Arc 2 – Lies Chapter 4 – Madness

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A metal hoof trampled embers, scattered ashes on the wind, and mixed soot with sand. Tin Flower kept sliding her prosthetic back and forth, her brow furrowing as the blackness stubbornly clung to the slightly tarnished steel.

She stared at her blurry reflection.

It didn’t show a tired, dust-blighted young mare; it refused to reveal her annoyed face tinted with worry. The ominous darkness encroaching on her silhouette made her stomp again, rising a cloud of dirt.

Before the eddy settled, she had already hoisted the saddlebags onto her aching back; the gemstones in the casket softly clinked together, hidden amongst the meagre supplies. Groaning and muttering curses, the mare climbed the steep incline and scanned the horizon.

Macintosh Hills loomed behind her, casting shadows on the impressively lengthy artificial pass and its rotting railroad. Tailing Luna through the straight as a broom gorge proved almost stupidly easy; on still nights Flower could even hear the eerie howls ahead that belonged to no wind.

Now, the desert vista stretched before Flower, offering all but one direction possible, and barely any hint as to where the lunatic alicorn had gone. Barely—where the bleached ground met azure skies, one place refused the light; something there tainted the colours with an eldritch shadow.

Jostling the bags with a just as heavy sigh, Flower trod on.

The solitude and relative safety of the desolate landscape allowed Flower’s thoughts to claim her hypnotised by the monotonous journey mind. She pondered—would she finally be able to cross the desert on her own this time?

Before, her hooves only carried her to Dodge City, and after magic brought her back to Canterlot. Somehow, the deceptively empty place always managed to pose a challenge no easier than surmounting a cloud-hugged peak.

Maybe because it lay in what awaited her at the end of the road. The road that had been winding through the ever-thickening darkness. The stars of bright memories disrupted it with shared sonorous laughs and smiles; the Moon shone against the abyss betwixt those fading sparkles… but it had been inexorably waning.

“What is it like?” she once asked the sombre alicorn, back when Luna’s lucidity didn’t have to be achieved with so much struggle.

“An urge, that I know belongs to me not.”

A calling deep from inside, in truth—from far beyond, that exiled the harshly matured filly and the rapidly deteriorating elder mare from Kludgetown, forced the latter into shackles… actual chains, for certain bounds had already been dragging Luna into someplace nobody knew about.

Whatever spare money Flower could invest into that riddle, returned no profit. Anyone who’d learned a single thing outside the conventional means of magic knew of the Nightmare but never had to tell much; those who might have had a tale to tell—didn’t live to.

“The unwritten first rule of witchcraft,” a shifty greasy stallion from Somnambula cackled, his vest all but slurping the coins Flower gave him, “Is to never make a deal with the Nightmare. Never ever.”

After hearing different variations of the same thing for about a year, Flower gave up.

And at times like this, Flower couldn’t have been happier to be just an earth pony—denied the door leading to a place like that. Of course, it severely impeded her ability to comprehend the problem and, needless to say—offer any real help.

She abruptly stopped and peered at her artificial limb, meticulously searching it for anything left behind by grasping the hilt of the otherworldly blade. Not for the first time she wondered if her carefulness amounted to nothing as the threat lay not in contact with infected reality, but in reaching for Luna’s crumbling mind.

A familiar sensation washed over Flower—swelling desperation. The subtle fear that had been permeating her every breath. She was but an ant with shadows, gigantic beyond comprehension, passing over her, sensing impending calamity sharper each day. The box of crystals suddenly gained unbearable weight—a few dozen equinoids slumbering by her side, saved from the lies of the mechanical goddess… Did she do the right thing?

What guided her cold hoof when she ripped crystal hearts from iron rib cages?

Did that urge belong to her?

Sharp eyes with slit irises caught movement stirring on the edge of vision, and limbs obeyed the ancient routine. The lithe body crouched low, the hooves followed motions inherently alien to them as the muscles became taut with murderous intent, driven by hunger.

A shadow blotted the Sun and crashed onto the rocky ground, the horrified rodent scurrying away to crawl into the nearest crevice of the fading ruins.

At the last moment, the rightful owner reclaimed her reins.

Luna lay in the heart of what once used to be Appleloosa, waiting for the sunrays to banish the strings that jerked her flesh into the feral dance. Long silent moments passed but the pressure only lessened, refusing to leave; stifling a groan, she rose from the dirt.

The wind whistled mournfully through the void of the desert; the alicorn heard only the whispers of her unrelieved guard. The silhouettes emerged from her undulating mane to lisp things only she could hear, yet never understood; then they submerged back into the patch of the eternal night.

Lately, however, she had started to make out words—not in the conventional sense, but the movement of the desiccated wispy lips reflected in her mind with thoughts. Those spurs she refused to heed to, yet grew harder and harder to ignore as the Moon in the sky paled and grew gibbous.

Her stumbling gait drove Luna’s numb body forward. She teetered, struggling to remember the reason for pressing forward so urgently. Her unfocused eyes bore a hole in the frost-crept earth and Luna knew that if she were to raise them, she would see a magnificent mare of a black coat and silver-blue armour, waiting for her patiently with a silent offer. And behind her, an alabaster alicorn in gold sorrowfully observing the fight.

Though both long gone, they would be there until the end—milestones of her continuous failure; the broken creature that reeled betwixt them was all the legacy left from that forgotten era.

The shades of fallen soldiers propped her up, their empty gazes peering at their commander with no sympathy. Luna tried to push them away only to crumble like a statue that had lost against the trial of time.

The black mist dispersed and, once again, she rested, motionless, on the ice-laced sand; the tongues of cosmos’ breath licked the desert—tasted that world.

They all spoke of deals that shouldn’t be made, of doors to never be opened. None realised that the knowledge alone created the path for the Nightmare, that it needed no agreement to take its tithe. As long as one remembered, it would always be there, bringing its plans to fruition.

And Luna could never forget—neither the allure of the possibility nor the depth of the fall.

To forget the road to damnation, would be to forget all she’d met on her way there, all who’d tried to stop her and for whom she had committed to that path. She could easily imagine the immaculately white mare behind her back sadly shaking her head—that sacrifice amounted to nothing.

The Nightmare had no concept of time and once it gained ground, it could never be pushed back. It could wait forever for the crack to become a passage, but wouldn’t need to.

A maliciously triumphant cry announced the vulture’s descent. Clumsily flapping its wings, the crow dug its talons into Luna’s shoulder and not a moment later the curious pecks of the bird’s cruel beak probed her ungroomed coat, craving moisture and sustenance.

The inky tendril let the bird sing one final strangled caw—its dirge; then the living shadows squeezed life of the scrawny feathered body. In an almost mocking fashion, the smoky limb offered the alicorn the disgusting meal and Luna turned away, baring sharp fangs.

Yet a moment later she found her teeth tearing at the cold carcass. She just needed some more time.

Even though those who lived upon hope died fasting.

A foul gust slapped Flower across her muzzle, brushing her face with withered leaves.

The Everfree Forest had finally met an adversary that equalled its entropic might, though the preternatural blizzard would have to work hard for more than a decade to finally free the soil from the chaotic presence.

Still, half a week of uneasy trotting unrolled betwixt the weary mare and the dark skeletons of trees. That, and a body amidst the ruins of Appleloosa striped to almost nonexistence by raiders and the elements. It lay deathly still if not for the writhing of the black smoke that almost tenderly blanketed the alicorn, gently nudging her to rise.

Hooves, heavy with the dust of days, carried Flower closer to the stertorously heaving Luna. Stopping several steps away, she lowered herself onto a weathered boulder—all that remained of a house—and quietly spoke; though her words were meant to be bitter, her tone carried only weariness.

“What good do you think that would do? We have nowhere to run.”

For long seconds, then minutes, only the mournful moans of the not-so-distant storm answered her.

Finally, Luna croaked, “There is always a solution.”

Flower solemnly shook her head.

“Not for us.”

The alicorn tried to climb to her hooves but failed, collapsing into a cloud of dust that glimmered with ice.

“Why are you here? You don’t have to...”

“I don’t know,” Flower replied, more than just a little disturbed by her own answer. Shooting Luna a stern look, she commented, “Nor do you know where you crawl.”

Ancient shadows boiled around the mare so young compared to them, smokey tendrils tugged on her, prodded her sides. Luna attempted to sit up again, and supported by the silhouettes of armoured ponies did manage to.

When she regained her breath, a whisper left her blood-stained lips:

“The end is near, one way or another—I sense it.”

“Coward.”

Flower’s scorn reflected on Luna’s gaunt muzzle with the worn-out resentment from countless similar conversations. “Fool. You have no inkling of what I have dealt with, of what I have to deal with.”

The grimace came to Flower’s face more out of habit than from anger.

“Stop pretending to be a victim.”

“And so should you—the deed of yours was no mistake.”

Now the mare’s fiery eyes flared up with wrath and the words she spat matched that fire, “I brought a nightmare into this world. Surely, you can see that—you spoke against it yourself!”

She reeled back as the alicorn looked at her, or rather, turned her head—catlike cyan did not meet her fury, but rather impenetrable black.

The tar ebbed away, bringing back the penetrating gaze of the predator and Luna uttered, “I sneaked a peek at the abyss and now it looks through me—I see only darkness now. And you said it yourself—they were right about me in the end.”

Having said that, she received a continued glare from the frowning mare. And when Flower’s forehead could crease no deeper, she barked:

“Then why am I still talking to you?”

Their manes whipped, though only Flower’s danced to the melody of the rueful Equestrian wind. The once Princess stood, still and silent, listening to the lullaby from beyond the sky.

First hesitant, but gaining determination with each step, Flower approached the dark statue of a mare; though, she stopped two hoof lengths short, wary of the crackling frost.

“Answer me, Luna.”

The blackness that crept at the edges of alicorn’s eyes receded and for a heartbeat, Flower glimpsed round pupils; though they disappeared so quickly, it could have been just the trick of the light.

“We are running out of time, we have to do something,” Luna curtly said; her words carried hardness for the first time in a long while.

Though Flower wished to echo her resolution, her voice faltered. “I did all I could.”

“I know.” The crimson lips quivered into a tiny sad smile. “Thank you.”

Flower stared at Luna, her eyes round. She took a sharp shuddering breath that came out as a vapour.

“Do you really want to know why I am here? You brought me back to life when you could have just left me to die. And that’s why I’m still talking with you.”

The black mare didn’t answer her—the veil of opaque gloom sapped her bright eyes of colour and her expression began to shift into the terrifying serenity of oblivion.

“Luna!”

The cry straightened up the alicorn and not only did she try to shake off the spell, but the twitching of her grotesque muzzle betrayed an attempt to conjure another smile. She failed, however, and her turn came to shake her head as she spoke in a tone hollow and broken.

“That memory runs too deep and soon I’ll remember nothing else. I already can’t remember…”

“Celestia,” Flower softly said.

That single word instantly injected determination, if dark, into Luna. Swaying, she fully stood up and unfurled her wings—two tattered banners rose against all odds.

Her reply imbibed the same fatalistic resolution.

“You can’t turn back the tide of erosion, Flower. Not when its waves are blacker than the night.”

The young mare smirked. “Yet you just said my name.”

The spark of humour died in the darkness of Luna’s imposing figure.

“You are not eternal,” she grimly stated. Casting an even more sombre look over her shoulder, at the all-consuming whiteness, she added, “I have to finish this before it’s too late.”

“How do you know that is your thought?”

“I don’t. I trust you.”

And then Luna stood expectant, casting a long shadow on Flower and imbuing the already bone-chilling wind with the breath of outer space. Behind her, alabaster protuberances of the undying snowstorm lashed out at the heavens, bleeding ice around the necropolis of Canterlot, shedding snow that overpowered even Discord’s eternal mark on the landscape… that might overpower even the most persistent horrors.

If Flower were to turn away from the ruins almost swallowed by the sands, she would see in the distance ochre crags behind which ‘another last city’ tried to pretend that horror didn’t exist.

It—the Machine Goddess—lay dormant in her Citadel of metal, another nightmare lurking in the daylight; an entity with too much power to warrant any safety as long as it existed.

What would happen if it clashed with the Nightmare?

If not both, then one of them would perish and the remaining enemy of the living should be weakened enough for the mortals to finish it off.

Flower whipped her head at Luna and squinted at her, peering into the obsidian slits of confused eyes, searching the darkness that infected minds with urges that didn’t belong there.

The shadows that she kept seeing passing over Flower—could she be casting one herself? How far had the black threads spread and who danced to the whims of insidious subtle tugs?

“Return to Canterlot,” she ordered to the alicorn.

Luna seemed to be ready to protest, but clenched her jaws and then asked:

“And you?”

The time to cross the desert hadn’t come—not yet.

Author's Note

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

Stay awesome.