Saros

Chapters

Do You Remember Heaventide?
The Last Wraith
Tranquility
Stellar
The Temple of Nebula
Ascent
Goddesses
Phantoms
The Spirit of Luna
Battered
Shine
The Ashes of Consus
A Light in Marefall
Surfacing
The Book of Saros
Beloved
Night
I Remember Heaventide
Desolation
Speak to the Stars

Do You Remember Heaventide?

"Myrk?" Choral murmured. She leaned softly into him, clasping and unclasping the halves of their two necklaces. "Do you remember the day we met?"

Myrk's eyes openened: black orbs like polished obsidian. Before him stretched the glittering waves of Heaventide as far as his nocturnal vision could see. The two young ponies sat before the shores of the grand subterranean ocean. Sailing ships drifted slowly over Heaventide's silver horizon as a pale white sheen of false starlight shimmered off the layers of bio-luminescence that lined the ceiling of the unfathomably enormous cavern above.

"We met here," he murmured, a very distant and quiet voice. Myrk's leafy ears flicked, and he wrapped his stone-gray forelimbs around her tightly as they settled further into the artificial beach's pale, glittering sand. "I was trying to get away from my thoughts, and you? You were trying to get away from another of your father's lectures, if I recall."

Choral giggled, a slight blush forming beneath her cream-colored coat. "You make it sound so childish, so trivial," she said. Her hooves pieced the two necklaces together once more. The dual figures of a flying owl and a swooping bat danced with one another, and then she unclapsed them again. "Like we were just children in love."

"Hmmm..." Myrk's lungs resonated beneath her as he spoke, "But we were. We still are, in a lot of ways."

"Oh come on..." She tilted her head up to look at him, careful not to poke his strong muzzle with her curved horn. "Things are changing. I've been accepted into the Lunar Energy Commission at Ponymonium University. And you?" She giggled and nuzzled him once more. "My adorable little Myrk, new Captain of the Night Wraiths..."

Myrk glared into the crashing waves along the monochromatic shore. "I was never 'little'..."

"Oh yes you were," Choral said with a smile. She squinted her blue eyeslits, and an aura of ivory light illuminated the left side of his skull as she telekinetically played with his ear. "When we first met, you looked so alone, so scared. You'd never seen something as bright as the reflective waves of Heaventide, and yet you couldn't stop looking at it. My heart went out to you. I wanted everypony to be able to see beautiful things, but you most of all..."

He flinched and twitched his head away from her, snapping her magical grip. "Choral, please," he briefly groaned. Then, as if remorseful of his own tone, he sighed and said. "Sometimes, it's healthy to be scared."

Choral's face went long as a sympathetic breath squeaked out of her. "Must you believe that all of the time?" She gulped and whispered, "When we met, the first thing I thought was how adorable you were, and how badly I wanted to protect you. But now, all this time, you're the one who's done the protecting, Myrk. When will you finally let me take care of you?"

"Choral, everything around us, everything we care about and believe in..." Myrk gulped and shut his slitted black eyes. "I feel like there's something terribly wrong. I've only been Captain of the Wraiths for a few months. And yet, the closer I get to our Savior and Empress..." He grimaced, as if in pain, and slowly opened his eyes. "I do not like what I see. Now, more than ever, it is simply wise to be worried. There is very little you or I can do, I fear..."

"Don't we have enough to be joyful for?" She asked, her blue eyeslits quivering. "Can't we just accept what the Empire has given us and be happy?"

He said nothing. Instead, he gently leaned down, nuzzling and kissing her neck.

She accepted his loving caress, though a nervous shudder still ran through her. Choral's hooves let go of the ornaments. The owl and bat hung loosely from their separate necks. "Myrk?" she stammered, pleaded. "Myrk, please, tell me what you are thinking about..."

His face drifted up. He looked into the depths of Heaventide. The flickering waves stabbed his vision, and yet he forced himself to stare while a breath was sucked out him.

The Last Wraith

"The phantom Daughter of our beloved Father hath given us the night. To darkness we were born, a mere tool of the Deceiver. But Her solemn grace and mercy hath made purpose out of our horror. By Her beauty, we art given spirit. By Her righteous fury, we art given strength. A new night falls, and let all who dread Her glory tremble and quake. For we art Her shadow, forever and ever."

(Chapter III, verses 11 – 13 of the Book of Saros)

When Myrk inhaled again, it was a prolonged thing, cold and soundless as his hooves. He glided like a dark cloud over the desolate lengths of a subterranean plain. Geometrically etched trails of magical leylines glowed with a dim blue light, stretching towards both ends of the expansive corridor of polished black stone.

The Mid-Level Junctions of the Lunar infrastructure stretched above and beneath his cloaked figure. Already, he could make out the sheer drop through the translucent sheets of transmogrified glass that appeared every fifty meters below. He clung tightly to the wall of the deep cavern, hoping that the dark texture of the burrowed surfaces would hide his stone-gray figure.

With the agility of a cat, he stalked his way into the sudden niche of a long vertical groove sliced into the wall. Hundreds of meters above—just within visual range—the groove served as a fastener to a translucent glass bridge, across which Myrk could just barely make out enchanted transports hovering to and from their destinations with the assistance of flickering mana stones. Myrk had positioned himself as deep into the crevice as the Mid-Level Junctions would allow. However, the veteran wraith instinctively knew that he could go even further.

Turning his head, he stuck his face out of the niche and peered at the remaining lengths of the obsidian plain. He took a deep, deep breath and lurched forward, opening his mouth wide as the whites of his eyes flexed around his black irises. A vaporous distortion lit the air for a brief second, and soon he was done with the high pitched exhalation. He knew that it was a heavy risk to make such a sound at this time and place, but he needed to find a way out of that deep crevice and pierce beyond.

Tilting his head back, he perked both of his leafy ears up, flexing the cartilage so that the lobes were as wide open as possible. He waited patiently, his black eyeslits narrowing. Finally, he sensed it, like a wave of priceless data surging into his brain. Myrk suddenly had a mental blueprint of the landscape up ahead, as well as the hollow tunnels lingering beyond.

There was little time to waste. Myrk shifted his limbs, and the long brown cloak furled over his body so that it covered him from shoulder to tail. There was a brief flash of lunar silk—the faint outline of a saddlebag—and he was once again blending with the shadows, hugging the wall and scurrying his way like a spider across the flat sheets of muted rock.

As he proceeded along the glossy floor, he passed under the shadow of another glassy bridge, this one less than one hundred meters overhead and supported by gray marble pillars. Beads of magical light ran past him, surging through the etched lines, until they coalesced into the runes that lined the edge of the lingering platform above.

Before passing underneath, Myrk monitored his steps. He meditated inwardly, slowing his heartbeat and breaths as he passed within proximity of the runes and their powers of detection. His every other hoofstep resonated with ringlets of circular light, as if he was marching into a thin pond of glowing water. He slowed down even further, feeling the cold static dancing through his silver-streaked mane as the subtle taste of rust filled his mouth. Just up ahead, he could sense where the plain's glassy surface cut off, and where he could dive off the cliff and approach the tiny canals below.

It was the closest he had gotten to an avenue of escape in hours. He felt the weight of his saddlebag shifting beneath his cloak as he snaked slowly beneath the bridge, careful to not even sweat or else the runes would send signals of alarm all throughout the network of leylines wired into that section of the infrastructure.

When Myrk approached the far end of the bridge, a shock flew through his system. He froze and closed his eyes. He didn't need to see them to know that they were coming. Gnashing his teeth, he sidestepped over to one of the pillars and boldly pressed himself up against the onyx strut just a half-meter away from the detection rune that was glowing faintly on the other side. He could hear through the glass structure above as a manacraft hovered to a stop, venting steam violently into the subterranean air. A panel slid open with an telekinetic hiss, and his heart nearly plummeted at the sensation of three dozen bodies hopping out, and all of them clad in lunar armor.

"Fan out!" a terribly familiar voice barked. Myrk was already sensing the tall, rigid figure of the captain of the Lunar Imperial Rune Guard. He marched out of the hovercraft in his Imperial helmet, thick shoulder armor, and two mana spheres located above the unicorn's muscular joints. "The target was last seen leaving Marefall three hours ago! This section of the Mid-Level Junction is all that lies in his path towards the lunar surface! By order of Her Majesty, Nightmare Moon, we are to prevent the sarosian exile from breaching the outer layer! Find him, and capture him—dead or alive, but most importantly, retrieve that which he has confiscated! The security of the Lunar Empire depends on it!"

"Aye, sir!"

"Now move!" The heavy hoofsteps of the Captain shuffled directly overhead. It was difficult to hear from all of the other unicorn bodies galloping across the bridge in all directions. "Lieutenant Razsaleen!" Myrk heard the stallion's authoritarian voice echo as he came to a stop. "Any news on the Phantoms?"

"They're en route, sir," a younger, far feebler voice replied. "Permission to speak freely?"

"Granted. Make it quick."

"Will the Phantoms be necessary? With all due respect, this sarosian has served the Empress for nearly a decade. Surely there must be a way to reason with Captain Myrk—"

"You mean former Captain Myrk, Lieutenant. The sarosian and all discordant blood like him lost their title and privilege the very moment they showed their true, traitorous colors."

"Yes. But of course, Captain Stellar. I should have known better than to play his advocate."

"See that you learn this one thing: a sarosian warrior is a poor substitute for absolute fealty to our Savior and Empress. We have the magical blessings of a goddess to aid us, and he is but one fool clinging to a terrestrial scent. Let us not waste this opportunity to exact justice for what has happened to Major Shine, at the very least."

"I concur wholeheartedly. I shall monitor the process of the Phantoms."

"See that you do." Stellar's hooves swiveled about, scraping the bridge's surface above Myrk. "Search harder, soldiers! The first moment you see his leathery wings, fire up a signal! He's not getting out of this corridor alive!"

At this point, Myrk was doing all he could to breathe regularly. He felt his pulse increasing, and at any second the runestones around him would scream in protest. As he sensed the bodies of unicorns descending from the bridge and piercing the shadows around him, he brought a stone-gray limb to his chest. He did not fiddle with his cloak, nor did he tighten the straps of his saddlebag. Instead, his hoof slid up to a necklace hanging around his neck. The moment he touched the metallic shape of a tiny owl, he instantly relaxed, and he exhaled in a slow breath of calm while waiting for his captors to pass.

Tranquility

Five hours previous, Choral's cream-colored hoof was stroking the silver contours of the bat pendant dangling from her neck. The black lines of a vertical tunnel blurred past her on all sides. She slowly gazed up and across the large elevator platform, past the shoulders of the unicorn attendant whose horn was operating the complex controls of the humming vehicle.

Beyond the glowing frame of protective manalight, a gigantic corridor loomed into view from below. Choral watched calmly as she descended upon the hauntingly familiar sight. Illuminated by walls teaming with cultured bio-luminescence, the majestic depths of Marefall appeared before her. Ancient roads of lunar concrete and humble pony masonry crisscrossed over a distinctively organic stretch of earth, a grand peninsula of trees, grass, and farmland that rested like an alien strip within the center of the gigantic tomb. For the length of six kilometers, the miniature continent loomed beneath the grand curvature of Marefall's ceiling. In the distance, buildings and suspended platforms housed hundreds if not thousands of the Lunar Empire's shadier populace. Across the strip of earthen land, clusters of ponies could be spotted, working patiently to farm the sparse patches of vegetation left to thrive on the jagged strip.

As the elevator came to a hissing halt, the unicorn attendant relinquished his telekinetic grip of the controls and lowered the manalit forcefield. "We have arrived at Marefall. This is as low as the ride goes, milady."

"It's low enough," Choral murmured in reply. She made to trot off the platform. "Much appreciated—"

"Milady," the attendant repeated with emphasis. He gazed at her with a face full of concern. "This... This is hardly a safe place for the likes of you. Might I suggest you reconsider disembarking, or at least wait until I can summon members of the Imperial Guard to give you an escort?" He gulped and added in a low breath, "This is home to those of discordant blood..."

"I would not bother worrying if I were you," she said, giving him a lethargic gaze. For the first time, the slitted nature of her blue eyes glistened before his surprised vision. "I know a thing or two of 'discordant blood.'" That said, she drew the hood of a blue moonsilk cloak over her curved horn and shuffled off the platform, alone.

The attendant nervously watched her depart. After she had trotted a meager distance, he heard what resembled a series of distant shrieks from the enormous chamber beyond. Trembling, he funneled energy once more into the controls of the platform, and shot his glowing blue way back up the geometrically carved shaft without her.

As Choral trotted alone into the valley of Marefall, she passed by several ponies. A few of them were unicorns, though they were a haggard and destitute bunch. At the sight of her rich, immaculate robe, they stopped to stare and ponder, but proceeded with dragging their hovercarts full of enchanted wares towards the furthest reaches of the cavern.

Choral crossed a bridge of gray masonry that stretched over a silver stream of rippling water. Equine figures were standing along the banks with spears in their grasp. At random intervals, they thrust their barbs into the glittering stream, a few of them victoriously lifting skewered eels that wriggled and flicked with glowing fins. These meaty catches were swiftly euthanized with ivory daggers before being deposited gracefully into crates of compact lunar dust. The fishing ponies wore cloaks in the same style as Choral, though hardly as pristine. The smell and taint of ages hung off their robes, and when a piece of their body graced the silver light of the cavern ceiling, it was fangs and leather that showed instead of fur and feathers.

After several minutes of patient trotting, Choral crossed over and stepped onto the edge of the earthen strip of land. Aquamarine blades of grass bent underneath her, a soft and welcome reprieve from the endless platforms of black glass that defined the upper platforms far above Marefall. The scent of leaves, soil, and sweat met her nostrils. She glanced aside as she crossed a cobblestone road, seeing various robed ponies working in solid lines of hard labor across the harvest fields. A few of them glanced her way, and her heart leaped at the sight of so many pale slits of eyes, and not a single one of them recognizable.

With a sullen breath, Choral knew that she had to travel deeper to find that which she had come for. She took a left and trotted down a steep flight of stone stairs lining the edge of the sundered earth. Flecks of dirt and exposed tree roots reached out to her as she ducked and shuffled her way down the thick breadth of the organic structure.

The world turned even darker. High-pitched bursts of noise wafted up from the deepest depths of Marefall, like angry felines fighting at the bottom of an immeasurably deep well. Pausing briefly, Choral raised the cuff of her silken robe to her lips and spoke to a rune etched into the fabric with lunar dust. "Y'lynwyn." Her horn glowed briefly, but soon the light was spread dimly throughout the body of the robe itself. The hem of her hood and the insides of her sleeves shimmered with a muted silver glow. A soft patch of light followed her as she reached the bottom bedrock of Marefall and took a sharp right, trotting directly beneath the suspended body of the land strip.

As she entered the shadows, a series of runes hung from rusted chains, spelling out the name of the foreboding habitat she was just now entering: "Tranquility." For having such a peaceful name, the streets and alleyways of Tranquility were anything but charming. Gone were the rigid, sculpted corridors of lunar urban construction. Instead, the tunnels curved and careened, roughly blending with the jagged rock structures of the land strip overhead. Gnarled tree roots and petrified strips of wood dipped into the black spaces, into which several homes, shops, and establishments had been haphazardly carved. Lining the walls and spaces were rusted braziers of blue flame. A soft glow was cast across the blackened walls of the place by these meager excuses for light.

It was too dim for Choral's taste; it was always a little too dim for her. At first, it looked as though the streets and burrows of Tranquility were utterly abandoned. Soon enough—on this journey just like on so many previous visits—Choral found that she was hardly alone.

They were hiding at first, undoubtedly scared off at the mere sight of a unicorn's magical light source. However, once she had pierced the thick of the dwellings, they came out of the shadows like onyx spiders emerging from their holes, and Choral realized that she was utterly surrounded. Undaunted, she bravely pressed on, trotting past their gazes, her vision quivering at the dozens upon dozens of slitted amber eyes piercing out like yellow stars from beyond the blackness.

There were no words, no dialogue—at least not in the official lunar tongue. Occasionally, there would be a brief burst of noise, and she felt the fuzzy tips of her ears twitching in a desperate attempt to hear what was said, and yet—all her life—she never could. It used to make her feel guilty. Now, she felt frightened. She was looking for somepony, and suddenly she felt that they knew volumes more about what happened to him than they would ever let on about.

Pausing briefly, she glanced at a pair of figures. They disappeared as if behind a splashing curtain of ink. She gulped, hearing more noises stirring behind her, then doubling, like a blanket of leather sheets folding over themselves. Glancing behind, she saw several winged sarosians trotting past her—a lot more closely than she would have felt comfortable with. They marched sideways, their eyes glaring like golden lanternlights. Black hooves glided over the hard floor of Tranquility with the grace of nocturnal serpents.

Looking past them, Choral's vision was ensnared by a wanted poster. The black background to the manufactured illustration was too dark to have been properly made for sarosian habitats. She knew instantly that the Lunar Imperial Rune Guard had slapped it there, expecting it to serve the same futile purpose as it did on several of the magically-reinforced platforms closer to the moon's surface. She gazed across the shadows of Tranquility and saw half a dozen more duplicates of the poster, and all of them depicting the same thing: three winged figures with harsh, midnight stares. Two of them had the stereotypical amber eyes of her distant relations, but one—a stallion with a silver-streaked mane—stood in the center of the group, bearing eyes of a ruthless, soulless black.

A squeak escaped Choral's lips. She was standing in the depths of the moon's darkest shadows, and yet she longed for something even darker. She took one step towards the image in the poster, but suddenly a line of leather and muscle stood in her way.

Choral tilted her head up to face the stallion blocking her, but was then shoved back by a midnight blue hoof. "Unnngh!" She fell down, her cloak wilting around her like crushed flower petals. The pale hint of a cutie mark, illustrating a cosmic explosions, appeared on her flank.

"Hmmm... She chirps like an infant," a grizzled sarosian hissed before slapping the hood off her skull. Choral's trembling horn and creamy coat flickered like a bright comet in the bitter depths of that place. "Ah. Her eyes belong to the darkness, but look at the rest of her! The child is her very own nightlight!"

Several other stallions laughed alongside their burly colleague. Shadows, slitted eyes, and sharp fangs surrounded Choral, grinning and leering. She bit her lip and trembled, standing up and inching away from them as she stared into the foggy distance. The image of five sarosian foals were watching from a windowsill far away. They cowered in a manner like Choral did, clinging to the flanks of their silent mothers. The mares saw Choral's plight. Instead of rushing to help, they quietly covered their children in a protective stretch of leather wings, blocking their sight.

"Please..." Choral stammered and looked back up at the intimidating gang. The musk wafting off their gnarled wings was enough to make her wretch. "I don't want to cause a stir. I'm just looking for my—"

With a grunt, the stallion shoved her hard. She fell back onto the floor with a cry, cowering behind her robe as he hovered above her with a heated flap of brown wings. "You shall find nothing but shadows here! For that is all you have left us with, Imperialist!" His nostrils flared, and his eyeslits became golden knifepoints. "You have the scent of Ponymonium on you, unicorn." A pair of fangs glistened like serrated barbs in the blue torchlight. "Have you come to give us the Empress' blessing?!"

Choral bit her lip and flinched away from him.

Just then, a female voice chirped into existence behind the stallion. "How's this for a blessin', ya tyke?!" A vicious hoof was bucked straight between his legs.

The heavy brute let loose an indiscernible shriek. Part of a glass storefront shattered in its wooden frame across the street. He fell to the rocky floor, twitching and crossing his legs as his companions huddled over him. Following a scrape of hooves, a wingless sarosian with a stone gray coat marched triumphantly into the torchlight. The image of blooming violets appeared on her flank as she produced a fanged smile and offered Choral a helping hoof.

"Always takin' a fall for handsome leather-wings, are ye?"

"N-Noktyrn!" Choral gasped. Once she was pulled up onto all fours, she collapsed forward and clung to the mare. "Oh, I'm so, so very glad to see you..."

"Always a blessin', lass," Noktyrn held her close, gently stroking a hoof over Choral's shoulder. She leaned back and raised the hood of moonsilk back over the unicorn's curved horn in a sisterly gesture. "Though I'm sorry to say that ye've picked the wrong time to have visited hereabouts." Her dark, furry face hung sadly. "What, with all the drama up above. The shadows are hardly safe for ye."

"I know, Noktyrn," Choral said. Gulping, she watched as the group of sarosian stallions dragged their aching buddy off while casting the two mares an angry glare. "But I had to come, especially after what I heard."

"Ye are welcome as always to me family's burrow," Noktyrn said, leading the unicorn safely through the shadowed corridors. "The place has gotten a wee bit crowded since the days when we were foals..." She chuckled. "But many folks are still around that ye should know and love—"

"Noktyrn, please..." Choral tugged back at her. She stood, clutching her glowing robe in the crossroads of Tranquility's earthen alleyways. "I only came for one reason. I have to know if he's here."

Noktyrn sighed and caressed Choral's shoulder. "Please, lass—"

Choral frowned. "I have to find him! Or else, I may never see him again!"

Noktyrn was silent. She took a deep breath and leaned forward. "There be more eyes upon us than even I can see," she said in a low tone. "Not all unicorns respect the blood of shadows like ye do. It is only a matter of time before the Guard arrives. Ye could suffer great penalties for so much as bein' here."

"Let me be concerned with what I suffer or don't suffer," Choral said firmly. "I know that there is nowhere else for him to go. Noktyrn, please, take me to him. I beg you, as the sister you always considered me to be."

Something rattled under Choral's neck. Noktyrn's amber eyes fell towards it. She saw the glitter of a bat figure carved out of the finest nickle. She took a deep breath, then gave a weathered smile.

"Alright, lass," she said quietly. "But pray Elektra hides us beneath her soil long enough for anythin' to come from it."

Choral nodded fervently. "I've said more prayers than I can count."

"So has he," Noktyrn said, then tugged on Choral's forelimb. "Shhh. Stay close, stay silent." She led her down a winding corridor, past torches of blue flame, beyond the droves of amber eyes peering in from the shadows. After a few minutes of shadowed galloping, the earth sarosian ushered Choral down a wide avenue and towards the front of a majestic building carved out of midnight granite. The onyx structure protruded into the belly of the earthen strip overhead as if it was built to be the peninsula's very foundation..

"Here?" Choral blinked at the familiar temple. She shuddered. "Noktyrn, I told you that I've said all my prayers—"

"The House of Nebula gives more than blessings, lass." Noktyrn trotted up to the gates and tugged at a threadbare rope. A high-pitched chime echoed from deep within the stone foundation. "I would think ye would know this, though it's been an awful long time since ye last visited." She smiled gently while adding, "Though I know she is hard to pray to in the glass corridors of the Empire."

"I've not turned my back entirely on Nebula, Noktyrn," Choral said as her face hung towards the hollowed ground. "I've simply chosen her sister as my intercessor."

"Ah, Entropa, the perfect Goddess for an Imperialist to worship," Noktyrn said with a fanged grin. "At least me beloved Elektra knows what it means to feel both joy and regret."

Choral frowned. "Is this what you brought me here for? A lecture on my beliefs?! Noktyrn, I told you that I need to find—"

"And ye shall find him," Noktyrn said. There was a loud clicking from beyond the stone gates, and the doorway opened with an ancient groan. She grabbed Choral gently and ushered her into the black depths of the cathedral. "But when ye do, ye'd best pray to both Entropa and Nebula that there is somethin' in him left to save."

"Wh-what?!" Choral stammered as she stumbled into the dark foyer. "Noktyrn, why are—?!"

She didn't follow. The stone doors slammed shut, bathing Choral in echoes and darkness. The eye-slitted unicorn trembled, clutching to the silks of her robe. The glow to her article had long faded, and she was left alone to attempt eking whatever semblance of sight could be had through her hybrid, blue eyes.

She shuffled forward, every punctuating hoofstep like a lone gunshot screaming softly through the pitch black place of worship. She became faintly aware of dim spots in the distance, like the violet specks of faraway stars. Trotting closer, Choral made out soft blue candles lit around the circumference of a grimy old statue, a miraculous artifact that still smelled of the ancient stains of earth. The prancing figure of a majestic alicorn goddess stood on its hind legs, its elemental wings spread to embrace the forgone winds. A mane of frozen granite flame graced Nebula's neck, and a pair of stone eyes stared, unfeeling, into the glow of candles as Choral's shadow joined the depths of the temple.

Alone before the forsaken altar, Choral shuddered. She slumped down to her haunches and stifled a sob from deep within. Running a hoof over her face, her forelimb bumped into the necklace, issuing a tiny chime from the metal bat pendant. She tried squeaking forth a name, but it sounded just as muted and helpless.

"Chaar and Pulsade are dead."

Choral gasped, lifting her tear-stained face in a jolt. Her blue-slitted eyes panned left and right for the source of his voice.

"I came here to ask penance for their lives..."

She stood up and turned around. Still, there was nothing but darkness. Then, on a hunch, Choral tilted her gaze upwards. The first thing she saw was his leafy ears hanging, and her heart skipped a beat. Then, like a leather canopy unfolding, his face peered from behind his wings. Two orbs of black—darker than the shadows surrounding him—devoured her sight, and she knew that she was staring her lover in the eyes.

"For a moment, I thought it was all a veiled sin," he said softly, gravely. A crescent cutie mark flickered dimly in the blue candlelight. "I thought I had come here out of cowardice, to hide from my actions. But then, you showed up, and I wonder if this is Nebula's way of showing grace." He released his grip of the ceiling, flipped with a flash of leather, and landed on all four hooves. A cloud of dust rose and fell around him like lunar mist, and he trotted darkly towards her. "Or if this her way of punishing me..."

"Myrk..." She whimpered.

"Choral, you are in danger here," he said, standing above her. "You should be with your father, with your family, with the Commission—anywhere but in Tranquility."

"I had to find you, Myrk—"

"Then you have invited death," he said with a frown. The whites of his eyes were the only indication that he was glaring, or that he was even there at all. "It has been ages since we've seen each other last, Choral. I thought now was the right time for me to do what needed to be done. The last thing I wanted was for a pony like you to get involved."

"Myrk, how could you say that?!" Choral said, close to hyperventilating. "Every member of the Rune Guard is scouring the platforms from Ponymonium to New Whinniepeg, looking for you! Of course I'm involved! You think I could just sit in the bright halls of the Lunar Energy Commission Tower and pretend that our moon wasn't collapsing all around us?!"

"Choral, I know I've said many mean things about the system you work for but at least I was comfortable with the knowledge that you were safe there—"

"Myrk, I love you!" Choral shrieked. She heaved once, twice, then flung forward, clinging to his chest. She nuzzled him dearly, her face scrunched up and grimacing as she murmured forth, "I don't know what's gotten into you, or why you've tried so hard over the last few years to scare me away—but I love you! I always have, and I always will!"

Myrk stood silent, breathing heavily. He remained still as her sobs wracked his body. However, a perfect statue the stallion was not. Soon, his trembling hoof made its way under her hood to caress her long, blonde mane.

Choral hiccuped the last of her heavy sobs. She leaned back, drying her face, only to see the glitter of a tear-stained owl pendant in the blue candlelight. The sight of it gave her a bittersweet breath of relief. Slowly, her eyes traveled up the necklace to his handsome face. "Myrk," she stammered, sniffling. "What happened? What did you do?"

Myrk's nostrils flared. He gulped and stared at the statue of Goddess Nebula past her. In the presence of two holy spirits, he eventually gave in. "The three of us—Chaar, Pulsade, and myself—we broke into the Imperial Vault," he said.

Choral gasped, her blue eyes brimming with moisture. "You... You went after the beacon, didn't you?" She gulped. "After all these years, you finally did it. You tried to steal the Spirit of Luna..."

Myrk said nothing. He merely nodded...

Stellar

The metal-laced hooves of the Lunar Imperial Rune Guard trampled loudly overhead. Myrk clung to the shadows beneath the bridge at the base of the Mid-Level Junctions. He could still hear Captain Stellar shouting orders as his voice grew more and more distant. Myrk had to be patient, anticipating a moment when the unseen bodies of the hunting party were spread out the most. If he was to make a break for the edge of the glassy plateau, it would have to wait until there were fewer sets of eyes around to see him.

The rune glowed just beyond the pillar to which he huddled. Myrk tightened the brown cloak around his body and the saddlebag clinging to it. Clearing his windpipes, he opened his mouth again, his throat undulating as he produced yet another high-pitched burst of sound. The reverberations split past the pillar, leaving the rune on the other side untouched so that Myrk's presence was not detected. When the echoes returned, he had a bifurcated picture of the landscape beyond the pillar, but at least it was enough to go by. He judged that most of the rune guards were still traversing the bridge, and the few that had descended to the plateau below were too far away to see him amidst the shadows of the cavern.

Myrk knew a true opportunity of escape when it lit his ears. He clenched his jaw and tightened his wing muscles. He wanted to save flying for a last resort. Besides, he knew the heinous tools that the Imperial hunters of the Guard had at their disposal, and he realized that even an experienced wraith stood little chance against the might of the unicorns' violent magic.

Captain Stellar shouted something else across the bridge above. From the trailing echoes billowing their way into Myrk's ears, he could detect the unicorn waving a hoof over his horn, giving the universal signal for his troops to relocate their search. Myrk fought the urge to exhale in relief. He clung to the shadows, his black eyeslits clenched shut as he meditated, keeping his breath evenly paced so that he could concentrate on the sounds and shapes reverberating overhead.

He detected several bodies lining up, climbing aboard the mana charged hovercraft that had brought them there. Captain Stellar issued another command to Lieutenant Razsaleen, but their voices were suddenly cut off from Myrk's expert ears. The steam engines of the hovercraft boiled, and a loud hiss filled the air, shredding the precious echoes apart before Myrk could determine whether the guards were leaving or not.

He winced, gritting his fanged teeth together as he waited out the noise. But, just then, another sound pierced the cacophony. He flashed his eyes open and looked across the shadows of the low-hanging bridge.

A young stallion stood atop the plateau besides the bridge, rattling in silver armor. He frowned with the typical, upper-lunar grimace, bravely pointing towards the hidden sarosian with an Imperial issued horseshoe.

"There! The wraith!" he shouted in a voice of mixed disgust and anger. "I found him—!"

Myrk's fangs glinted in the illuminating manalight. His heartrate increased, and the rune on the opposite side of the pillar began clicking madly. With a billowing of his cloak, his leather wings unfurled and flew straight down, shooting him like a black comet directly into the young guard.

"Ooof!" the unicorn grunted as he was tackled to the polished floor. Rivulets of cracked glass formed a cobweb beneath him as a loud siren magically filled the air.

Myrk flashed a look over his cloaked shoulder.

The rune stone was lit up, pulsing and wailing loudly in announcement of the sarosian's sudden movement. Above it, galloping towards the edge of the bridge, Myrk saw Captain Pierce Stellar. The tall unicorn gawked at the sight of the former wraith, his rich violet eyes wide as saucers. Then, with a growl, the angry guard pony shouted to his inferiors, "There! The exile! Shoot him!" The mana spheres in Stellar's shoulder armor glowed a bright blue as a phalanx of unicorn soldiers marched up alongside him and flicked their forelimbs. Crystalline barrels protruded from their shoulderplates; they shimmered from hotly charged manabullets deep within.

Myrk held his breath. With barely a second to act, he grabbed the helmet off of the young guard with his teeth.

The unicorn looked up, growling. "What do you think you're—Ooof!" He wheezed as all four of Myrk's limbs sprung off of him.

Myrk flew high into the air on flapping leather wings, flipped upside down, and tossed the helmet like a missile straight towards the plateau below.

"Quick! Take him out—!" Stellar was shouting, but soon his own voice was drowned out by the mutual grunts of his soldiers, all growling the same unholy word into their shoulder-mounted runes:

"H'rhnum!"

A solid wave of burning blue energy streaked towards Myrk. The edges of his cloak caught fire and blew out as he plummeted through the discharge. Miraculously, he dodged every single beam of energy, following the tossed trajectory of the helmet. The metal piece of armor flew savagely into the glass floor beneath the guard, shattering it. The sheet of translucent material gave way, and soon the unicorn was plummeting with a blood-curdling yell into the jagged, unpaved ravines of the lunar depths below. Gliding on midnight wings, Myrk soared down past him, surging speedily towards the tunnels lingering beyond.

"No! Blast it, no!" Captain Stellar slammed his hoof onto the edge of the bridge. He motioned towards four of his most heavily armored guards and jumped off the edge. "You, you, and the two of you! Follow me! Lieutenant!"

"Y-yes, sir?!" Razsaleen shouted in response from the bridge.

Stellar barked over his shoulder while galloping towards the freshly shattered hole. "Make your way to the Highways above! He'll want to ascend the lateral tunnels if he wishes to reach the surface!"

"Aye, sir!" Lieutenant Razsaleen motioned towards the remaining guards as they all filed into the steaming hovercraft.

"Rune guards!" Stellar flicked his head in mid-run, extending a sheet of glowing goggles over his upper helmet. "Take wing!" That uttered, he and the four other unicorns shook their forelimbs. Shoulder-mounted vials full of lunar dust emptied, spreading a cloud of fine powder around them as they leapt fearlessly through the gaping hole below.

Descending in a murderous glide, Myrk glanced behind him, his eyes narrowing on the sight of the five guards.

Captain Stellar and the unicorns fell through the cloud of dust above. One after another, they shouted into their runed armor: "Y'mnym!" Bright auras of manalight pulsed around them. Energy bolts spouted from their horns, circulating through the lunar powder and solidifying it into the crystalline framework of translucent blue gliders. The freshly conjured vehicles sparked to life, fastening to their forelimbs as they gripped glowing controls and imbued them with pure magic. A dim hum filled the air, building up to a high-pitched squeal as the five fliers sailed violently after Myrk.

Myrk gnashed his teeth and clung his leather wings tighter to his cloaked body. The compressed air of the lunar canyon whistled tightly around him as he made for a solid wall of white tunnels.

Captain Stellar led the diving squadron. He hissed into the wind, lining the sarosian target up in his glowing sights. He was the first to shout the runic command. "H'rhnum!" His four wingponies followed suit, and soon the five fliers were launching a barrage of manabullets through the wing-mounted cannons of their summoned valkyries.

A cyclonic stream of energy burned its way after Myrk's silver-streaked tail. He held his breath and rolled to the left, dodging a slew of the blue energy as it streaked past him. Another volley was launched, and he darted to the right, avoiding them with a twirl, all the while desperately maintaining his mad dive for the jagged corridors up ahead.

"By Entropa!" one of the guards shouted. "He's going to reach the tunnels!"

Captain Stellar howled, "Stay on him!" His horn glowed and he grunted, "H'jem!" With a flash of blue light, a crystalline cannon materialized on the belly of his vehicle. "W'nyhhm!" The cannon came to life, swiveling left and right with a crackle of static mana until it trained intelligently on the distant figure of Myrk. Squinting his eyes, Stellar growled. "L'jymnh..." The shoulder mounted mana spheres on his armor glowed brighter and brighter, filling the ravine with a pale blue fury.

Myrk's black eyes twitched upon observing the edge of the venomous glow. He flapped his wings and gave himself some last-second lift.

The image of the sarosian jerked sharply upwards in Stellar's sight. Nevertheless, the Rune Guard Captain charged the cannon to the bursting point. Sparks danced from his mana spheres as he gnashed his teeth and shouted into the sparkling air surging past him: "Y'hnyrr!"

Murderous, unfiltered magic fountained out of the cannon, burning a violent blue swath directly at Myrk from afar. However, the former wraith was well prepared, and he flung his descending arc into a spiral, literally dancing around the surging stream of the weapon’s discharge. Instead of burning him to a crisp, the mana-beam slammed hotly into the cavernous wall, causing an avalanche of lunar dust to collapse over half of the looming tunnel entrances.

Myrk took advantage of this. Holding his breath as if to dive underwater, he folded his wings inward and glided forward, accelerating past the velocity of the falling rocks and swooping into the centermost corridor before the passage was blocked entirely by the collapsing debris.

"Captain—!" one guard shouted.

"I see it!" Stellar was already yanking at his controls, swerving to the left. "Split up and overtake him!"

"Aye, sir!"

The Captain and the four rune guards flew into separate holes, sailing up the corridors adjacent to the blocked passage that Myrk had taken. The screaming hum of their pursuing vehicles were swallowed by the dense body of the moon as they zoomed after their lonesome prey.

The Temple of Nebula

"The decision was mutual," Myrk said, his voice echoing hauntingly across the granite bowers of the Temple of Nebula. He paced in the blue candlelight before Choral, murmuring, "Or at least, that's what we told ourselves." He took a deep breath of remorse. "I was still the ringleader; I knew that from the start." He cast the half-blood unicorn a tired glance. "Chaar and Pulsade were my closest companions, and yet they were still my subordinates. Since we first ever flew under Luna's banner together, they had pledged their very lives to me, promising to follow my word to the bitter end." His black eyes narrowed. "Just a few days ago, I discovered how sincere their commitment truly was."

Choral clutched the front of her silken cloak and gazed anxiously at him. "How did they get caught?"

"We had everything planned perfectly," Myrk spoke. "For weeks, we surveyed the inner security of the Imperial Vault. Using my close proximity to the Empress, I determined the best place and time to break into her sacred storage facility. But, after so much work and anticipation, we finally arrived... only to discover an entire battalion of the Lunar Rune Guard lying in wait with their swords and manarifles. It's a miracle that the first salvo didn't incinerate us. We fought briefly, but realized that the battle was futile. So, we took flight. Days later, when I arrived here alone, I heard the grim nature of their fate. I've been lying in hiding ever since."

Choral's face hung. She took a deep breath. "Was it...?"

"Captain Pierce Stellar," Myrk grunted in a deep breath. "It all makes sense now. He's always suspected that I never truly shared the Imperialist mindset. Undoubtedly, he went over my head and made an appeal to the Empress. Nightmare Moon must have given him total control over the ambush. Not only were his soldiers ready to spring the perfect trap on us, but every canister of alicorn mana was gone. Not a single piece of Princess Luna's ethereal spirit was to be found in the entire vault."

"They... They had been relocated," Choral muttered, her hooves shifting nervously on the floor. "My father told me about it days ago. He's head of the Lunar Science Committee, after all. Now that I think about it, it makes sense that the Empress would put him in charge of temporarily housing the canisters to keep them safe from thieving hooves." She winced upon hearing her own words. Gulping, she tilted her face up and gave Myrk a sad look. "As soon as I found out about the relocation of the mana canisters, I knew that something terrible had happened. I knew that... it could only mean you had finally done what I've feared you would do all these years." She bit her lip and trembled, her gaze avoiding his face as she stared into the blue candles around Nebula's statue. "And then all of the wanted posters popped up everywhere, and the Ponymonium broadcasts branded you, Chaar, and Pulsade as traitors..."

"The Imperial Cabinet had always held a deep-seeded distrust of the Night Wraiths," Myrk said. "For years, Captain Stellar had tried to sway Nightmare Moon into agreeing with her advisers. It took this most recent event to finally persuade the Empress into banishing all sarosians from the Lunar Guard for good. I imagine this turn of events has been coming for years, Choral. Even if the three of us had never broken into the Imperial Vault, it would be a matter of months before I was replaced as chief Guard to Her Majesty—"

"Then is that why you broke into the facilities to begin with?!" Choral exclaimed with a rising growl. Her pale features frowned angrily. "Was it just to secure your position as the highest ranking sarosian in the Guard?"

Myrk's fangs showed. "You think I'd risk the lives of myself and my stallions for something so arrogant and trivial?"

"Self-righteousness to some is arrogance to others, Myrk!" Choral nearly shouted. "What did you even hope to achieve?! What could you possibly have done with the Empress' bottled mana once you had stolen it?! That energy is built for powering the subterranean cities of the Empire, not for rattling around in the leather wings of clandestine guards!"

Myrk took a deep breath, his leather wings flexing and unflexing. "The beacon, Choral," he said softly. "We were going to send a message to the Princess' four sisters in the cosmos."

Choral's breath left her. "Oh Myrk..." She hung her face. In a sigh, she sat on her haunches and clutched her cloak to herself. "After all this time, after all we've argued and fought about," she whimpered and gave him a sad glance. "You still believe in summoning the stars?"

"Now more than ever," Myrk said with a grave nod. He marched past Choral and gazed at the candlelit visage of Goddess Nebula. "It's been nearly a thousand years, Choral. A thousand years since Princess Luna became Nightmare Moon and was banished here to the heart of Consus' floating remains. And in all those centuries, did she once change her despotic ways? Did she ever cast off the malevolent shades of the 'Empress' and return to the redeeming embrace of Harmony?"

"She's making a perfect society, Myrk!" Choral exclaimed. "After a millennium of heartless banishment and exile, she's come this close to absolutely perfecting science and industry." She stood up and stomped her front hoof in anger. "The Lunar Empire is nothing less than the pinnacle of equine civilization!"

"Spoken like a true Imperialist," Myrk murmured. He turned and gazed unemotionally over his stone-gray shoulder at her. "This 'scientific and societal perfection' you so zealously defend is the means by which she's been constructing a gigantic war machine for centuries." He turned and trotted icily towards her. "In barely a few decades, Nightmare Moon will have crafted the means to transcend the imprisoning power of the Elements of Harmony. And when she does, she won't return to Equestria in peace to embrace her sister, Celestia. She will invade the land with the unbridled wrath of the very demoness that she has become."

"How do you know that?!" Choral frowned at him, struggling to calm her fuming breaths. "Just because you've been her top guard for ten years straight doesn't give you divine insight, Myrk! Wraith or not, you are a mortal like everypony else! How dare you think that you can pierce the mind of a goddess older than time?!"

"'On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape,'" Myrk quoted.

Choral closed her eyes and sighed. "Yes, Myrk," she said with a limp nod. "I am quite familiar with the scriptures you hold dear. I can't count how many times you've read the Book of Saros out loud to me."

"If that's the case," he murmured as he paced past her in the dark hollow of the temple, "Then you must remember: 'The phantom Daughter of our beloved Father hath given us the night. To darkness we were born, a mere tool of the Deceiver. But Her solemn grace and mercy hath made purpose out of our horror.'" His hooves scraped to a stop as he turned to face her. "You are not all unicorn, Choral. The same blood that runs through me is also inside you. No matter how much you ascend to the upper levels of Ponymonium to deny it, and no matter how much your father protectively tries to hide it, you are still a creature of the night..."

She sighed and dragged a hoof over her face. "Myrk..."

"Your ancestors and mine were living weapons, tools of Discord," Myrk said firmly. "The Deceiver took the flesh of dead pegasi and blended them with bones forged in the depths of Tartarus. We came into this universe as fiends, and it was Princess Luna—the spirit of mercy, the lonely gravekeeper of her father Consus—who saved us from eternal madness in the dark. It's taken me a long time to realize it, but it is her spirit—and not the façade of Nightmare Moon—that my blood, and yours, has been sworn to serve since the beginning of our existence—"

"You see, Myrk, this is why I couldn't stay in Tranquility anymore!" Choral cried through gnashing teeth. The edges of her eyes watered as she hoarsely shouted, "I had to run away from the shadows, the blue flames, and the leering glares of this dark, dark place—not because of my father, not because of my career with the Lunar Energy Commission, but because of your damned insatiable obsession with... with..." She spat, "Prophecy! Myrk, I fell in love with you because I chose to, not because some... some Book of Saros or ancient scrolls on the Elements of Harmony told me that I was supposed to! I want to be in control of my life, Myrk. I want to make this moon a better place to live in! I want our civilization to someday return to earth with honor and pride! But every time I listened to you, you always had the same dream—and it was never your dream, Myrk! It was the unfulfilled dream of countless sarosians who died ahead of you! And now look at what this obsession has finally done!" She shuddered and teetered back, choking on a sob. "It's... It's d-destroyed you, Myrk." She sniffled. "It's destroyed you and your comrades and your career and... and... for what?"

The temple fell silent, undisturbed save for the sporadic breaths that shot out of Choral's heaving lungs.

Finally, Myrk looked at her coolly and said, "If I sit back and do nothing, if I let Nightmare Moon continue on the path she has set for herself, then the one Goddess that I and my forbears before me have sworn our lives to protect will end up destroying herself, Choral. She will assemble an army, launch an invasion of Earth, and eradicate everything left in ponydom, all because of a horrible possession that has steered her soul for ages on end." He stepped towards Choral and placed a gentle hoof on her shoulder. "Yes, I believe in prophecy. But to me it is merely a guidebook for what has to be done. If the four sisters are to be summoned from the heavens, if Luna is to be cleansed of her curse, then I must do that which is in my power to see that the prophecy comes true, and that Princess Luna never fully turns into an Empress of pure evil, like that which her father Consus almost became."

Choral's head was tilted down. Tears ran slowly down her cheeks.

"Don't you see?" Myrk pressed a hoof under her chin and tilted her gaze up to meet his black eyes. "I want to save our future, Choral."

Choral blinked mistily at him. There was a tiny glint of blue reflection. She looked down at the owl pendant hanging from his neck. With a bitter smile, she stroked the figurine of nickel with her pale hoof. "You always dreamed of the future, but what hope is there now, Myrk?"

Myrk squinted at her curiously.

She gazed up at him and dried her face. "You broke into the Vault. You tried to make off with a piece of Nightmare Moon's untapped power. And for what?" She sniffled and stammered, "You're a wanted fugitive, Myrk. They're coming for you. Stellar and angry unicorns like him are going to find you, and then they're going to take you away from me forever. And then... then what future will we have, Myrk?"

Myrk stood dead still, his black eyes glazed in thought.

She asked, "What will you do to save it...?"

Ascent

Myrk panted heavily, trying his best to catch a cooling breath while piercing the airtight tunnels from the ravine behind. The noise of Captain Stellar and his fellow pursuers was drowned out by the solid walls of lunar rock on all sides of him. Gulping, Myrk flapped his wings harder and pressed onward, accelerating towards his destination. He knew that the Mid-Level Highways loomed at the far end of these corridors, and once there he would no longer have the luxury of tight places to hide his escape.

The tunnel wound left and right, making a serpentine pattern as it gradually tilted towards the upper levels. Everything was pure dark, and all that Myrk had to go by was the mental image that his echoing breaths had to occasionally give him. Every so often, he'd let loose a high pitched shriek, and the immediate corridors beyond the surrounding walls would appear in brief blinks of sonar. For the time being, they were empty, and he continued his speedy flight with vigor.

Myrk's ears twitched as he remembered the anger in Captain Pierce Stellar's shouts. Between heartbeats, he recalled that same tone in the guard's voice whenever they would meet over the past few years to discuss routine security. As Captain of the Night Wraiths, Myrk had worked with Stellar on several occasions. It chilled Myrk to realize that the same fury that was fueling Stellar's pursuit of him had been something growing insurmountably over the course of a bitter decade.

Myrk tried to remind himself that he was on a mission to save his liege. He shook the saddlebag on his airborne flank and felt the weight of that which rattled within. In so doing, he heard the ringing noise of the owl pendant clinging to his neck. Myrk held his breath, focusing briefly on the metallic tone, and sooner than he realized it, he was being distracted.

A bright burst of light burned into his tunnel. Myrk grunted, his black eyes clenching shut from the painful strobe. Instinctively, he gave a high-pitched shriek, and his natural sonar illustrated the shape of a unicorn surging in from an adjoining corridor atop a murderous managlider.

"Raaaugh!" the guard shouted as he slammed sideways into Myrk.

"Mffngh!" Myrk bounced off the blue vehicle, bore a vertical ravine into the tunnel, but swiftly kicked off. He sprung back and flung his weight into the flying unicorn.

The guard absorbed the blow through his shoulder plates. Yanking at his crystalline controls, he spun his glider like a huge, blue blade. The wings sliced through the air of the claustrophobic corridor, blowing dust and lunar powder everywhere.

Myrk surged forward and back, dodging the sharp swaths of the wings. He flapped his leather wings harder and shot ahead of the guard and his magically engineered vehicle. Relying on his natural gifts alone, the breathless sarosian accelerated up the vertical shaft.

The guard evened out and trained his sights on the leather-winged target. Squinting one eye, he protruded a shoulder-mounted manarifle and shouted into his runes: "H'rhnum!" His voice echoed off the walls blurring past them as pulse after pulse of bright blue magic shot at Myrk's tail.

Myrk darted in every random direction he could muster. Holes exploded in the cylindrical walls from the unicorn's heated weapons. This madness proceeded for several heated seconds with Myrk skimming the curves of the winding corridor while the Rune Guard's projectiles barely missed him.

Finally, they both came upon a vertical straightaway and Myrk knew he couldn't avoid the guard's shots any longer. So, tightening his muscles, he glided closer to the edge of the tunnel and dug his horsehoes into the walls speeding by. With a frictious grind, Myrk kicked up a huge cloud of dust, sending it spilling onto the pursuer coming up behind him.

The guard gasped and flinched, his sight being overwhelmed by a thick layer of dust. He coughed as the sediment began fogging up his helmet. Soon he was shouting "H'rhnum!" ad nauseum, firing blindly into the tunneled madness ahead.

Myrk knew this was his opportunity. He took a deep breath and flung his wings forward like air brakes. He caught a wall of wind and decelerated.

The guard shook the powder off his helmet in time to see Myrk's cloaked body flying back at him with the force of a leather boulder. He barely had a breath to scream before the sarosian's vicious hooves smashed his face in. The sheer impact shattered the glider to pieces, and it sent the guard's spasming body plummeting like a sack of meat down the long shaft from which he came. With a flap of his wings, Myrk took off and proceeded along the next junction of tunnels.

He wasn't alone for long. With a mutual hum, Captain Stellar and his three remaining allies converged on Myrk's rear from their separate corridors. Stellar blinked and looked behind him, seeing that one of his guards was missing. Cursing under his breath, he shouted to two of his wingponies. "Break off and get to Mid-Level before us! If we don't take him out, prepare to blast him upon exiting!"

"Aye, sir!" Two fliers veered off into separate tunnels while Stellar pointed at a third.

“You!” Stellar shouted at the remaining guard. “With me!” The wingpony gave a stern nod and together they channeled mana bursts into their gliders and rocketed up one shaft directly following Myrk.

As the loud hum of their conjured vehicles filled the tight air, Myrk's ears twitched. He held his breath and flapped his wings faster, darting from side to side as his tunnel suddenly became a labyrinthine web of maintenance corridors. Stellar and the other unicorn zoomed after him in hot pursuit, doing their best to keep on his tail throughout the forest of crudely burrowed chambers. They flew past rusted equipment left their centuries ago during the pioneer days of Imperial lunar engineering. Runes dimmed from ages of neglect flickered and shot past them like comets as they gradually caught up with his billowing tail hairs, and yet still the target was eluding their grasp.

"Soldier!" Captain Stellar shouted above the screaming air around them. "Take point! I'm going to give your glider a boost!"

"Affirmative!" The hissing unicorn's helmet glinted as he flew directly in front of his superior.

Stellar concentrated, his horn pulsing in an alternating rhythm with the two bulbous mana spheres of his shoulder armor. A bolt of sparkling energy eventually surged from his skull and illuminated the Rune Guard's vehicle from its tail to its wingtips. The glider's hum reached a higher pitch, and soon it was surging forward to catch up with Myrk on a stream of burning blue energy.

Myrk was sweating, straining, aching to outrace the advancing Imperialist. He gnashed his fanged teeth and glanced left and right, looking for another exit from the steep corridor he was being chased through. Finally, he saw a thin hole to his left, and he darted towards it.

"Subject's making a lateral detour!" the guard shouted. Keeping Myrk in his sights, he veered left to chase him. "Maintaining accelerated pursuit!"

Stellar saw it. He gasped. "No! Abandon the chase! He's leading you up a mining capillary! Corporal! Pull back this instant—!"

The guard was too far ahead to pay the Captain any heed. He shot straight up the narrow passageway behind Myrk's tail.

"Nnnngh! Luna damn it!" Stellar hissed as he forced himself to take a passage to the right.

In the mining capillary, Myrk was soaring upwards and undaunted. For once he was calm, even as the guard behind him began inching his way up on his flanks.

"That's as far as you go—!" The guard prepared to fire his manarifle when a loud scraping noise filled the sides of his helmet. Breathless, he glanced at the walls blazing past him. "Huh...?"

The very wingtips of his glider were grinding against the lunar surfaces of the corridor. The capillary was easily too small for him to navigate. Soon, a shower of sparks was bathing his runestoned armor.

"Blessed Gultophine..." He squeaked, then yanked at the crystalline controls to decelerate—when he got a face full of leather.

"Haaaugh!" Myrk had dropped down to pounce on him. The guard jerked his body to the side. Myrk grabbed the unicorn's neck, spun about, and held him from behind, attempting to reach over and grab the controls to the magic vehicle. Together, the two ponies struggled as the zooming walls of the mining passage closed in tighter. Centimeters per second, the wings of the managlider crumbled into translucent blue shards. The glow flickered off and on as the shower of sparks became overwhelming.

"Nnnnngh!" the unicorn grunted and head-butted Myrk. He pulsed his horn and swiveled the manarifle on his armor to aim into Myrk's chest at point blank. Before he could shout a command, Myrk flung a hoof over his mouth and clutched his skull in a vice-like grip.

The two struggled with each other in the rumbling, crowded tunnel until Myrk—furious and frowning—flung his mouth wide open in the unicorn's face, shrieking at the top of his sarosian lungs. The unicorn howled in agony. Cracks formed in his helmet and twin trickles of blood fountained from his ears. The glow of his horn strobed like a pulsar, and soon he was yanking the vehicle into a crumbling spin. Dust and crystalline shards filled the corridor as the glider shattered completely.

Before the unicorn's limp body could fall, Myrk bit into the guard's forelimb. Holding the ragdoll body in fanged teeth, Myrk gazed up ahead as a bright pair of lights formed at the end of the tunnel. He flew out into the cavernous expanse of Mid-Level. A pair of Stellar's wingponies were hovering in wait with their manarifles at the ready. But as soon as Myrk exploded out the mouth of the corridor, he flung a face-full of paralyzed guard at the gasping pair.

One unicorn dodged at the last second. The other wasn't so lucky; the guard's body sailed into him like a meteor, shattering the managlider instantly. The two equine shapes flew limply into a sea of lunar powder while Myrk shot up like an onyx lightning bolt towards a complicated array of criss-crossing bridges and platforms stretched across an enormous, glass-paved chamber.

The remaining guard panted, gawking at the fleeing target as Captain Stellar surged past him. "Do not tarry, soldier! Lieutenant Razsaleen will have the blockade ready!"

The soldier gulped and followed as swiftly as he could. "Yes, sir!"

Myrk sailed up through open space, deliciously cooled by the billowing air as he surged past bridge after bridge of roads clustering up the Mid-Level Highways. Ponies pulling glowing hovercarts from lunar township to township stopped to gaze in shock at the peculiar sight of a sarosian fleeing above them. A deep murmur filled the air, a sound that was replaced by a sudden, mutual gasping noise.

At that, Myrk jolted nervously in midair. He pivoted about, launching a sonar barrage in every direction that he could. Just then, he sensed a wall of bodies behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he spotted a phalanx of Rune Guards lining up with mana cannons atop a glossy platform's glowing edge. At the command of Lieutenant Razsaleen, all the unicorns fired in unison.

"H'rhnum!"

Myrk backflipped and dove upside down in a suicidal somersault. As he did so, huge bolts of burning blue mana roared past his figure. Several hairs of his tail were roasted, along with the furthest corners of his brown cloak.

"H'rhnum!"

A second volley came from the Imperial line, and again the air caught aflame with electrical branches of magical fury. Myrk dove through the madness—spinning—until he descended upon a single glass bridge in the dead-center of the steep cavern. Lunar citizens shrieked and abandoned their carts as he dove upon them.

Myrk grunted, flattened his body at the last second and slid beneath the levitating body of a hovercart. Two beams of blue mana flew into the vehicle, bursting it aflame and sending bits and pieces of mercantile wears splattering across the platform. Rocketing out from underneath the explosion, Myrk skimmed over the deck, flaring his wings in a desperate attempt to slow himself. His hooves skidded across the glass platform a few times until managing an awkward gallop as he surged past two cowering unicorns. He prepared to leap off the highway when another blast blew up a wagon full of oats beside him.

The blow landed too close, and the sheer concussion of the blast knocked the former Wraith off his hooves. He tumbled sideways, rolled, and landed in a rough stop with his shoulders against a glossy black stagecoach. Wincing, he opened his eyes in time to hear the whining pitch of a managlider.

Before his black eyes, Captain Stellar dove down, swooped up in a corkscrew, and cut his manastream in midair. The crystalline conjuration disappeared in a blink, and the enraged Captain came down, telekinetically unsheathing a glowing, midnight blue scimitar from his armor. He dropped down on Myrk like a raging comet. "Raaaaaugh!"

Myrk gnashed his teeth and flapped his wings. The burst of air flung him forward in a daring roll.

Stellar came down, swinging the sword in full-force where Myrk's prone body was lying just half a second ago. The abandoned stagecoach exploded in twain, filling the air with a shower of metallic shards. Stellar spun around, leering.

Myrk rolled up onto his hooves and slid in reverse.

Stellar charged in full gallop, thrusting his scimitar like a bayonet ahead of him.

Holding his breath, Myrk rotated the tips of his forward horseshoes, the metal articles extending a fan of razor sharp blades. He reared around his front limbs and blocked Stellar's attack with a shower of sparks. Yanking down at the blade, he attempted throwing Stellar off his balance. But just as he dove in for an attack of his own, Stellar blindly levitated the scimitar behind his back and deflected Myrk's attack. He shoved against the sarosian and swept the scimitar low.

Myrk backflipped and slid to a stop. Before he could grind his hooves and prepare another attack, a huge body sailed through his sonar senses. He ducked low just as the remaining wingpony sliced over him in a vicious dive. The managlider scraped the top of his mane before swiftly pulling back up and continuing down the highway. Myrk saw it arcing around in preparation for another pass, but then Stellar was advancing once more into the sarosian’s sight, swinging and slashing madly with his blade.

Myrk backtrotted, desperately blocking Stellar's offensive moves with his forelimbs. A slash made its way through his defense, and the expert unicorn soldier bloodily grazed Myrk's shoulder. Hissing in pain, Myrk ducked another swing of Stellar's blade, grabbed a loose shard of hovercart debris in his teeth and flung the metal object towards Stellar's helmet. Stellar stepped back to deflect the projectile, giving Myrk time to break into full gallop across the highway and take to the air.

But no sooner were Myrk's wings spread, when the remaining wingpony swooped down low and smacked him in midair. With a grunt, Myrk flew limply into a long, wooden passenger cart on the far end of the bridge. The vehicle crumbled around him, piling a huge weight of lumber over his twitching figure. He grunted and struggled to get free, but his lower limbs refused to budge under the clustered mana crystals of the demolished vehicle's hover engines. Groaning in frustration, Myrk desperately gripped a flank of metal with his teeth in an attempt to pry it off him. For a brief moment, he was shocked that Stellar hadn't sliced his way into the vehicle to decapitate him for good. It was then that he heard a noise in his expert ears from far away.

"H'rhnum!"

Lieutenant Razsaleen's phalanx fired another volley from afar. The air heated up with static energy. A bright blue fury blinded the corners of Myrk's black eyes. He quivered, hissing and struggling with every fiber of his being.

The owl pendant rattled around his sweating neck, and Myrk grimaced as a huge plume of manafire consumed the very platform beneath him.

Goddesses

"Strong and resilient Elektra, I entreat you. Protect Noktyrn, her family, and the families of Chaar and Pulsade with your bastion of earth. Cast the darkest shadows over the eyes of our oppressors, so that they may never find those loyal souls who would take shelter in your timeless grace..."

Choral shuffled around the corner of a long hallway in the center of the temple, looking for Myrk. Glancing to the left, she finally saw him. He was squatting before an altar lit with blue candles. Erected before him were the porcelain figures of six alicorn deities. With a soft breath, she leaned against a granite pillar and patiently waited, staring across the shadows at his penitent figure.

"Blessed Gultophine, goddess of life and death, I pray that you usher the souls of Chaar and Pulsade into the silver pastures beyond," Myrk murmured, his head bowed. "Judge them not for their penultimate actions, but instead punish me for having brazenly guided them to such an end. I can only beg for your mercy and forgiveness, but I cannot demand it, holy Gultophine. I am humbly yours to bless or curse as you see fit."

He took a deep breath and spoke with greater zeal.

"Goddess Nebula, this sarosian's hooves and wings are yours. Grant me wisdom and tenacity to deal with the consequences of my actions, that I may restore balance to this moon, and bring your sister Luna's citizens even closer to the harmony of your glorious nature."

Choral slowly trotted towards him, careful not to make her hoofsteps too loud as his prayers continued.

"Wise and ever vigilant Entropa, I ask that you give me patience. Now more than ever, I need your intellect and all-seeing vision to guide me through these perilous times. The prophecy looms, and your sister's fate hangs in the balance. Light my path, as you have so quietly shaped it, so that I may know the direction of my flight ahead."

He was silent for a spell. Choral sat beside him, adjusting the folds of her cloak. After a few seconds, she summoned the strength to utter, "Myrk—"

He blindly held up a hoof. She silenced herself as he opened his mouth one last time, "And I entreat you, Princess Celestia, keeper of the Sun..."

Choral bit her lip and stirred with a slight nervousness. Nevertheless, she quietly listened as he went on.

"...Protect the souls of Equestria, as you always do. Maintain the law and harmony of earth, for soon you will be reunited with your sister once more. I ask that you show the same mercy to her as that which spared Luna's life a thousand years ago. Though Nightmare Moon has been on a path to destruction, your strength and maturity has preserved her, and—more importantly—the spirit of your younger sister imprisoned within. I apologize sincerely, Celestia, that I have failed in summoning your older siblings to come to her aid. Please hear my prayers, so that you may remember the power of true humility, for there will come a time when you will confront the goddess of the moon again. By the power of Epona and Consus, I pray. Your shadowed child, Myrk, son of Slaad."

In the silence that followed, Choral sat on folded hooves and gazed softly towards him. "Do you always pray to every goddess?"

Myrk slowly nodded. "Even the four cosmic ones."

Choral's eyes darted across the candles. "How come I didn't hear you pray to Luna?"

He swallowed and said, "All my life, I've let my actions be my prayers to Luna." He turned and looked towards her. "Do my words with the goddesses still disturb you, Choral?"

She fidgeted, avoiding his gaze. "Erm..." She muttered, "Only when you try to talk to the last one."

"Celestia is hardly the villain that the Empire has forced us to label her all these centuries."

"It still won't stop you from being beheaded on any platform above Marefall."

"Do you feel the same way when you pray to your patron goddess down here in Tranquility?"

"Entropa isn't my patron goddess, Myrk," Choral retorted. After a sigh, she said, "She's simply been... the most useful."

Myrk's brow furrowed. "Even you have always known better than to relegate a holy alicorn to mere application."

"Th-that's not what I meant! I... Nnngh..." Choral sighed and ran a hoof through her blonde mane. "I don't feel the same intimate connect with the daughters of Epona and Consus that you do, Myrk."

"If Entropa is all whom you pray to, that can be understood."

Choral snickered. "I swear, you and Noktyrn have been exchanging notes..."

Myrk tilted his head to the side. "I beg your pardon?"

She sighed and pivoted to face him directly. "For your information, Entropa means more to me than just the goddess of time. She's a spirit of patience, of diligence, of hard work and scientific dedication. Everyday that I work within the Lunar Energy Commission, I'm depending on her for strength and guidance and intellect."

"Has she complied with your humble requests?"

"I would like to think so!" Choral exclaimed. "With help from my father and several of his closest associates, I've devised a formula to enhance the storage of individual unicorn leylines by nearly five hundred percent!" She smiled with a brief air of pride. "I've personally conducted several breakthrough experiments. I've been able to store unfathomable amounts of energy in my horn alone, enough to make battle-hardened soldiers like your dreaded Pierce Stellar envious. If a delicate mare like myself can store half a mana battery's worth of energy into her horn, who knows what specially trained sorcerers in just a few years can do?! We can transport power sources across opposite ends of the moon without relying on hovercraft and polluting cargo trains! We can make a cleaner and safer future for the Empire!"

"Or Nightmare Moon could seize the magical breakthrough and harness it into newer and far deadlier manarifles," Myrk exclaimed. "I've seen the Empress do it before with your father's previous discoveries."

Choral gave a long sigh. "Look, before you steer this topic down another one of your self-righteous tangents, let me first finish my thought." She looked gently at his face. "Entropa has always been a part of my life, but I know better than to depend exclusively on her. What I am now, and what I've accomplished, is either the result of my personal work or the close assistance of my family and friends. We are the sculptors of our own destiny, Myrk. Face it: the age of the goddesses are over and done with. It's honorable and just to pay homage to the cosmic sisters, but the Empress is the only alicorn that matters—now and forever."

Myrk nodded slowly. He took his time before quietly replying, "You have always thought for the future, Choral. That's one of the things I love about you. But you must realize that the future means nothing without taking a stake in the past."

Choral exhaled hard, her breath upsetting the candles beneath the porcelain figures. "You really are like a broken record..."

"Please, hear me out," Myrk said, gesturing towards the ceiling with a hoof. "What lies above us?"

"Tranquility," she replied in a muttering tone.

"No, Choral. What lies above that?"

She fidgeted slightly before murmuring forth, "Marefall."

Myrk nodded. "And what is so special about Marefall?"

"It's... well... It's where all the founding members of the Lunar Empire came from: unicorns, sarosians, and even Nightmare Moon herself."

"Precisely," Myrk said. "And just how many members of Imperial society care to remember that fact?"

Choral made a face. "What are you talking about? Everypony knows about the importance of Marefall."

"Do they, Choral?" he asked gently. "Do they really? Do they feel the unnerving thought of it stirring inside their hearts every lunar sunrise, as they wake faithfully from their beds to continue doing their Empress' unquestionable work?" He shifted and turned to face her with a coal-black stare. "Do they remember that we were all once soldiers and murderers, traitors to the Celestial Monarchy in a time of great war and violence, swayed into subservience to a fascist, all-powerful warmonger whose heated ambition was enough to make her slay her own flesh and blood?"

Myrk pointed once more through the cathedral ceiling above them.

"We all started on that tiny strip of earth, Choral. You, me, your father, my father, Noktyrn's family and even Stellar's soldiers; they all had ancestors who were unwittingly caught in the magical bands that spewed from the burning core of the Elements of Harmony. When Nightmare Moon was projected onto the moon, they were teleported here along with her. Even to this day, I've had astronomers inform me that a gorge of ghastly proportions still resides in the heart of Equestria where the fated confrontation between Celestia and Luna took place. The ponies of Earth obviously haven't tried to cover up the scars of the past. But what has the Empire done to pay homage to yesterday’s sins?"

Choral said nothing. She merely stared at her hooves.

Myrk leaned forward, speaking, "They've abandoned that strip of land, Choral. Following Nightmare Moon's lead, they burrowed their way up as far as they could, distancing themselves from the moon’s one and only precious piece of home. They built Ponymonium using the same weapons that brought them here. They paved the ashes of Consus over with glass and obsidian. They built oceans and rivers out of transmogrified water in a veiled attempt to create artificial terrain. They've utterly forsaken the past, Choral, and in so doing they've forgotten the very nature of their sins, the same blemishes that cursed them to a thousand years of exile to begin with. Now..." He took a deep breath and entreated her gaze with a sincere expression. "Tell me, with a history cast to the fires of neglect, what chance do we have in avoiding a repeated holocaust in your highly anticipated future?"

Choral muttered, "We're more powerful than ever before, more intelligent than ever before, more learned than ever before." She turned to look at him. "We have the means to achieve harmony, Myrk."

"But do we have the motive?" he asked. "Knowledge is one thing, but it was also knowledge that led Princess Luna down the corridors of madness. Her task of guarding her father's remains turned into an obsession, and she transformed from a gravekeeper to a dark avenger. If she had clung to the spirit of harmony that gave meaning to her task, maybe she would never have let her anxiety and fears get the best of her. Look at the Empire now. Look at its ambition, its hubris, its militancy and xenophobia and try to tell me that the future won't be anything less than the horrific past being repeated!"

Choral shook her face with a pale expression. "Myrk, I am just one soul in the center of a barren Moon. How can I be expected to carry the entire weight of the past on my shoulders? Not even an immortal like Luna could do that, not after so many years of building one thing and one thing alone."

"Perhaps Nightmare Moon's greatest sin is fear," Myrk said. "Fear of being exposed to her mistakes. And perhaps that..." He spoke as he stood up slowly. “Perhaps th-that is the one and only quality that I share with the Empress that I've spent so many years guarding."

"Huh?"

"I can't hide here any longer," he stated. "If I don't face the consequences of my actions, then nothing will change. What kind of an example would I be for Princess Luna, even if all I've ever wanted to do was save her?" He shook his head. "No, the time of hiding is over."

"What... What are you saying, Myrk?"

"I'm leaving this temple," he said. "I'm leaving Tranquility and turning myself in."

Choral's eyes widened as she gasped. "Wh-what?!"

Phantoms

"Is it over?!" the flying unicorn guard shouted desperately as he zoomed past the smoldering pile of ashes that dotted the battle-strewn highway. "Is he finished?!"

"Silence!" Captain Pierce Stellar shouted. As his guard zoomed in looping circles above him, he trotted across the bridge, over piles of glittering debris, before standing directly before the burning refuse that remained of the wooden passenger cart. His violet eyes narrowed on the sight as his breaths slowly evened out.

The rubble was still brimming with crackling embers of manafire from Lieutenant Razsaleen's distant cannon blasts. The remains of the transport wagon were positively melting off the edge of the bridge, filling the center of the steep cavern with a pale blue glow. After several prolonged seconds, Stellar exhaled calmly. He spun his glowing scimitar about and telekinetically sheathed it into the side of his armor.

"Shame that we couldn't retrieve the canister," he said in a dull tone. "However, the target's eliminated." Clearing his throat, he turned and shouted towards the flying unicorn as he zoomed by once more in the managlider. "Go and inform the Lieutenant and his blockade that the subject's been terminated! The Empress will be pleased to know that the traitor never brought the stolen item to the lunar surface—"

"Captain!" the wingpony shouted, raising a hoof off his crystalline controls to point behind him.

Stellar pivoted about, his violet eyes squinting. A flat black plate from the wagon's shattered mana battery compartment had somehow survived the blast. What was more, it was stirring in the center of the burning rubble.

"Damnable Nebula," Stellar grunted and tugged at the hilt of his scimitar.

Just then, the black plate exploded outward, nearly knocking Stellar off his hooves. He stumbled backwards on the bridge's surface and watched as a smoke-trailing figure surged towards the cavern's ceiling. Singed and bruised, a certifiably living Myrk soared out of hiding. He hovered several meters above the bridge, dust and embers flying off his coat with every beat of his wings.

From across the cavern, Lieutenant Razsaleen could be heard shouting. A runic command was yelled all at once, and a fresh volley of blue flame burned towards the bridge yet again.

Airborne, Myrk easily dodged the volley. He swooped low over the bridge, forcing Stellar to duck once more. The Captain turned and watched as his loyal guard flew the managlider after Myrk, firing a steady stream of manabullets. Myrk swooped up, planted his hooves on the wall of the canyon, bounced off, and landed on the back of the gasping guard's aircraft.

"Corporal! Disengage—!" Stellar tried shouting.

But Myrk was already pummeling the guard savagely in the helmet, making it impossible for the soldier to hear. With fangs glinting, the sarosian then bit directly down onto the guard's horn and gave a savage twist. A sickening snap filled the air as the unicorn's leylines were severed. He screamed in agony while the magic faded around him, dissolving the crystalline structure of the managlider in a blink. Myrk next dropped the guard so that he fell towards the distant web of glass bridges below.

Stellar gnashed at his teeth. His hooves fumbled over his shoulder armor, finding every vial empty of lunar dust. Just then, a roar of noise filled the air above him as three fresh recruits on managliders soared over the bridge he was on. "Shoot him!" Stellar shouted after the three fliers. "And for the love of Gultophine, don't let him get close to you!"

Myrk heard the squadron's roaring approach. He glanced over his shoulder and spat the sparkling unicorn horn out of his mouth. With a flap of his wings, he shot towards the upper edge of the cavern. A mad splash of blue manabullets trailed after him, reducing the available air of flight into burning flame. Nevertheless, Myrk spiraled through the cluster of projectiles, making his way sweatily towards a thin corridor entrance lining the furthest corner of the grand chamber.

There was a long silver track stretched along the length of the topmost portion of the cavern wall, held up by lateral support struts. Sparks of energy surged up and down as a distant monorail approached, powered by steam and carrying countless tons of lunar ore from the lower mining facilities. Myrk saw it, and then he focused on the tiny opening to the corridor just beyond the track. Flapping his leather wings with extra might, he accelerated towards the thin exit, his tail twitching from the sea of burning bullets streaking after him.

From afar, Stellar squinted, leaning against the edge of the bridge below. "He couldn't be..." His lips tightened. "The blasted wraith has to be mad!"

Up above, Myrk hissed through the strain of his high-speed flight. The glow of the train's engine illuminated him with an angry blue spotlight. Undaunted, he flapped his wings one last time, before folding them in and shooting forward like a missile, just barely skirting past the violent head of the screaming vehicle. Myrk shot into the corridor in a blink, and soon the blurring length of the train blocked all pursuers.

The three wingponies expertly veered off, avoiding a shattering collision with the train at the very last second. They circled limply about, the pilots grunting in frustration at their escaped prey. There was a countless number of train cars, and with the intense volume of minerals they were carrying, it would be several minutes before the line of vehicles passed along the track and allowed access to the corridor behind it once again.

"Damn," Stellar grunted, already galloping towards the far end of the bridge to rendezvous with his troops and get restocked on lunar dust. "He still must be heading for the surface," he grunted aloud. "That means he can only be taking one path. Let's hope the Phantoms cut him off..."

Indeed, Myrk was rocketing towards a singular destination, speeding down the maintenance corridor as it opened up into the largest lunar chamber he had entered yet. A gust of wind blew at his cloak and silver-streaked mane as he came upon an enormous cavern filled to the brim with buildings, lights, and glistening highways. Slowing briefly, Myrk reached two hooves up and yanked the hood of his cloak over his head before his sarosian skin could burn from the illumination. In the presence of so many glowing lights, he couldn't afford to be any less careful.

Regaining speed, Myrk dove gracefully into the spires and platforms of New Whinniepeg below. Around him, Imperial citizens trotted in droves, clustered on elevated courtyards and long glassy platforms. Various pedestrians stopped in the middle of talking, transporting, and trading to gasp at the sight of the conspicuous wraith threading his way down the vertical urbanscape like a hot needle through butter.

Myrk narrowed his black eyes, trying to focus on his destination. The very bottom floor of New Whinniepeg loomed beneath him, appearing to be an utter continent away. He dove steadily towards it, knowing that the Imperial Battery Chamber rested beyond the concrete pits below, and there he would find the ventilation tunnels that would finally lead him to his goal.

His ears twitched; he was sensing something amiss. Myrk's heart rate increased as he blurred down past several skyscrapers and densely populated platforms. He tried listening past the shocked murmurs of the frightened unicorn citizenry. He tried listening past the mana generators and electrical conduits. He pricked his ears to hear beyond the booming voice of Nightmare Moon's projected image as it growled phrase after phrase of Imperialist dogma.

Somewhere—amidst all the city chaos and industrial noise—Myrk's sonar found it. He detected four shapes, lithe and nimble, their bodies draped in capes and their forelimbs armed with all sorts of bladed weaponry. He flew briefly backwards, allowing himself a chance to squint up at the buildings he was blurring past. For the tiniest of blinks, he made out four unicorn shapes perched fearlessly on the edge of a balcony above. Their masked faces exhaled cold vapors and their copper-ringed horns flickered with blue bolts of energy. Then, in a second blink, they were gone.

Myrk's heart skipped a beat. The air around him crackled as four bristling orbs of ball lightning coalesced beside his descending figure. With the dull thuds of localized thunder, four Phantoms materialized on all sides of the fleeing sarosian. The cloaked unicorns fell alongside him and swung their forelimbs, pummeling Myrk like a ragdoll.

He gasped, grunted, and spat blood from their vicious assault, Spiraling in an awkward fall, he flapped his wings and bucked at them with his rear limbs. His hooves struck nothing but air, for the Phantoms had teleported yet again.

Myrk barely had time to wince before the sapphire balls of lightning spread again and rematerialized into Phantoms on the opposite side, slamming him hard in his ribcage.

"Oooof!" Myrk shouted and bounced off at a crooked angle. He slammed onto the surface of a platform and rolled like a leather log across the courtyard. Several unicorns shrieked and galloped away in fright; mares grabbing their foals while stallions shouted angry curses to the Goddess Nebula. Myrk winced and tried to stand, when fluctuating spheres of blue formed around him.

The first Phantom that materialized hissed through his silken blue mask and reached a hoof to Myrk's hood, hoisting it down. The sarosian's stone-gray coat was exposed to the manalight of the buildings all around him, and steam instantly rose from the slightest contact with the unnatural glow.

"Nnnnghh-Aaaaaugh!" Myrk shrieked in agony, gnashed his teeth, and smacked the Phantom's hoof away. He flung his hood safely back up over his burning skull and thrashed angrily at the assassin.

But the Phantom had already disappeared, and in a clash of thunder two others materialized at Myrk's rear. They kicked at him in unison.

"Ungh!" Myrk stumbled across the platform and collapsed onto a bench. He looked behind him.

The Phantoms galloped, somersaulted, and dove towards him. In midair, the bracelets on their forelimbs extended shiny metal claws that sliced straight at Myrk's forehead.

Myrk vaulted off the bench just as the Phantoms sailed through it, smashing the metal structure to pieces. They hissed cold vapors as the sarosian took to the air once again, only to have the other two attackers materializing with a heavy tackle. Grunting, Myrk wrestled with the two as their combined weight sent him plummeting off the edge of a platform and into the space of New Whinniepeg below. He managed to smack one across the masked face and headbutt the other, but when they released him it was a matter of their choice and not his. Gazing at his flight upside down, Myrk understood why.

He sailed violently through a skyscraper's glass window and tumbled into a loft classroom full of shrieking foals. The fillies and colts dropped their telekinetic practice spheres and cowered in the corner of the room. As glass and metal littered the floor around Myrk, the breathless teacher ran over and ushered the children out into the adjacent hallway.

Wincing, Myrk climbed up to his hooves, only to hear the crackle of the Phantoms rematerializing thunderously behind him. With a cold-hearted sneer, he gripped a nearby desk in his fangs and spun his entire body around.

The four assassins were already teleporting by the time Myrk's flung projectile sailed through them. They rematerialized in a cape-billowing dive all around the sarosian figure, but Myrk was ready. He rose with a violent uppercut of his left forelimb, smacking one unlucky Phantom across his masked face. The unicorn's copper-ringed horn sparkled with blue lightning, but Myrk was quick to extend the blades of his horseshoe and slash across the pony's throat.

When the Phantom finally teleported, he rematerialized on the opposite end of the classroom in a bloody slump. Myrk had no time to celebrate, for the assassin's three partners were charging him in a hissing blur. A wall of claws and hooves flew at Myrk in violent precision.

Myrk backtrotted, ducked, sidestepped, and jumped all the blows he could. Two or three of their swipes made it through the fray and ripped at his cloak, hood, and eventually a forelimb.

"Aaaugh!" Myrk grunted as his blood stained the classroom floor. Sneering, he gripped one Phantom and bodyslammed him through a desk. Another pounced onto his backside and grabbed his neck in a vice-grip. Breathless, Myrk flapped his leathery wings and flung himself straight up, slamming the Phantom’s body mercilessly into the ceiling. He slumped off of Myrk's form while the third Phantom plowed into him with a flurry of blades.

Myrk grunted and fell onto the floor, wrestling with the Phantom until successfully kicking him off with a savage buck from his rear hooves. The Phantom flew across the classroom and landed upside down on the tips of all four sets of claws. In nimble fashion, he crab-walked back towards Myrk, kicked off the ground, flipped, and sailed a pair of claws straight at the sarosian's skull.

Myrk ducked just in time to lose a lock of silver-streaked hair instead. He jerked his fangs up, grabbed the Phantom by the cloak, and flung him hard into the floor. Before the Phantom could teleport away, Myrk clamped both of his bladed horseshoes onto either side of the assailant’s neck and slashed them viciously across each other.

There was a horrendous popping noise, and the Phantom's head rolled wetly across the floor as his two partners hissed and charged Myrk. They performed several rapid teleports in a shutter-strobing fashion before converging on the sarosian in a burst of angry magic.

Myrk wrestled with them both as all three tumbled out another window, shattered through it, and plummeted towards the lower streets of New Whinniepeg. Myrk clamped his fangs over one assailant's forelimb while barely dodging the claws of a second to his left cheek, all the while falling into the depths of the subterranean city. Another skyscraper loomed behind them, projecting the intimidating face of Nightmare Moon and her polished helm. Myrk's sonar filled with the reverberating bass of her recorded propaganda, and he flexed his left wing at just the angle to spin the midair struggle around.

The combatants slammed into the wall of the building. The Phantoms took the blunt of the blow, and their heavy impact shattered the crystalline mirrors that projected Nightmare Moon's face. The image of the Empress fizzled as the three bodies fell towards a balcony greenhouse below. One Phantom regained his wits in time to teleport out of the plummet. The other struggled, only to have Myrk sailing down towards him with a murderous dropkick.

The two smashed through the glass roof of the greenhouse and slammed through two tables full of colorful flowers. A solid rain of glass shards and bits of crystalline projectors fell around them. The Phantom tried crawling away, but his lower limbs were shattered, and his vaporous breaths came in labored wheezes. He was gripped from behind by an infuriated Myrk, but before the sarosian could snap the Phantom's neck, the assailant's partner teleported in and slashed down at Myrk's backside.

"Aaaugh!" Myrk shrieked, doused by his own blood. A river of scarlet formed along his spine. The Phantom took advantage of the painful moment by reaching for the saddlebag beneath Myrk's torn cape.

Snarling, Myrk spun around and shrieked straight into the Phantom's skull. The sheer force of his sarosian lungs shattered the entire outer half of the greenhouse's glass windows. Reeling from the tumult, the Phantom leapt back, teleported, and rematerialized to land a reverse kick on the other side of Myrk.

Myrk dodged, rolling over the loose soil and littered plants. He stood up, only for the Phantom to teleport again, zip over in a blue speck of lightning, and come down on the opposite side with a fierce elbow. Myrk stumbled and grunted from the horrendous barrage, incapable of touching the last fighter even once as he was attacked and slashed at all angles.

Finally, in a breath of frustrated anger, Myrk somersaulted backwards, gripped a loose metal bar from off the floor, and swung it around him in a full circle. Miraculously enough, it made contact—smacking the Phantom upside the skull. Before Myrk could swing a second and far more punishing blow, the Phantom teleported again at an awkward angle. Myrk stood stock still, his ears flexing. Through sonar, he detected a body of mass materializing across the greenhouse. He spun and tossed the metal bar at full force. The projectile whistled through the air and pierced the ball of blue lightning just as it came to a stop.

In a bright flash, the Phantom appeared—choking—for he had materialized with the metal bar skewering his windpipe. Before he could slump to the ground, Myrk had dashed over, grabbed him by the shoulder, and bucked him savagely into the brightest corner of the shattered greenhouse.

Fatefully, the breathless Phantom flew hard into a mana generator, forming a deep dent in the energized device; sparks flew out wildly as the battery glowed brighter and brighter. The one surviving Phantom hissed in horror and tried in vain to crawl away, when a loud whining noise filled the balcony.

Myrk needed no greater incentive to flee. He galloped out of the greenhouse, leapt off the balcony, and dove into the lower skyline of New Whinniepeg just as the generator exploded, annihilating the greenhouse and all other objects on the platform in a bright blue plume of unbridled mana.

As the city reverberated with the echoes of destruction, the bruised and bloodied sarosian sailed victoriously downward, carrying his precious, saddlebagged contents towards the concrete pits below.

Right at that time, Captain Pierce Stellar and his company rode up on the lowest highway in their hovercraft. He hopped out and peered over the edge, seeing Myrk's descent into the glowing chambers beneath the city.

"Do we have backup in the Imperial Battery Shaft?!" he shouted.

"We should have a full battalion there by now!" Lieutenant Razsaleen replied.

"Good." Stellar frowned as he emptied one of two fresh vials of lunar dust. "Let's give them all the help we can muster. Lieutenant, you're with me! Time to finish this!" He dove off, effortlessly conjuring a managlider mere seconds after jumping.

Razsaleen motioned to two more guards who followed him as they did the same, summoning crystalline blue wings and joining Stellar in formation. The four Rune Guards joined on Myrk's tail, their magical engines screaming a banshee's echo as they sailed down the concrete pits behind him.

The Spirit of Luna

"T-turn yourself in?!" Choral gasped. She trotted limply after Myrk as the sarosian marched his way towards the front gates of the shadowed temple. "Myrk, have you lost your mind?!"

"Much rather, I think I have found it," he said in a neutral tone. "It's the only logical course of action now."

"How?!" Choral snapped, frowning angrily as she tugged on his right wing. "Stop and tell me how in the name of Entropa that is anywhere close to being'logical!"

"If I resist the Lunar Rune Guard, I will only provoke the wrath of Stellar and his subordinates," Myrk stated. He turned to face her with a serious expression. "By turning myself in, I will undoubtedly undergo a lengthy trial. I have closely served Her Majesty for ten years as captain of the Night Wraiths, after all. I may yet have a chance to speak personally with Nightmare Moon. Perhaps, by the grace of Nebula, I'll be able to appeal to the spirit of Luna inside her so that she may summon her siblings with the beacon herself."

"Myrk!" Choral growled. If her sarosian blood had granted her fangs, she would have been brandishing them. "You yourself said that both Stellar and members of the Lunar Cabinet have been fighting to squash your kind underhoof for years. You'd have to be a fool to think they'd let you get one word in to Nightmare Moon, much less even look the Empress in the eye! They'll sick a lynch mob on you and have your body hanging from the towers of Ponymonium by next sunrise and you know it!"

"Then that's a risk I shall have to take."

"Myrk!" she shouted.

To her surprise, he turned and embraced her, cupping her muzzle and stroking her face with a pair of strong hooves. "Choral, you've been the one constant joy in my life, my guiding star. I know that we've drawn apart these last few years—"

"Please..." Choral stammered, clutching his forelimb and trying to hold back her tears. "Please don't do this—"

"I just want you to know that I am sorry, Choral," he said gently. The owl pendant around his neck rattled in the candlelight and he leaned in and nuzzled her dearly. "You've had your own hopes and aspirations, and all this time I've done nothing but judge you unfairly for them. Yes, I am a stallion of certain conviction, but that doesn't give me the right to tell you how to live your life any more than the Imperialists who know and love you as dearly as I ever could."

"Nopony..." She sniffled and stared firmly into his black eyes. "Nopony has ever loved me as you have."

"You..." He struggled with speaking suddenly. After an anxious gulp, he managed to say, "You have a full life ahead of you to test that belief, Choral. Pursue your dreams; I beg of you. But please don't lose sight of the divine spirits that has preserved us here in spite of the Empress' dogmatic ways."

"Myrk..."

"Your have a fantastic career waiting for you in your father's industry, as well as with the Lunar Energy Commission..."

"Myrk, I..." Choral's face winced as she fought back a choking sob. "I-I have no future with the Energy Commission."

To that, Myrk's features sank. He gawked at her in shock. "But... But what do you mean? Choral, you have dedicated your entire life to the sciences..."

"But there is no going back to the facilities," she said with a shuddering sigh. "Not after what I've done."

Myrk squinted at her crookedly. Just then, a bright blue light strobed from the center of the room. He flinched, covering the front of his sensitive coat with a length of leather wings. Slowly, his black eyes adjusted, and he gazed in breathless shock at the source of the light.

Choral had just reached into the depths of her cloak. When her hoof came out, it was holding a thick black cylinder glowing with burning blue energy from deep within.

"The sp-spirit of Luna..." Myrk breathlessly exclaimed. He gulped his dry throat and fell on his haunches. "Her pure, unfiltered mana. Choral..." He gazed numbly at her. "Where... Where did you get this canister?"

"Like I said," Choral said in a low tone, her tears shimmering from the pulsating glow between them. "These were relocated to the building where my father works after you, Chaar, and Pulsade fell into the trap. Because of my connections, I... I-I managed to get access..."

"But... But why, Choral?" He exclaimed. "You realize that this brandishes you as a traitor as well! You're as good as dead if you return to Ponymonium, for even your father must kn-know by now!" He stood up limply, shivering. "Why... Wh-What could have possessed you to do this?"

"What else, you silly?" She smiled at him, her eyes brimming with tears. "I love you, Myrk."

His ears drooped as a soft smile melted over his face. He stared lengthily at her, and his black eyes glossed over, and just when it looked like he was about to say something—

A loud crash emanated from the burrowed streets of Tranquility directly outside the temple gates. Choral shrieked. Myrk spun about, his wings stretched out instinctively.

There were flashing strobes of light waving left and right through the avenues beyond the musty, dirt-stained windows. Several sarosian voices gasped and murmured as the bodies of armored equines marched steadily through them. Above the noise and militant thuds, a single voice could be heard shouting over the rest.

"Wh-who is it?!" Choral whimpered, clinging to Myrk. "The Rune Guard?!"

Myrk produced a high-pitched noise. He craned his neck. As soon as his leafy ears twitched upon the echo's return, he frowned. "Stellar," he grunted.

Battered

Panting, bleeding across random spots of his stone-gray body, Myrk reached a hoof back to feel the thick round contents of his saddlebag. He managed a slight breath of relief upon feeling the shape of the canister within. As a wave of hot air struck him, he gazed straight down towards where he was furiously diving.

Through the concrete pits beneath New Whinniepeg, a large vertical chamber loomed. The Imperial Battery Shaft of the subterranean city housed gigantic columns of glowing blue crystals. Stretching as far as Myrk could see, enchanted strips of moonrock coiled together, funneling waves of priceless energy through metal coils that fueled the skyscrapers. Several rusted black platforms stretched around the columns at random intervals, providing walkways for workers and engineers to monitor the gigantic sources of mana production.

Through the edges of his sarosian ears, Myrk could hear the whine of four pursuing Rune Guards. The sound of Captain Stellar's conjured engines stood out the most. He knew that with their combined magic, the Guards would enter firing range in less than a minute. But Myrk also knew that he was nearing the final stretch. This was the Imperial Battery Shaft, and while it also had to channel mana to New Whinniepeg above, it also had to vent exhaust and mana dust. Where there was the need to vent, there were lateral corridors, and those corridors led in only one direction: up.

Myrk's black eyes scanned the pale walls of the subterranean shaft, struggling to find the ventilation corridors that would take him to the moon's surface. His cloak was tattered in so many places that the sheer glow of the industrial lights were starting to burn patches of his exposed skin. Fighting for concentration, he decided to let loose a burst of sonar so that he might sense the way out. What he discovered instead was a cluster of armored equines two platforms below his current descent.

He looked towards them and immediately wished that he hadn't. A line of unicorn soldiers were forming a solid phalanx, but instead of launching manabullets or cannon fire his way, they were illuminating huge beams of light. Swaths of burning gold shone over Myrk from afar. He was instantly blinded, and he felt his skin sizzling through the thin layers of the cloak around him.

"Nnngh—Aaaugh!" He howled in pain, covering his clenching eyes with his forelimbs. His descent turned into a spiral and his spiral into a plummet. He fell limply past the platform, sailing towards certain doom. His sonar screamed through the burning agony, telling him that the last platform was about to streak by, and beyond it was nothing but jagged rock.

With a heave of his stone-gray muscles, Myrk spun his body and stretched out his wings. He glided to a bumbling stop along a rusted sheet of grated walkways. The air around him rang with reverberating metal as he stopped finally, lying limp in the middle of the final platform that bordered a drowning strip of vertical mana batteries.

He lay there for several agonizing seconds, feeling his whole body throb in its extremities. His wings twitched and his burning joints struggled to pull himself up. Through a numb cloud of sonar he sensed the two dozen bodies of unicorn soldiers several hundred meters directly above. They were scurrying down the spiraling walkway to reach his body and finish him off.

No matter how badly his coat burned, Myrk knew that he had to keep moving. However, the very moment he sat up, he felt his saddlebag finally shredding and the canister rolled out onto the middle of the platform. Gasping, he lunged forward and gripped the precious cargo in his hooves. Less than two seconds later, the bodies of four unicorns landed in front of him, their hooves clanging loudly through the metal. Wincing, Myrk pried his singed eyes open.

The first thing he saw was the leering gaze of Captain Stellar. He stepped ahead of Razsaleen and the others as he stared with raging disgust at the body of Myrk below him. "Chase is over, Discordant filth," he said. "Hoof over the beacon, or else I won't make this quick."

Shine

Choral hugged the glowing canister, watching Myrk as he snuck stealthily up to a cracked opening in the temple windows. He stared out, having to squint from flickering pulses of merciless unicorn magic.

In the carved tunnels of Tranquility outside the House of Nebula, an entire company of Rune Guards had gathered. A mana-driven hovercraft hissed to a stop, and the chiseled visage of Captain Pierce Stellar marched into sight. He gave the crowd of cowering sarosians a bored glare before banging a hoof against the side of the vehicle.

The hovercraft's doors opened, and two burnt husks were tossed onto the bedrock. The gnarled, blackened bodies of two ponies crumpled on the floor. The leathery scraps of their wings burst into billowing dust as their muzzles were locked in permanent, skeletal screams. From a distance, several sarosians gasped and murmured silent prayers to Elektra and Nebula.

At the sight of the two bodies, Myrk took a deep breath. His jaw clenched and his wings curled inward. Slowly, Choral shuffled up from behind.

"Myrk? What... What's going on...?"

He gently, quietly motioned her to stand next to him. She slid in and leaned against his weight, grimacing as she stared out at the sight through the crack in the temple window.

Just then, a set of hooves hopped out of the hovercraft and leered loftily over the burnt corpses. A frail unicorn with a long red mane stood in a silken uniform, casting a glare of disgust at the furthest reaches of the sarosians' subterranean niche. "Hrmmph," he muttered. "It's not even fitting for cockroaches."

"You're the better orator, Major Shine," Stellar said as he strolled past him. "Feel free to take charge, but do keep the poetic diatribes to a minimum."

The officer merely smirked back. "Do you wish me to intimidate these animals or entertain them?" He cleared his throat, concentrated a wave of mana through his horn, and cast a mercilessly bright glow on the wincing populace around him. "I am Major Lucid Shine of the the Empress' Lunar Rune Guard!" He kicked the charred corpses in front of him. "And these... are all that remain of two putrid traitors whom some of you sarosian beasts may be unlucky enough to call 'brothers!'"

Choral inhaled sharply. Making the connection, she cast Myrk a sympathetic glance. "Oh Myrk, I'm so sorry..."

He urged her to be silent with a gentle pat to her shoulder as he glared at the proceeding.

Major Shine paced before the crowd, forcing the pained sarosians to flinch one after another as the bright light swam over each amber-slitted set of eyes. "When we found them, they were audaciously staging the most notorious of raids on the Imperial Vaults! Under the command of Captain Myrk, son of Slaad and former commander of the now defunct Imperial Night Wraiths, these traitors attempted to get their conniving hooves on the very magic of the Empress Nightmare Moon herself! A single canister like the ones they sought to steal is enough to power the towers of New Whinniepeg for years! To encroach upon such royal property is an offense punishable by death, and yet—empowered by some bygone sarosian creed or whatever lunacy looms in the shadowed vestibules of their discordant blood—they performed the unthinkable. I would like to know why..."

"Major..." Stellar remarked from where he leaned casually against the front of the Imperial hovercraft. Surrounded by several guards, he inspected his glowing scimitar before glancing casually the Major's way and saying, "We are in Tranquility; try speaking with a bit more brevity. These are simple-minded creatures, after all." A few of the guards chuckled.

Lucid Shine rolled his green eyes. Adjusting the silk collar of his uniform, he marched firmly over the charred corpses. "I asked these two wastes of flesh why, and—like good lunatic soldiers—they resisted my interrogation." His hoof clamped over one skull and pressed down, smashing it to flakes of black dust. "At first, that is." He grinned wickedly at the crowd. "But, within the boundaries of a manalight chamber, and after much persuasion on my behalf, I did get one of them to utter a single decipherable word amidst all the screams: 'Tranquility.' And the question I was giving the dying fool at the time was 'Where can we find your Captain?'"

With a grunt, Shine kicked his way through the other corpse, stomped straight up to the wincing families and aimed his unicorn's glow so close to them that their coats started smoking.

"I know that the traitorous waif Myrk is here! He's on every wanted poster from here to Ponymonium! Don't pretend that you discordant-blooded abominations are as blind as you are stubborn! You've seen him! You've seen where he's been! Surely, you must know where he is now, and I doubt there's a single one of you who wishes to end up like former Officers Pulsade and Chaar here!"

"Oh, shove a moonrock in it, ye sissy-hoofed wanker!"

A shocked murmur ran through the leafy-eared crowd. Stellar and his fellow guards blinked in alarm. Lucid Shine spun with an iron frown.

Noktyrn stood a few meters ahead of the rest of the line, frowning. Her fangs showed as Lucid slowly marched towards her. "Might wanna be a wee bit more polite if ye expect any answers in these parts."

"Polite?" Lucid droned, his red eyebrows raising. "My darling batfilly, the most polite thing I've done is not set fire to this damnable peninsula of foul earth the very moment my comrades and I arrived." His facial muscles twitched.

An aura of telekinesis grabbed Noktyrn by her mane. She gasped and sputtered for breath as the hairs were spun three times around her neck. Fiercely, the Major yanked her to the floor beneath him. He stood a hoof on her shoulder and focused a light-beam into her cutie mark, starting to cook the tiniest and most excruciating of holes into her flesh.

"Do you want to know why we want Captain Myrk so badly, you insufferable gypsy?!" he snarled. "A survey was performed at the science facilities of Ponymonium just this morning. It turns out that a container of Nightmare Moon's mana is missing after all. Now, the last fool left alive who attempted to grab such a canister was said to have been hiding here. Do you have any idea what such a thing like that is worth to the Empire?!"

Noktyrn hissed and growled through the smoke of her own roasting flesh. "How about ye bite me flank and we'll talk bits later?!"

"Want to bet that the canister is worth more than your own pathetic family ten times over?! What say we melt their faces off and feed them to you? Then we'll see how well your stubbornness stacks up..."

Inside the temple, Choral was whimpering. "Noktyrn! Oh please, blessed Entropa, no!"

Myrk hissed for her to be silent. Choral instantly shuffled backwards, trembling. In so doing, her right forelimb brushed against a length of the window, and entire sheet of glass fell to the rocky floor with a loud crash.

Lucid Shine immediately stopped shining his light on Noktyrn's quivering figure. He cast the front of the temple a curious glare, a devilish curve gracing his lips. "Hmmm... But of course. Sheep will be sheep, after all." He turned and smiled the Captain's way. "Stellar? Would you be so kind?"

Pierce Stellar nodded, sheathed his scimitar, and motioned towards his subordinates. "Rune Guard! Form up!"

Major Shine stepped off of Noktyrn to join the phalanx. Breathless, the burnt mare stumbled up to her hooves.

"No! Back off, ye bloody sods! Have ye no respect to the goddesses—?!" She froze upon the glow of three sets of manarifles being trained on her. A protective group of sarosian companions rushed forward and pulled her out of the courtyard.

"Captain Myrk!" Stellar shouted towards the gates as his guards lined up before him, training their shoulder-mounted cannons. The tall unicorn's voice echoed across the natural cave walls of Tranquility. "This is Captain Pierce Stellar and Major Lucid Shine of the Imperial Lunar Rune Guard! In the name of Her Majesty, Empress Nightmare Moon, we hereby order you to come out and surrender yourself, or else face immediate punishment for crimes committed against the Empire!"

Choral was hyperventilating. "Myrk... Myrk, I'm so sorry! I—"

"Nothing to be sorry for, beloved," he said, holding her as he stared out the brightly glowing temple windows. "You may very well be the source of Luna's salvation today, not to mention the entire moon's." He took a deep breath and squatted before her, staring her in the face. "Listen, Choral. Give me the canister of Luna's spirit..."

"Myrk..."

"I... I will carry you out of here," he said. "I will find you a place to hide so that Stellar can't find you. I still have friends in the darkest alcoves of the moon's mining shafts. They can keep you alive while I send the beacon to summon the stars that will aid Princess Luna's escape..."

"Myrk, don't be crazy!" she exclaimed, shivering as Stellar repeated his loud warning immediately outside the temple gates. "You can't expect to carry me and the beacon and still expect to get away from all of Stellar's Rune Guards. I don't care how fast or strong a Wraith you've ever been."

"Choral, for the love of Gultophine, I just can't leave you here!" he snarled.

"Shhhh..." She reached up and cupped his cheek in one hoof while clutching the glowing canister in the other. "Yes you can, my love."

Myrk's black eyes quivered. His lips hung open in disbelief. "Choral, you can't—"

"Do you remember when we first met?" she murmured.

The world thundered outside. The air grew with violent static as the guards began charging their manarifles one by one. Myrk hissed from the growing glow of light and managed a wavering response, "Yes. H-Heaventide..."

"You looked so cute, so adorable, and yet so lost." She smiled tearfully. "The first time you let me play with your ears, I knew that I wanted to be with this precious colt forever. I've always, always wanted to protect you, Myrk. But you never let me..."

He took a deep breath and stroked her forelimb. "I-I never had a chance to..."

She leaned up and nuzzled him dearly. "Well, now you do..." Leaning back, her tear-stained face grew solemn. "Myrk, listen to me carefully. You want to send the holy sisters a beacon? Then this is what we'll do..."

The Ashes of Consus

Myrk was lying painfully in the middle of the rusted platform. With trembling hooves, he slowly and deliberately slid the canister back into his saddlebag. He forced the canvas container shut and—wincing from his burns—rose slowly to all fours to face his opponents at the bottom of the Imperial Battery shaft.

Stellar's violet eyes became hard as daggers. "Don't pretend those freakish ears of yours don't work, former Captain!" He sneered and spat, the mana spheres of his armor flickering with emphasis. "Give me the beacon or I'll introduce you to the smell of your own, roasted flesh!"

"I would rather die than let you have the last sliver of Luna's good spirit," Myrk hissed.

"You are already dead, Myrk!" Stellar barked. "You have betrayed the Empress and all that her Lunar Kingdom stands for!"

"The Princess betrayed herself the moment she became an Empress!" Myrk howled back, just as fitfully. The guards behind Stellar trained their blades on the sarosian as he glared and shouted, "The moment Nightmare Moon took over Luna, her respect for all universal Harmony died! And so has the holy oath that my forbears and I had sworn to her since the Fall of Discord!"

"We dwell within the remains of our Holy Father Consus!" Stellar furiously retorted. "We are surrounded by the very same ashes that Luna has been charged with preserving for millenia! So long as you live in her domain, you are charged with abiding by the absolute law of her Empire! This has worked for our civilization over a thousand years! Who are you to challenge that?!" Stellar pointed an angry hoof at Myrk's saddlebag. "And what could you possibly gain from the implementation of such a heretical device?!"

"The four holy alicorns must know what has happened to their sister!" Myrk exclaimed. "They must bear witness to her anguished spirit and come back from the deep cosmos to usher her back to the land of the sun!"

"In five decades' time, Luna will have amassed the power to return to Equestria and exact harmony herself!" Stellar retorted.

Myrk shouted, "In less than a single decade, she can be transported home for Celestia to exorcise with the Elements of Harmony!" He glanced in desperation at the other soldiers' faces. After a breathless gulp, he stammered, "It is almost the eve of the thousandth year since our Princess' banishment! She must return home, as prophesied! How are we helping her by turning at each other's throats? What benefits us to enslave thousands and exile sarosians to the furthest depths of the moon?! Do we not wish the same glory for our beloved Luna?! Are we not all brothers in the worship of her divine brilliance?"

Stellar took a step forward, his gaze hard and vicious. "You are no more my brother than a piece of discordant excrement. If I'm still alive by the time Nightmare Moon returns to Equestria, I'll personally make sure that the putrid ashes of all your kind are thrown back through the Gates of Tartarus where you belong."

Myrk took a fuming breath. His sonar detected the galloping bodies of the two dozen unicorns descending upon their platform from above. "So be it." He began flexing his wings. "But if you forsake harmony, you invite chaos upon yourselves."

"You should speak of chaos," Stellar grunted. Then, with a smirk, he tossed over his shoulder, "Lieutenant!"

Razsaleen immediately tossed a vial full of dust in Myrk's direction.

Myrk's black eyes twitched at the sight. He made to fly away, but it was too late. The lunar ashes draped over his body. Then—with a transmogrification spell—the Lieutenant solidified the powder into dense crystal that bound Myrk's wings tightly to his spine and sides. The sarosian winced and struggled, flailing helplessly in the middle of the platform.

The other two guards stood at the ready. Stellar shuffled past them.

"Careful," he warned. "Even flightless, he's still as agile as ever." Stellar trotted several intimidating steps forward. "Let me finish this." As he spoke, a low hum filled the air, echoing off the metal grates of the platform below. His horn sparked brightly, and blue bolts of magical electricity shot into his two mana spheres. The two glowing orbs lifted out of his armor, and several spiked runes laid into Stellar's breastplate hovered up in a cloud of blades. They rotated like the floating spikes of twin maces around the pair of ominous, levitating globes.

Myrk was beginning to sweat heavily now. The crystal rope grew tighter, and he hacked forth a painful exhale. Glancing across the platform, he saw Razsaleen standing dead-still, concentrating hard to maintain the tight, telekinetic spell.

"Got a steady grip, Lieutenant?" Stellar asked as the death spheres rotated around him.

"Y-yes, sir," Razsaleen managed to say through an evident migraine. "Now's a good time to finish him off."

"See that you suffocate him while I do." Stellar held his breath, pivoted on two hooves, and flung his horn forward. There was a bright strobe, and soon both spheres came screaming in Myrk's direction, the tiny runes twirling in orbit about them like whistling daggers.

Myrk ducked low. One sphere of knives sliced above him and he rolled to the side just in time to avoid the second orb, which carved a deep gash out of the sheer metal platform with a spray of sparks. He hopped up to his hooves, looked behind him, and barely had time to leap to the side as one of the spheres returned. A sharp rune sliced at a length of Myrk's cloak, exposing more of his skin to the burning light. Myrk hissed and limped towards the mana batteries, trying to catch a breath, but the crystal rope coiled even tighter around him.

Across the way, Razsaleen gnashed his teeth, struggling to tighten the bindings' hold. Stellar's leering face blocked Myrk's sight of the Lieutenant as the Captain gave the spheres another telekinetic toss. "Raaaugh!"

Both razor-sharp weapons hummed Myrk's way, converging on him. He ducked one sweep, dodged a second, and tried deflecting a third throw with the blades of his right horseshoe. Only two runes bounced off, while three more sliced through to his forelimb. With a spray of blood, Myrk stumbled in reverse and had to fall straight back as another diving sphere skimmed the surface of his chest. He landed on the platform with a full stretch of his belly exposed to the glow of the mana batteries. Under a cloud of smoldering flesh, he rolled over and curled into a groaning fetal position. Tearing, his black eyes again caught sight of Razsaleen, but then he heard the hums of the spheres sailing towards him once more.

"Squirmy bastard child of Nebula—stay still!" Stellar hissed. His violet eyes reflected the spheres as they sped towards Myrk faster than ever.

Myrk knew he had two breaths—three at most—before his lungs couldn't summon the strength to stretch anymore. With nimble limbs, he kicked off the ground and shot straight up. The two spheres collided beneath him with a rattling splash of their orbiting runes.

Stellar and the other two guards looked up.

Myrk gripped onto a metal railing with his fangs, swung on it, and propelled his body towards the hapless form of Razsaleen.

Stellar gnashed his teeth and flexed his telekinetic muscle.

The spheres flew up at Myrk and collided just in front of him. The concussive blast of the glowing orbs knocked Myrk back.

The sarosian slammed hard on his haunches and rolled backwards until he landed against the edge of the mana crystal batteries. His vision was blacking out, and he felt his ribs bending painfully inwards from the pressure of Razsaleen's binds. Mryk knew that he had one breath left to give. In the midst of this nightmarish haze, he made out the murderous shadow of one of the two spheres screaming straight towards his skull.

Myrk's black eyes pulsed. His throat tightened. Bravely, he flung all four hooves forward and towards the orbiting daggers of the incoming ball. With the final breath left to give, he pitched his head forward and let loose an enormous banshee shriek. The remaining oxygen cleared his crushed lungs, but he managed to shove all of the lacerating runes out of their telekinetic orbit of the sphere. Able to grasp the globe safely, he coiled his muscles and bucked the thing back at full force.

The naked sphere sailed across the platform and collided with its glowing twin. The second orb was knocked violently towards Captain Stellar on a blind course. Gasping, Stellar dodged to the side, but immediately wished he hadn't. He turned and watched in horror to see where the runaway ball was sailing.

Razsaleen's body jerked. He vomited forth a fountain of crimson as his lower half was eviscerated. As he fell into his own juices, his eyes rolled back in their sockets and his horn violently blinked out.

The crystal rope around Myrk's body transformed back to ash. He instantly flung his wings out, inhaling sharply as strength returned to his form. Glaring, he stood up and grind his hooves.

Shocked, Stellar turned, frowned, and flung both spheres at him yet again.

Taking wing, Myrk easily flew over the projectiles, swooped down, and aimed two bladed horseshoes at Stellar's skull.

Stellar's horn grew brighter as he unsheathed his scimitar and deflected Myrk's attack. He shoved the sarosian away as the spheres soared back in a return formation. Myrk ducked under the orbs, slashed at Stellar, deflected his scimitar, headbutted him, dodged the orbs again with a jump, forward-flipped, and slashed straight down. The sarosian's horseshoes scraped across Stellar's helmet, knocking the Captain down onto his flank. Right at that time, the two guards rushed Myrk's sides and grabbed him. With a furious scream, Myrk simply stretched his wings out, knocking the guards away. He took to the air just as the balls returned.

Stellar looked up, gasped, and flashed his horn in time to stop the bladed mana spheres just centimeters from his muzzle. Panting, he looked straight up to see his target making a break for the nearest ventilation corridor, and the lunar surface beyond. With a growl, the Captain ran towards the edge of the platform, trailed by the two glowing spheres.

"Clear the platform!" Stellar howled, galloping over Razsaleen's corpse.

"But sir! At this rate—"

"Clear the platform and then follow me!" The Captain shouted, perching on the platform's railing. His two spheres glowed hotter than a blue sun, vibrating with mana overload.

The guards saw it, gasped, and scurried down the nearest set of stairs.

"Nnngh!" Stellar leapt clear off the edge of the platform. With impeccable timing, he sent a huge discharge of unicorn energy into the twin spheres. They exploded in a bright nova behind him, and the shock wave of mana surged into his airborne body, giving him an unnatural boost. While accelerating, a furious and bruised Stellar emptied his last vial of dust, conjured a managlider, and roared up the tiny corridor to get within biting distance of the wounded target.

A Light in Marefall

Choral slid the canister into a saddlebag, hoisted the pouch shut, and tied it to Myrk's abdomen. "Try not to p-perform too m-many stunts," she stammered, her brow sweating profusely as she hissed in pain. The echoes of her trembling voice were drowned out by the countdown of Captain Stellar immediately outside the temple doors. "There's n-no telling how easily this container can shatter."

"I'll be as careful as I can afford to." Myrk helped her tighten the saddlebag. He reached behind the temple altar and pulled free a dusty brown cloak that he next fastened around his neck to cover his photosensitive coat. "If I'm lucky, I'll have the entire Imperial Rune Guard following me."

"Heh..." Choral managed a quivering smile. She gulped and looked at him. "Lucky?"

"Because then I'll know that they won't be stalking you—" He turned and gasped. "Choral!"

She teetered over, forcing Myrk to reach in and catch her. She shook her aching head and looked dizzily up at him. "Heh... I'll always be falling for you. Luna help me..."

Myrk gulped and gave the thinnest of smirks. "I think she'll be too busy learning how to be thankful."

"Heh..." Choral tickled his chin, smiling tiredly. "It's worth it."

"Worth what?"

"Seeing you smile again..." She said, a tear trickling down her pale cheeks. "Myrk, why did we split apart for so long?"

He bit his lip and leaned in, nuzzling her. For the briefest moment, the bat and owl pendants of their necklaces danced together. "We went our separate ways, Choral. You had your career and I had mine. We had things on this moon that we wanted to achieve."

"And here we are giving them all up..." she chuckled painfully. "Life's awfully long to figure out what love means."

Myrk's black eyes wandered as he shuddered, inhaling the scent of her mane one last time. "I'd settle for a short life if it meant fixing all my mistakes."

Stellar's countdown was growing louder, reaching the final number.

Choral stood up straight, her face forming a chiseled frown. "Now you must go, Myrk.” She gently pushed him away and stood on trembling legs. “Go and fix Luna's mistakes."

Nervously, Myrk galloped over to a loose panel in the wall. He opened the escape hatch, but paused. With a twist of his brown cape, he turned to gaze at her. "Choral, if... if it all doesn't work out—"

"Myrk, it will work out!" she exclaimed hoarsely. Stellar shouted with finality. The courtyard of Tranquility pulsed brightly outside. "Go!" she hissed, waving a firm hoof. "Now!"

Brightness flooded the temple as the doors blew open from a red-hot volley of manabullets. Choral shrieked and dodged the flying splinters all around her. As the hot strobe died down slightly, she glanced breathlessly at the far wall. The panel was shut. Myrk was gone. Gulping, she spun around and immediately froze in place.

Captain Stellar and Major Shine were marching into the ruptured entrance of the temple. Their guards lingered loosely behind, eyeing all dusty corners of the barren interior before spreading out to conduct a thorough search. Stellar icily marched past Choral, giving her a dispassionate gaze. He proceeded to press his hoof along the walls of the place before stumbling upon a ring of candles surrounding a conspicuous alicorn statue.

"A Temple to Nebula," Stellar remarked. "Goddess of the Elements."

"Hmmmm..." Major Shine's nostrils flared as he stood in the center of the ancient place. "I thought something smelled like mildew." He turned and narrowed his delicate vision on Choral. "Why, hello there."

Choral stood stock-still, doing her best to resist trembling as Shine paced slowly around her.

"My my... you're looking rather pale for a laypony of these parts," he murmured. He paused to wave his hoof a centimeter above the noticeable curvature of her horn. "Interesting horn you have there, citizen. Is this your first time visiting this place of worship?"

"Please..." she gulped, sweat visibly running down her face in crystal beads. "I-I didn't know that there was an Imperial search happening here. I was paying respects to Nebula when you arrived outside. I... I was scared..."

"And that is the reason why you refused to come out?" Shine remarked with a raised eyebrow. "In spite of my illustrious Captain's repeated shouts?"

"Please..." Choral stammered, speaking in full honesty. "I was sc-scared. I'm not used to searches like these. I hate conflict..."

"Hmmm..." Shine looked steadily at her slitted blue eyes. "Frankly, dear, I don't think you're quite used to anything at all."

Captain Stellar chuckled. Several guards marched up to him from the far corners of the temple. "We've searched high and low, sir. There's no sign of the former Wraith. There're no other ponies inside the Temple whatsoever."

"Not the first time a dimwitted sarosian got lost in the dark," Stellar remarked and turned towards the other officer. "I know Myrk; he'd be a fool to try hiding here. I suggest we search elsewhere, Major, while we still have the advantage of time on our hooves."

"I'm inclined to agree," Shine said with a nod. "You may go, darling. Try to conduct your worship at home like a good, modern citizen."

"Th-Thank you, sir." Choral nodded, wincing slightly from a wave of pain through her skull. She trotted swiftly for the doors. "Bless you..."

Shine turned and looked out his peripheral vision. Suddenly, his horn flickered. "Wait just one second—"

Choral jerked in place, gasping. She looked back to see that he had anchored her in place by a telekinetic grip to her cloak. He lifted the silken object slightly, exposing the starry nova on her flank.

"My, what an interesting cutie mark you have there," he complimented.

"Uhm... Why thank you," she stammered, gulped, and tried to leave again. "I-I really must be going—"

"Because it happens to match the descriptions belonging to the daughter of the head of the Ponymonium Energy Commission," Shine said with a smirk. "The very same mare who was reported missing... at the exact same time that a certain canister disappeared from Imperial possession."

Choral merely trembled in place.

Stellar looked at Shine, at Choral, then back at the Major again.

Shine's smile was locked on Choral's sweating face. After a breath, he turned towards Stellar. "Captain, if you would, form a line at the front of the Temple. Block all traffic coming and going."

"Right." Stellar motioned to his guards and led them out towards the rest of the battalion at the hovercraft in the Tranquility courtyard.

Choral watched them fitfully. She felt herself being ushered by a gentle hoof to the furthest end of the Temple. Stumbling forward, she winced past a raging headache and exclaimed, "You must have me mistaken for another m-mare! I-I've never been to Ponymonium! I swear, I was only here to commune with the goddesses!"

"Is that so, darling?" Shine led her into the altar room. "Then you wouldn't mind performing a bow!" Snarling, he shoved her viciously forward.

"Aaaugh!" Choral fell into the candlestands. Porcelain statues of alicorns shattered to the floor beneath a dance of blue flames. She winced and tried to get up, only to have a spotlight of intense manalight trained on her forehead. She whimpered and curled up. However, concentrated as the light was, not a single puff of smoke emanated from her pale coat.

"Hmmm... So I was right," Shine said with an amused smile as he leered over her. "You are indeed half-sarosian." He paced around her, training the light into a finer point against her twitching flesh. "Funny how after all these centuries, bastards still trot among us."

"Please..." Choral whimpered, looking up through a pale sheen of pain as her blue eyes squinted. "D-don't do this—"

"Do what, child?" He silenced her with a beam of light flashing into her irises. "No interrogation has even begun. Only a guilty soul would be pleading for anything at this point. Tell me..." He leaned down and hissed into her twitching ears. "What piece of himself did he give you to lay your life down for him? Hmmm? Was it enough for your family to die?"

A frown broke through Choral's innocent façade. "If you... l-lay a single hoof on my father..."

"Ohhhh, so we're not a bastard after all!" He pressed his hoof down on her shoulder, forcing a pained squeak from her lungs. "Well, that's even more interesting! A filly's love for her father versus the love for an abominable vagabond. I don't think either was worth violating the sanctity of Imperial prestige, do you? Has Nightmare Moon not provided for your every want? Must you spit in her face so? Tell me, when did you give the canister to Myrk? And just where did you send him?"

"Nnngh..." She strained and clutched two hooves to her skull. "M-my head..."

"Oh, does it hurt?" He trained the light harder, shining it directly in her ear where he finally found flesh sensitive enough to sizzle. "That's a terrible crutch your discordant blood has, you realize. Pain, I mean. Why, the two souls I spent all of yesterday interrogating..." Major Shine inhaled pleasantly, as if he could still smell their charred flesh. "They made the most interesting of noises when the skin was melted off of them. I had to wear a headguard so as not to go deaf during the... interview process. It's a shame that there're so few of your kind left, really. I'd like to learn more about the beast of chaos that lurks deep within you, pretending to be sentient, pretending that it has the same rights as all other lunar citizens."

"I... d-don't h-have anything to tell you..."

"Oh, you will." Shine grinned wickedly, hissing into her face as he burned the light deeper into her soft flesh. "Open your mouth, darling. I want to hear it, hmm? I want to hear your most delicious, exotic screams..."

A large, leathery shadow crossed over the room.

Shine leaned back, blinking. A pair of fangs clamped over his right ear and twisted. Cartilage snapped loose from bone as Myrk furiously flung the body of the frail unicorn over his shoulders and through a crashing bench of prayer scrolls. Leaning down, Myrk mounted the Major and pulled his jaws all the way back. A quarter layer of flesh was peeled off the part of Lucid Shine's skull where his ear had been.

The unicorn curled up, howling tortuously into a pool of his own blood.

Myrk lifted his head up and spat the flesh and cluster of red mane out. Sneering juicily down at officer, he growled, "Do you hear the screams yet? They sound rather pathetic to me."

Choral looked up, sweating profusely. "Myrk!"

Myrk flashed a fuming glance at her. He resembled a leathery beast in the blue candlelight. From the far side of the temple, a shout caused him to spin about with a billowing of his cloak.

"Major Shine!" Stellar's voice yelled. "What's the matter? We heard yelling!"

Panting, Myrk gulped and looked at Choral. "Run away. As far as you can!"

"No, you run, Myrk!" she rushed over and pressed her shivering hooves against his chest. "Thank you, but we both know what needs to be done! Please... Please go before it's too late!"

Myrk seethed. With a muffled growl, he lowered his jaws and clamped them over Shine's grasping throat.

Choral watched in mixed horror, covering a hoof over her mouth as Myrk lifted the spasming body up in the air. On leathery wings, the former Wraith bolted out of the room, blurred down the length of the temple, and hurdled himself towards the bright, gaping entrance of the cathedral just as a wide-eyed Stellar skidded to a stop.

"You!"

"Captain..." Myrk grunted, dropping Major Shine's corpse like a bomb.

Stellar barely leapt out of way as Shine's body sailed past him and slammed three armored soldiers to the ground. Myrk soared low over the remaining Rune Guards and made for the furthest corridors of Tranquility. The many sarosians spun, gazing at him and murmuring in shock. Standing back up, Stellar could make out the canvas saddlebag beneath Myrk's waving cloak.

"Damnable bat pony," he grunted. "He had it all along!"

The standing guards didn't need an order from Stellar to aim their manarifles at Myrk's cloaked figure. However, just as they prepared their shots, several sarosians galloped forth from the crowd and plowed them to the floor. The soldiers grunted in surprise as they fell back, firing blindly into the earthen ceiling of the tunnels. A fierce riot exploded through the subterranean basement of Marefall, with sarosians and unicorns exchanging fierce blows and blood-curdling shouts across the shadowed alcoves.

Stellar was sneering. He motioned towards two guards and galloped straight for the hovercraft. The vehicle was already powering up, burning a glowing blue path towards the furthest exit of the chamber and knocking aside any leather body daring to block the way.

"Take us up to the Mid-Level Junctions!" Stellar shouted. "We must converge with Lieutenant Razsaleen's company and block his ascent to the lunar surface at all cost!"

As chaos and violence erupted outside, Choral limped towards the shattered entrance of the cathedral, nursing a terribly aching head. She panted through streaming tears, staring at where she last saw Myrk fly away.

Just then, Noktyrn and three other sarosians rushed over to her. "Lass! We have to get out of here!"

"Myrk..." She stammered, her lips quivering. "They're all after him..."

"Yes, but nopony's after ye! Follow us! We know a way out of here!"

As Noktyrn and the others tugged her away, Choral fought to shout over the raging riot, tossing her voice through the tunnels beyond. "You fly like you mean it, Myrk!" She panted, she shrieked. "Do you hear me?! You make like the lunar winds!"

Surfacing

Even now, drained of blood and oxygen, burned in a dozen places, Myrk could hear the sweet chime of her desperate voice. There was a rattling noise echoing across the thinning walls of the ventilation corridor. As he soared up the vertical tunnel, he paused his hyperventilating just long enough to feel the ringing owl pendant that was dangling around his neck. He sucked a painful breath inward, praying for the lunar surface to appear at any time.

Suddenly, the shaft exploded with bursts of hot lunar powder around him.

Myrk gasped, flexed his wings, and regained his steady flight upwards. There were more bursts of burning mana all around him. Several bright plumes of energy surged past his body. Grimacing, he glanced straight down.

A furious, disheveled Stellar was hot on his tail. He charged a bolt of blue light into his managlider and morphed the wings tighter to accommodate the shrinking corridor. The Rune Guard Captain gained speed, hurdling up after Myrk's battered body and firing volley after volley of burning death. "H'rhnum! H'rhnum!"

Myrk swiveled and twisted from side to side. The sheer proximity of the glowing projectiles was burning at his sensitive, sarosian coat. He wheezed, short of breath as he forced his numb wings to flap harder and harder. A tiny circle of light marked the end of the vertical shaft and the grated exit to the lunar surface beyond. The canister rattled around in his threadbare saddlebag. He grimaced and whimpered in pain as he felt the dreadful hum of the managlider gliding closer.

Stellar was gaining speed, but it still wasn't enough. He looked down behind him and saw the two distant specks of his backup guards. Cursing under his breath, he flexed his limbs and unlatched all four hooves from the crystalline controls of the glider. He stood straight up on the vertically ascending craft, unsheathing his scimitar. After several meditative breaths, he summoned a deep-throated growl. The horn flickered brightly through his helmet as tears trickled from the excruciating concentration needed for the following act.

"Rrrggghhh—" Stellar gnashed his teeth. Pulling a page out of the Phantoms' book, the unicorn disappeared in a flash of blue light.

A blue bolt shot straight up past Myrk. The sarosian's black eyes twitched, and he had very little time to react.

The ball of lightning materialized; Stellar came flying down with a full swing of his glowing scimitar. "—Aaaaaaugh!"

Myrk flung all four hooves ahead and caught the sharp blade between his metal shoes. The weight of Stellar halted him in midair and shoved him straight down the shaft.

And that's when Stellar's managlider caught up with them.

"Ooof!" Myrk slammed into the speeding vehicle hard. He rolled aside and dangled off the crystalline left wing of the craft.

Stellar perched above him, swinging and slashing furiously with his blade. Sparks danced off the ascending craft as the Captain's strikes inched closer and closer to Myrk's limbs, grazing him once.

Myrk hissed into his own spray of blood. As Stellar prepared a final blow, he planted his hooves against the middle of the craft and kicked off. He flipped up, dodged the blow, and landed with his rear hooves scraping the blurring wall. As Stellar prepared to swing his sword again, Myrk bucked his limbs against the shaft and speared his body into Stellar’s chest. The ponies' bodies sprawled over the nose of the glider, upsetting its ascent with their weight. The vehicle bent into a suicidal spiral as it drilled its way up the final length of the shaft. Stellar hissed and growled, kicking Myrk off him and slashing blindly at the sarosian’s body. Myrk dodged, somersaulted, and landed clumsily next to the Captain. Before Stellar could bash his sword’s hilt into Myrk’s face, the former Wraith clutched Stellar tightly from behind. On a whim, he wrenched the unicorn’s manarifle loose from his shoulderplate and aimed it at the the blurring wall.

"H'rhnum!" Myrk's lips produced.

Stellar's runes fired a manabullet point blank into the surface of the corridor, splashing a hot burst of lunar powder into his face. "Gaaah!" Stellar rolled off the nose of the craft. Before he could fall, he managed a loose grip onto the wing of his careening managlider and dangled wildly.

In the meantime, Myrk kicked off the craft, making a desperate leap forward. The grated exit to the shaft was just within screaming distance. The sarosian stretched his forelimbs out, hurdling himself fitfully for the exit, his goal, his salvation as well as Luna's.

Hanging from the glider, Stellar looked up, cleared the dust from his violet eyes, and frowned. With a concentrated burst of telekinesis, he chucked the scimitar straight forward and launched it after Myrk.

The glowing blade shot up the shaft... and sank its way deep into Myrk's flank.

The sarosian howled in pain, his voice reverberating off the last length of the tunnel. When his body struck the grate, it had become a living cannonball.

With meaty thunder, Myrk smashed through the door and into the blackness of space. He flew into a dramatic arc, his body leaking a crimson band of juices from the blade embedded behind him. It took three full breaths of agony, but his body finally came down, smashing hard and grinding to a cratered halt in the white, sunlit plains of the lunar surface. High above, the bright shape of the earth could be seen, with the blue oceans and the emerald continent of Equestria gazing apathetically at the lone sarosian's plight.

"Nnnngh... Mmmff..." Myrk heaved, twitching as he struggled to pull himself up. He looked skyward, his black eyes brimming with tears. Instantly, smoke rose from his skin. With a stifled shriek, he reached up and flung the hood over his brow. To his indescribable misfortune, he had arrived upon the moon's surface at the tail end of a lunar day. Sneaking a peak beyond the edge of his hood, he spotted a solid black line. A brief breath of hope escaped Myrk's lips; it was almost nightfall. However, the horizon of darkness was a torturous three hundred meters in front of him.

Myrk couldn't afford to wait for the sunset's release. As waves of pain cycled through him from the sword stuck in his side, he flung one hoof forward and then a second, pulling himself over the scorching powder in a desperate attempt to make it to the dark side of the moon.

He was not alone. With a burst of telekinetic energy, Captain Stellar's manacraft flew out of the shaft. He backflipped, dissolved the vehicle, and landed softly on the powdery sands. With icy menace, he trotted easily after Myrk's worming body. The two backup guards soon also emerged, and they joined their leader's side—breathless—with floating blades drawn.

Through the pain, Myrk could sense their approaching bodies. He didn't dare gallop—not even fly—for fear of losing all blood or being burnt to a crisp. He continued clamoring his way through the powder, inching slowly up the edge of a petrified crater. His breaths were shallow and tight, his gnashing teeth crunching flecks of dust into his dry mouth.

Stellar stood directly above the helpless sarosian. With a calm breath, he flickered a burst of energy through his horn and savagely ripped the scimitar out from Myrk's hide.

"Aaaaugh!" Myrk shrieked, a fountain of blood pouring out of his exposed wound. He lingered briefly in the lunar dust, soiling it with his juices. The pain was made all the more agonizing from the edges of his coat and limbs exposed beyond the flimsy, tattered veil of his cloak.

Stellar saw it. With a growl, he swung the scimitar and slashed the length of the cloak off Myrk's body. His weapon kicked the fabric loose, exposing the sarosian completely to the sunlight.

Myrk had never felt so much pain in all his years of guarding Princess Luna. His body sizzled from head to tail beneath the solar glare. Steam rose from his flesh as his stone-gray coat turned brown, filling the air with the musky scent of torture.

The other guards watched solemnly as Stellar marched over and kicked the burning sarosian in the side. "Nnngh!"

"Haaaugh!" Myrk howled in torture.

"Pathetic filth..." Captain Pierce Stellar spat on him and kicked his roasted flesh several more times. He leered above him, telekinetically gripping the scimitar. "I wasted a dozen of my stallions' lives chasing you down, and now you wail like an unweaned infant! Get up!"

Myrk rolled over the edge and down the white-hot embankment of the crater, curling into his own blood and whimpering.

"I said..." Stellar slid over and kicked him across the skull this time. "Get. Up!"

Myrk hissed and spat up blood, nearly vomiting to the scent of his own fumes filling the black spaces above.

Stellar snarled. He stood directly above Myrk and straddled him, purposefully controlling the degree to which his own shadows caressed the spasming sarosians' form. Leering, he pointed the edge of his blade into Myrk's chin and hissed, "I hate your kind. I always have. You sarosians and your mutant eyes and your self-righteous resolve and your wicked teeth and your stupid, ugly ears!" He slammed the hilt of the scimitar across Myrk's cheek and shouted, "Is this your holy prophecy?! Did your forbears promise you pain and anguish?! Look into my face, smell your own ashes, and tell me: Who is your Empress?!"

Myrk coughed and sputtered.

Stellar smacked him again. "Who is she?! Who is your Empress?!" He raised the hilt again.

Myrk squeaked and looked up through blood-soaked eyes. "I... snkkt... s-serve the Princess..."

Stellar stared silently down at him, the edge of his fury dissolving slightly.

Myrk gnashed his fanged teeth and bore the closest resemblance to a frown. "The phantom D-Daughter of... our b-beloved Father... is whom I serve, and not the sh-shadow..." He clenched his eyes and hissed forth, "The Nightmare must accept paradise... must accept harmony." He gulped and sputtered, "Only the Princess' solemn gr-grace and mercy has made purpose... out of m-my horror..."

Stellar seethed. After several heavy breaths, he stood up off of Myrk, reintroducing the sarosian to the burning sunlight.

"Gnnnghhh..." Myrk clasped his forelimbs over his face and curled into the dust.

"Listen to me, Myrk," Stellar grumbled. "You are a horror, an abomination." He knelt down and tore open the exiled wraith's saddlebag. "You were born of Discord to be a weapon, and today you just proved that." He reached in and felt for the canister. "And when Nightmare Moon returns to earth, and brings the weight of a thousand long years upon the aimless, sunlit fields of Equestria..." He yanked the container out and stood victoriously with it. "All your kind shall remain here on the moon, alone, buried deep within the forsaken ashes of Consus."

There were two gasping voices from behind Stellar.

The Captain turned around with a glare.

Wide-eyed, the guards were pointing silently at what was in his grasp.

He looked at the canister, and his own jaw dropped. "What in Entropa's name...?" The metal device was intact, but there was no glow to it. The bright blue energy had been completely drained. He held in his hooves what amounted to an empty jar of inert metal. "The.. The alicorn mana! Where... Where did...?!"

A weak chuckle filled the space above the crater, growing louder and more haunting.

Breathless, Captain Stellar gazed down at his burnt nemesis.

Myrk was hugging himself, laughing and coughing alternatively into the fumes of his charred flesh. "The... The sp-spirit of Luna...?!" He grinned bloodily, his eyes twitching as he struggled to glare up at the sight of the haggard Rune Guard. "Do you not h-have it?" He spat and wheezed before droning forth, "You never did, Stellar. Not you, not the Rune Guards, not even the Wraiths. Nopony who has ever worshiped the Empress Nightmare Moon can c-come close to being blessed with Luna's spirit, with her energy, her holy gift to c-cast off the fetters of the Deceiver and serve the goddesses like we were b-born to..."

Stellar's lip quivered. He stared at Myrk, at the empty canister, then at Myrk again. "You... But all this time...?"

"I'm the exiled Captain of the Lunar Wraiths," Myrk spat. "Do I look like a pony capable of protecting anything anymore?"

The Book of Saros

From the sunlit side of the moon, the three Rune Guards could see the pale-blue column of light surging off into space. Stellar gaped in horror as the two guards mumbled fitfully behind him. They all watched, helpless to stop the beacon. As it pierced the furthest reaches of space, the Captain thought he could spot four distant stars—brighter than the rest of the constellations—flashing in response, pulsating, and darting out of their cosmic formation. In a blink, they dissolved from his view of the celestial sky, and he could no longer focus on anything. He could only feel a deep panic, like an icy chill, creeping over every square centimeter of his battered figure.

"Impossible..." Stellar whimpered. "We... We had it... We had it!"

"'By her beauty, we art given spirit...'" Myrk's voice sounded strong all of the sudden.

Gazing down, Stellar realized why. He gasped, for in his shocked reaction to the blue beacon, he had neglected to notice the looming onset of night.

The guards rattled in their armor as the sun disappeared past the furthest mountains. Before them, within a stone's throw, the pitch black horizon of lunar evening was seeping over the craters, surging towards them like a menacing curtain.

Myrk hissed, his breaths growing longer and angrier as his skin was no longer burning. "'By her righteous fury, we art given strength...'"

Stellar stumbled backwards, his blood freezing within his veins as the sands dimmed all around him. The powder cooled like ice around his hooves. A sheen of frost formed along his battered helmet and scimitar.

"'A new night falls,'" Myrk hissed. As the inky curtain shrouded his features, the last visible thing was the menacing glint of his fangs. "'And let all who dread Her glory tremble and quake.'"

Myrk disappeared, as did the entire lunarscape. Stellar and his two guards stood on a solid plain of pitch black nothingness, surrounded by the mere echoes of their panting breaths. Their horns glowed between them, and yet they could barely see a few centimeters beyond their own muzzles.

Stellar blinked. In swift order, he stabbed into the ground with his scimitar several times. He struck nothing but pebbles and dust. Myrk was gone. Cursing under his breath, he spun around and gazed across the darkness. He was beginning to hyperventilate.

The guards alongside him were no less scared. "C-Captain?!"

"Captain Pierce, we n-need orders!"

"Everypony, stay alert!" Stellar said, but his growling resolve had long gone. He gulped and practically squeaked forth, "J-Just keep close. The Empress has entrusted us with power of timeless sorcery. Let us find our way back to the ventilation sha—"

A body blurred by them, black and leathery.

"Elektra alive!" one guard spun about, brandishing his sword and sweating profusely within the glow of his horn. "Captain—!"

"I said stay alert!"

Another shadow darted between the three.

The guards spun and slashed at each other. Sparks flew from their blades as the two stumbled apart, gasping. Suddenly—in a flurry of black powder—one was slammed onto his chest from behind and dragged out of the sphere of the other two's light.

"Captainnnnnnn!" he shrieked until his terrified voice was drowned in darkness.

"Corporal!" the other guard stammered.

Stellar was speechless. His scimitar hovered shakily in his telekinetic grasp. A flurry of wind kicked at his mane.

Beside him, the second guard's body disappeared within a cocoon of leather wings. "Gaaaaaaaaaahh—" His shrieking voice dissipated as he was lifted like a missile straight up into the stars.

Stellar spun, pale as the ashes of Consus. He was alone. His armor rattled. His breath came in timid little vapors.

Just as swiftly, the guard's scream returned, this time hurdling down like a comet. He landed directly on his neck. With a sickening snap, he tumbled dead at Stellar's hooves.

The Captain stumbled back from the body, waving his scimitar back and forth and trying not to retch. Just then, something blurred by and clamped onto his sword with metal horseshoes. The scimitar was yanked from his magical grasp like a torn leaf.

Stellar panted, whimpered, and transformed his breaths into a furious, all-encompassing yell. He protruded the manarifle from his shoulder and fired madly into the darkness, chanting over and over again until veins popped from his sweat-stained neck: "H'rhnum! H'rhnum! H'rhnum!"

He stumbled back until he tripped over the edge of a crater. He fell back onto his spine, winced, and looked straight up. For the briefest of moments, he thought he spotted two orbs—blacker than the blackest reaches of space—and then they were followed by the bright flash of ivory fangs that lunged at him through the emptiness.

If the Captain had one last breath to give, it would have been a sob.

Myrk plowed into him, fangs digging deep into the unicorn's twitching neck. A pair of onyx eyeslits narrowed on the Rune Guard. As Captain Pierce Stellar bled out, he and his nemesis shared a lasting stare, and it wasn't the sarosian who blinked.

Stellar twitched once, twice, and fell still under Myrk's jaws. With a lasting shutter, his horn grew dim, and the life left his body on the heels of pathetic anger.

True darkness fell. Myrk stood in the center of the ring made by the corpses of his enemies. He winced, hissing into the shadows as every centimeter of him screamed from burns and lacerations. He tried to take wing, but the energy simply wasn't there. He trotted a few meters forward, teetered left, teetered right, and collapsed in a groaning slump.

Dust flew up and settled around him, bathing him in the soothing frost of lunar night. Myrk lay there, on the edge of the crater, alone and paralyzed. As his panting breaths grew further and further apart, he wondered—prayed—that the beacon had accomplished its purpose, that the four stars—the holy sisters—would come to aid his patron goddess in her time of need.

With a lingering thought, Myrk tilted his face up. The last thing he saw was the blue column of light: the shimmering beacon burning its way into the blackness of space in all its strength and glory.

Beloved

Choral gnashed her teeth, her entire body acting as a prism through which to channel the leylines of Luna's spirit. Her limbs shook; her horn vibrated upon the breaking point. Finally, after five agonizingly long minutes of broadcast, the energy she had housed for so many hours in her body drained out. The horn went dim, and she fell back in a breathy groan.

Noktyrn and the other sarosians were there to catch their half-sister. They smiled and nuzzled her, cheering in their own joyous, whispery way. As Choral relaxed to catch her breaths, her allies charged swiftly back down the hill towards where the ancient doorhatch remained hidden. They hissed after Choral, urging her to come along before any Imperialists discovered them trespassing on the dark side of the moon.

Choral swiveled to follow them. Suddenly, however, she paused and turned around, facing towards the bright side of the moon as the sunlit horizon retreated from sight. Breathless, she remained focused on the distant plains of darkness. Her heart beat heavily in her chest, and a quiet instinct—like a distant echo—forced her to reach for the pendant dangling around her light-colored neck. Her hoof toyed with the bat of polished nickle. Sniffling, she smiled into the emptiness and murmured three passionate words into the ashes of Consus.

Night

Myrk's leafy ears twitched.

Stirring, he summoned the strength to open his eyes again. His nostrils flared as he saw the beacon of blue light fading. Everything was beautiful and dark, and in the midst of it he heard a ringing noise, like a lover's sigh. Raising his burnt hoof, he brandished the owl trinket dangling beneath his chin. In spite of his wounds and pain, he produced a weathered smile and whispered the same three words back into the void.

Not long after, his leather wings began twitching.

With a groan, he forced himself back up on all fours. One numb hoofstep after another, he marched a lonely path across the onyx fields of the moon, lulled by the silken kiss of night, and the dream of being in the comforting embrace of his beloved once again.

I Remember Heaventide

"Myrk?" Choral stammered, pleaded. She leaned back into him and nuzzled his chest. "Myrk, please, tell me what you are thinking about..."

Myrk stared out upon the sharp, glittering waves of Heaventide. His eyes began to water. He squeezed her tighter within his forelimbs' embrace. "The future," the young sarosian replied. "Will everything become a paradise when Nightmare Moon returns to Earth? Or will there still be an Empire?"

Choral exhaled gently, her lips moving slowly, "Nopony can build paradise. You only achieve perfection in dreams."

"What if, then, that's all the future is?" Myrk remarked. "A dream?" He gulped and sighed. "Don't we owe the goddesses more than that?"

Quietly, Choral clasped and unclasped the pendants again. She paused, then pieced them together before joining the owl-and-bat tightly between her hoof and Myrk's.

He gazed down at her, curiously.

She responded with a sweet kiss on his lips, then nuzzled his ear, toying playfully with the leafy texture. "I don't know much about the future, or about owing the holy sisters. But I do know about the present, and that I owe nothing but my love for a special somepony."

Myrk took a deep breath, giving her a bittersweet smile.

She swung around until she was hugging him, chest to chest on the silver shores of Heaventide. "Let's worry about the present for now, and just maybe we can carry it into a dreamy future, okay?"

His breathing became shallow. He clenched his black eyes shut and hid his face in her shoulder. "I-I'm scared, Choral," the young stallion murmured. "I don't know if we all have what it takes to bring Princess Luna back. And the thousandth year is j-just a decade away..."

"Shhhh..." She murmured into his ear and clung to him. "Don't worry, Myrk. I'll protect you."

They clung to each other on the edge of perpetual, subterranean twilight, with the crashing waves faithfully drowning out the sounds of their sobs—both joyful and not.

Desolation

Something glittered in the center of an ashen pile of dust. A brown hoof reached down and twisted its horseshoe, extending a metal blade. The dagger dug through the pale sediment, picking and poking at the powdery substance until the source of the reflective light was pulled to the surface.

Gently, an armored pony raised a dangling piece of jewelry up to her veiled face. Cold vapors billowed out from her mask. With nimble wing feathers, she reached forward and raised her goggles. Squinting scarlet pupils studied the shiny figures of an owl and a bat made out of pristine nickel. After a few seconds, the pony lowered her goggles. She reached back and opened a pouch along her thick leather saddlebag. Swiftly, she dropped the tiny figures into a pocket full of similar metal debris rattling within.

"Mmmmfff," she grunted into the frigid winds. "Can never have enough friggin' bullets..."

Swiveling around, the last pony trotted across a snowy field littered with craters of fallen moonrocks. She made her way across a gray wasteland, heading directly towards an anchored zeppelin that drifted in the snowy wind, and the endless gray desolation of Equestria billowing beyond.

Saros

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Special thanks to: RazgrizS57, theBrianJ, and Props

Speak to the Stars

On the dark side of the moon, far away from Myrk's tortured body, even further away from all of Stellar's armed Rune Guards, a tiny ancient hatch of moonstone slid open. Soft blue torchlight kissed the blackened valleys of the unlit lunar surface. Four shadows emerged, stealthy and unnoticed.

One of them was Noktyrn. She took a good look around, her amber eyeslits blinking as she gave the landscape several sonar bursts. Satisfied that the coast was clear, she reached down and helped a trembling, quivering figure onto the surface.

Her face tense in mental concentration, Choral limped up to Noktyrn's side. Her horn sparked repeatedly with pent-up bursts of bright blue energy.

Noktyrn gave the hybrid unicorn a few choice words of encouragement. Choral nodded, and with Noktyrn's help she trotted firmly up a steep hill until she stood on a high summit in the middle of the pitch black lunarscape. She spread her hooves apart and took several heaving breaths. Noktyrn gripped her shoulders while two other sarosians reached in and braced her legs and flank.

A magical wind twirled up around them. Tears ran down Choral's cheeks from the strain. The other ponies of the night cheered her on, and with a high-pitched shriek she aimed her horn high and released the pent-up battery of Luna's mana.

In a beam of blinding blue energy, the beacon surged straight up and sliced through the heavens. The pulse penetrated the cosmos, carrying with it the pain, the sorrow, and the truth of Princess Luna's thousand-year plight.