mind needing more time to comprehend the information it was being given.

“Well ya, I figured you wouldn't be very surprised, being able to cause eclipses and all.” Cadence said, taking it much easier then Eclipse.

“I suppose, but what happened when the police came? Why are we still in here? Shouldn't they have arrested us? Why aren't you tied up any more? Where did the police go? Why didn't they take us?” Eclipse's mind spun with question after question, trying to comprehend the situation, but lacking much of his memory.

“Calm down, we're fine, the police left, they don't even know we're here.” Cadence assured Eclipse, but this only caused Eclipse to ask more questions.

“But why? Why didn't they arrest us? Why didn't they take us to jail?”

“They tried to take us to jail, and they would have, too, if they had found us, that is.” Cadence said, a smirk on her face, evidently proud of what she had done.

“What happened? Why didn't they find us?”

“Well, when you entered your rage state the magical knock back blew me to the other side of the room.”

“WHAT?” Eclipse yelled, more angry at himself then Cadence, “I blew you across the room? Did it hurt? GAA! I'm so stupid!” Eclipse said, punishing himself for something that he knew was beyond his control. That didn't matter to him, though, he still felt guilty about doing that, even though it appeared Cadence wasn't hurt at all.

“Eclipse, I'm fine, it didn't hurt, and besides, it-” Before Cadence could get out a full sentence to reassure him he cut her off.

“NO! It's not fine! I could have seriously hurt you! Or worse! If I hadn't lost control it never would have happened! GGGAAA!!” Eclipse yelled again, frantic over the thought that he could have caused pain to Cadence. Just the thought of hurting her made him physically ill.

“Eclipse, I already told you I'm fine, it didn't hurt.” Cadence said in a caring, almost motherly voice.

“But what if I did hurt you?” Eclipse asked, still feeling like he needed to be punished.

“Then you would have apologized and I would have forgiven you, it was an accident, just like at the summer solstice. I forgave you then, didn't I?”

“I suppose.” Eclipse said, his voice showing the fact that he didn't entirely like that answer.

“Now, after that I noticed some broken glass lying next to me, so I just used that to cut my ropes.” Cadence explained, this time managing to finish her sentence before Eclipse interrupted again. Making sure that he wasn't going to interrupt again Cadence continued her explanation. “After i got all the ropes off i went over to check on you, you were still lying in the middle of the floor. All around you the walls roof and floor were completely black from the fire around you.” Hearing this information he slowly turned his head, looking to where he had been on the floor a few minutes ago. It was then he noticed the deep charcoal-black they had been turned. He had been lucky this place was old enough to be made of stone instead of wood, he could have caused a fire, killing both himself and Cadence. Thinking about that started to make him nauseated again, so he turned his attention back to Cadence.

“Luckily the blast disintegrated both the collar and the ropes tying you,” Cadence continued now that Eclipse was paying attention to her again, “That's when the police sirens started outside, which is what woke you up the first time.” Cadence explained, slowly filling in the gaps in Eclipses memory, being passed out for so long he had missed a lot.”

“But how did we escape them? Why did they leave us here?”

“After you passe out again,” Cadence continued, ignoring Eclipses question in favour of finishing her story, “I new I had to hide us, that's when I noticed a closet door that had been dislodged by the blast. So I managed to drag you in there while the police were searching the apartment.”

“But wouldn't the have checked the closet? The police aren't stupid enough to ignore it are they?” Eclipse asked, this time managing to attract Cadence's attention.

“No, when i pulled the door shut it got stuck again, so when they came to check it they took a while to get the door unstuck. While they were doing that i dragged you into the very back corner and covered us with some old blankets and towels, it didn't smell very nice, but it did hide us until they left.”

“Then I take it you dragged me out and lifted me onto the bed? How long has it been since then?” Eclipse asked, fearing the answer.

“About 3 hours, it's just around 10 in the morning now.” Cadence said. Eclipse was thankful it was only 3 hours, that means Celestia probably didn't know they hadn't found them, so she wouldn't come looking for them yet.

“Good, we have some time before Celestia comes looking for us.” Eclipse said, letting Cadence know they were safe, for a while.

“Speaking of Celestia,” Cadence said, gaining more authority in her voice, “I have a few questions.”

“uh-oh” Eclipse thought to himself, not liking where the conversation was going.

“Why is she so determined to get you sent to jail? Isn't she your sister? And what's with your mother working so hard to get you hung?” Cadence asked, trying to make sense of the rift in the royal family.

“It's...... a long story....” Eclipse said, trying to tip-toe his way around the conversation, not wanting to talk very much about his past.

“We have a long time.” Cadence said, not letting Eclipse get off so easy.

“Are you  sure? I mean, the police could come back, or Celestia might come looking for us sooner then we think, it would be better if we left now.” Eclipse tried to change the subject.

“We still have a while until you will be able to stand again, and it will be a while before more news gets out about your escape, and even longer before Celestia notices they're still looking for us, so we have long enough.”

“Fine,” Eclipse said, finally giving in to Cadence, “but you should know that I'm not 100% sure on it, I know very little about this, actually, only what I've managed to gather over about 100 years of research, in a very theoretical sense.”

“You don't know your own past?” Cadence said, not sure what he was talking about.

“Well, from what I can remember, it wasn't even my past until about 600 years ago. Until then, it was Constellation's past.”

“Constellation?”

“You know how the night time sky has all those star patterns? All those shapes and pictures?”

“Ya, the ones The Father made.”

“Well, not exactly, you see, around 600 years ago, when I came into this world, there was another son in the royal family, Constellation. He made the stars into what they are today, all my father did was maintain them, and kept them in sync with the moon.”

“But then where is he? What happened to him? And what does any of this have to do with you?”

“Around 900 years ago, 300 before me, Constellation fell gravely ill, he could barley get out of bed, not even the best doctors could help him, he only had a view hundred years left. From what I understand, this disease had never been seen or heard of before, and it has never been seen since, it came, then just as fast, it left.”

“But what happened to Constellation?”

“The royal family has heart broken, he very deer to them, being their first born sun, Celestia especially fond of him, so they reached to the darkest depths of magic to cure him. Magic so dark, it is illegal to even speak of it, but they felt it was the only thing that could bring back Constellation, so they tried.”

“What did they do?”

“I'm not sure, there is so little information past this point, all I could find was something about a ritual and binding his soul to his body, with the aid of another soul, mine.”

“So where did they get your soul from? Did they kill you?”

“Not exactly, more like... Harvested.”