The Last Light of the Evening Star

Evening Star was in the castle again. This time though…something was wrong. All the surfaces…were covered in dust. The mugs of hot cocoa sat in the exact same place. But now they were cold, their contents left to coagulate.

“Hello?” She called out. Her voice echoed through the dusty halls.

“Please…somepony…” She cried out again. “Anypony?”

There was no response. Just as despair began to grip her, she spread her wings and took to the air. She began to check the rooms of the castle, one at a time. Most of the mementos were still present, but a few had been ripped away, leaving behind noticeable gaps.

Eventually, rising panic gave way to cold realization. She lay down on the cold floor and folded her wings against her back. She was alone. For all she had accomplished, all the lives she’d saved, she was still doomed to end up like this.
That’s when she heard it. The scampering of feet across the floor of the castle. She jumped to her hooves and flew after the sound, calling out.

“Is there somepony there? Please say something…” She paused when she reached an unfamiliar bedroom.
Inside she could hear sobbing. She paused for a moment, then pushed open the door...

“I did what I can for her…but she is going to need lots of rest now…” Said a soft, warm voice.

“We’ll take care of her, Princess.”

“Starlight…this is the fourth attack this week.”

“I know, Princess! But we’re doing everything we can to figure out how to stop it…”

“I know you are. But if a solution is not found soon…drastic measures will need to be taken…”

"Please, Princess...not that. Not again..."

Evening Star opened her eyes and saw Princess Celestia speaking with the Bearers of the Elements. Even from here she could feel the aura of heat which radiated from her. She smiled at the knowledge that everything would be alright and snuggled deeper into the warm blankets covering her form.

And drift back to sleep.

Evening Star was outside the castle now. A blizzard that concealed Ponyville from sight, raged around her. She tried not to think about the windigos, high up in that swirling vortex, looking for a hateful heart on which to feed. Moreover, she tried to ignore the occasional whinnying shrieks which could not be attributed to natural phenomena.

The tracks she followed were fresh and they led right out onto a small hill, not far from the front gate.

And there, on the hill, was Princess Starlight Glimmer. Only, she didn’t have her wings. She looked smaller, less confident, somewhat pained. And as Evening Star neared her, she realized that she’d been crying. The wetness in on her coat had all but frozen in the cold of the blizzard.

“I won’t do it!” Starlight finally said, turning back to Evening with a look of righteous fury.

“Really?” Evening Star asked, continuing to trot closer. “So, when you use your magic to mind control my friends…that’s all fine and dandy. But when I ask you to help me with something important-!”

“It’s not that important, Twilight!!” Starlight yelled over the howl of the wind. “Believe me…I spent my whole childhood…missing my one friend and…blaming the wrong people for what happened to our friendship, instead of trying to make a new one. I know I’ve messed up…that’s why I won’t do this! It’s too risky!”

Evening Star actually snarled, and the wind around her seemed to take on an even more chilling aspect. “I know it's risky, but it’s riskier if we do nothing and let everything that the Princesses worked for fall apart.”

Starlight looked at the snow at her hooves in despair.

Evening Star stepped closer. “Please…put your trust in me. This is the only way.”

Evening Star awoke to the sound of mumbling. She was in the Castle of Friendship again, this time in a room all to her own. Immediately, she felt a pain in her side from where the spines had been embedded not long ago. She sat up, hoping to relieve some of the ache and noticed she was not alone.

The mumbling had come from a cloaked figure by the roaring fireplace, who appeared to be stewing something in a small pot. When Evening Star gasped, the figure turned toward her and lowered her hood, revealing a white and gray rigid mane and a neck that gleamed with the light of the fire.

“Zecora…” Evening Star tried to sit up again and instead found herself sliding back into a reclined position. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

Zecora smiled, kindly and removed a wooden spoon from her bag of witch doctor implements, which she used to collect some of the bubbling brown liquid in the cast-iron pot. As she approached Evening Star, she lowered the spoon’s basin to Evening’s lips.

“In time I promise that I will explain. But first you must let me relieve your pain.” Zecora said.

Evening opened her mouth and blew on the stew to cool it. Then, glancing up at Zecora’s slightly mischievous smile, she supped from it, careful not to burn her tongue by ingesting too much too quickly. Once she’d finished off the stew, she glanced back up at Zecora, who was already turning away and heading for the fire.

“That should help you to heal your wounds. Although magic kept you from the tomb, if not for Princess Celestia’s arrival, your encounter wouldn't have ended in survival.” Zecora said, as she returned to stirring the mixture.

“But what are you doing in town?” Evening Star asked, already feeling the mixture of herbs in Zecora’s stew begin to relax her muscles and relieve some of the stabbing ache in her side.

“The residents of the Everfree have been upset. I fear they flee from an even greater threat. If this situation is not soon fixed
all of Equestria will be at risk.”

Evening Star tried to sit up again. “What do you mean, a bigger risk? What could be worse than Ursa Majors and Cactus wrens?”

“That which you speak of is merely scared by the growing evil within the snare. You who I recovered from deep inside, may hold the secret to save our hides.”

Evening Star felt herself get angry. She hadn’t seen Zecora since the zebra had dropped her off at the Ponyville hospital, having claimed that her own, herbal remedies were not strong enough to treat Evening Star properly. Evening had always suspected that Zecora knew more about her circumstances than she let on. More than Evening Star herself could recall. But the zebra spoke in riddles the same way she spoke in rhyme, endlessly teasing Evening Star with the possibility of uncovering her own forgotten past, by making her feel that if only she were a little bit cleverer Evening would be able solve the puzzle.

“Zecora, I don’t know anything about what’s happened in the Everfree Forest. I hardly remember ever being there…”

Zecora sighed. “Regardless of knowledge, you are the key. If only your newfound friends can jog your memory.”

With that, she removed the pot from the fire, and set it down on a plate by Evening Star’s bed. “Get yourself some rest, my dear. Dark tidings await you; I fear.”

Then the zebra had left, no doubt to perform more low-level potion-making on the ponies of the town and continue offering vague and cryptic hints as to what was needed. If she knew something about Evening’s time in the forest, why hadn’t she said so? What was the point in forcing her to learn the secret herself?

Or was she bluffing? Was she just as scared as everyone else, relying on her intuition to reassure herself as to the solution to the menacing circumstances?

Evening Star sipped a little more soup, before drifting back into unconsciousness.

They were in the old castle, the one which had once belonged to the Princesses. Work like this could not be done in a place of positivity. Black magic loved dark and moist places like this one, places that had been forgotten deliberately, because of what they reminded you of.

She could feel the magic pushing through her veins, buzzing through her horn. Both of her hippocampuses were focused entirely on recalling the thaumaturgical equation she’d recently memorized, necessary to complete the spell. All unnecessary brainpower, all her guilt, regret and dread blocked out by the pure amount of concentration required to complete this spell. And as her magic mingled with Starlight’s, so too did their surface thoughts, Starlight’s unease and her determination becoming one. Evening Star had not felt so confident in a long time.

This would work. She hadn’t failed. It wasn’t too late.

Then pain rushed through her as the world slowed and its colors all flickered out around the two of them. They were at the terminus of their journey, piercing the veil of reality and slipping through to that most forbidden of all realms.

Everything was going according to plan...

Evening was awoken by the sound of laughter. Pinkie Pie’s laughter, because even though the pony was trying to be quiet, she still had a laugh that could call dolphins and blind bats. Anger should have been her first instinct, after all she was resting after having been partially impaled.

However, Evening found that Zecora’s stew had completely regenerated her, and she was actually glad to have been pulled out of her increasingly ominous visions.

“Evening, you’re awake!” Trixie slid out of her seat and bounded over, still wearing the same cape and hat she’d adorned for her last show.

“How long have I been asleep?” Evening asked, as she slid out of bed, careful to avoid stepping on the pot of now freezing cold, uneaten stew.

“Twenty-seven hours, fourteen minutes and 33 seconds!” Pinkie said, bounding over to the other side of her. “Trixie came over to the castle, after Princess Celestia explained the situation to her.”

“I can’t believe you were saved by the princess!” Trixie said.

“Why is Princess Celestia here?” Evening asked, already dreading the answer.

“Oh, she’s came as soon as she heard about the Ursa Major attack, to help protect the town.” Pinkie said. “By the way, I just wanted to apologize.”

“Huh? Umm, what for?”

“For teasing you! For the longest time, I thought you were just the kind of pony who didn’t like anypony else.” Pinkie said.

Evening looked away.

“I didn’t realize how sensitive you were. Then I talked to Trixie about you and now that I know how brave and wonderful you are, I promise not to make fun of you again!” Pinkie said.

Evening blushed and shot Trixie a dirty look. “I am not…sensitive.”

“Aw, it’s okay!” Pinkie said. “I’m sensitive about things too, I just bury them deep down where nopony can ever find them!!”

Trixie wasn’t paying attention to the conversation. The moment that Celestia had been mentioned, she’d gotten a look on her face like she was enjoying a luxurious bath.

“Can you imagine it?” She asked to no one in particular. “The Great and Powerful Trixie performing for the princesses in Canterlot? Evening, you must introduce me to Princess Celestia.”

Evening glared at her. “Trixie, just because Princess Celestia saved my life doesn’t mean I can get you a job at the palace!”

“Ooh! Ooh! I probably can!” Pinkie said, jumping up and down.

“Really?!” Trixie asked.

“Of course. Starlight Glimmer was Celestia’s student…and I get invited to the palace all the time. I’ll just slip your name in there when they ask if I know any great performers.”

Trixie grinned. “Oh, that would be spectacular! Can’t you just imagine it…the Great and Powerful Trixie, Court Magician to Princess Celestia!!”

Evening cleared her throat. “Umm, Miss Pie?”

“Yepperooni?”

“Do you, by any chance…know where Princess Starlight is right now?”

“Oh, she’s downstairs, talking with the other bearers. They are trying to come with a plan for what to do about the monster attacks…so far, Rainbow Dash wants to take the fight to the monsters, Rarity wants to build a fence around Ponyville, Applejack wants us to put the Elements back in the Tree of Harmony and Fluttershy wants to try to convince one of the monsters to talk to her, so that we know why they are acting the way they are.”

“How long has all this been going on?” Evening asked.

“You mean the discussion or the monster attacks?"

“The monster attacks…I heard Princess Celestia mention that the Wren was the fourth one this week.”

“Well…” Pinkie frowned in thought for a moment. “First it was a pack of timberwolves, then a couple of bugbears...then there were a rockodiles in the sewers…then a pride manticores showed up…”

“Okay, I get the picture.” Evening said.

“The Ursa Major was the first time they actually attacked the town though…everything else we were able to scare off without needing the Elements of Harmony.” Pinkie said.

“Shouldn’t you be down there, talking with them?” Evening asked.

Pinkie shook her head. “Nope! Eventually Starlight will figure out what we need to do and then we’ll do that.”

“That’s awfully…agreeable of you.” Evening said. “I wish I could…let go of things like you do.”

“Aw, don't say that! You’re perfect the way you are!” Pinkie said.

"Yeah. Right."

“By the way, are you gonna finish your soup?”

“Oh, that? No, but you might not want to eat it.” Evening turned to see that it was already too late. The moment that the word “no” had left her mouth, Pinkie had picked up the bowl and downed all its contents. “…it’s full of medicine.”

“Delish! Tastes like goulash!” Pinkie said, her tongue swiping away at her mouth. Then she stuck her muzzle into the empty pot, trying to fish out any extra bits of vegetable left behind.

“Umm, Trixie…I need to talk to Princess Starlight, okay? I think I might know a way to help her and the others…”

Trixie frowned. “Umm, what are you talking about? You nearly died yesterday!”

“I know…but Zecora was right…I…I have something to do with this and I have to help…before anyone else in Ponyville gets hurt.” Evening said.

Trixie stared at her for a moment. Then she dipped her hat down in front of her face. “Then the Great and Powerful Trixie will accompany you! My magic will no doubt come in handy, on your noble quest!”

“I appreciate that…but-”

“No buts! Every-time Trixie lets you out of her sight, you end up almost smooshed or torn apart…plus, I need to impress Princess Celestia, if I want that job at the royal palace!”

Evening sagged. There was no point in arguing with Trixie. Not that she really wanted to. The place she was going, she’d need all the help she could get.

While Pinkie continued licking Zecora’s bowl, Trixie and Evening exited the bedroom and descended the staircase, stopping at the entrance to the meeting area. There, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Applejack and Starlight were arguing, but in the way that friends who want to work together do.

“For the last time, we are not going to flood the Everfree Forest.” Starlight said, her eyes on Rainbow Dash, who, being the naturally active type, had chosen to float over the friendship map, rather than sit down for the entirety of the meeting like everypony else.

“Why not! It would give Cloudsdale a chance to break the ‘most rain produced in one day’ record!”

“Is that a record that exists?” Rarity asked, as she used her horn to sew something.

“Well, maybe not…but it should be!”

“It’s not happening, Rainbow Dash!” Starlight said, causing her friend to sink into her chair with her forelegs crossed. "If we try to destroy the forest, the creatures that live there will be even angrier with us. We have to find the root of the problem first."

“Umm, excuse me, Princess?”

Starlight looked up and over to where Trixie and Evening Star stood. “Oh, Miss Star. YOu look like you feel a lot better.”
Evening Star nodded. “I just wanted to umm…suggest something…”

All ponies turned to look at her, waiting.

“Have you been to the Castle of the Two Princesses, recently?” She asked.

“No…to be honest we’ve been afraid to visit the Everfree more and more given the recent activity there.” Starlight said. “Is this about Zecora’s suspicions?”

“Sort of…I umm…I don’t know what might be causing the attacks…but I think there might be information about it, at the castle of the old princess.” Evening Star looked away. “And umm, I don’t know if this is true, but I heard there was a library there…”

Glimmer grinned. “And you want to see if you can find any information about our problem there?”

Evening Star nodded. “If you think it would be helpful…”

“Ah’m sure we all appreciate that, sugarcube.” Applejack said, hopping up from her seat. “But you already almost died rescuin’ mah and Rarity’s kin…we can’t ask ya to go marching into the belly of the beast on a hunch.”

“It…it’s not a hunch…” Evening Star said. “I had a dream…about the castle and about me and Princess Starlight.” She blushed. “Umm, we were doing some kind of spell…I think to protect Equestria…I don’t know if it means anything…but I think it might have something to do with my amnesia…I think I was sent from the Everfree to help you all deal with this. And besides…I can’t wait around for another monster attack to hit anyway…I-I want to be useful.”

They all looked at her with varying degrees of pride and wariness. Then Starlight spoke, pushing away her chair.

“Alright, Evening Star…I don’t have any ideas for how to deal with this crisis, so if I’m not about to turn down prophetic dreams and zebra witch doctors. If you think there are answers at the old castle…I’ll take you there myself.”

Evening smiled.

“I’m coming too!” Trixie said, lifting a hoof.

Glimmer sighed. “Alright...but you have to stick close to the rest of us…we don’t know what might be waiting.”

The reasons behind the Everfree Forest’s existence were unclear. Common knowledge dictated that it had been created by Discord’s plunderseeds, as a kind of revenge, tainting the land which Luna and Celestia had “taken” from him.

Of course, common knowledge was commonly wrong, and in this case not just because Discord vehemently denied the accusation. Any pony with the tiniest understanding of herbalism, would know that the plunderseeds, while similarly untamable as much of the flora in the Everfree Forest, had never constituted the majority of its ecological make-up.

As well, the Bearers of the Elements, who’d been forced to deal with Discord’s little timebomb when they’d first returned the Elements of Harmony to the Tree of Harmony, were of the firm belief that the plunderseeds had been just as toxic for the Everfree Forest as they were for the rest of Equestria (if a little less obviously so due to the rough and tumble nature of the area).

Some scholars of magic claimed that the forest had been created by the battle between Luna and Celestia, and that the sheer amount of ambient magic released by the two of them, had malformed the land, causing rapid mutation and elemental-fusion. This combined with Celestia’s vehement abandonment of the Castle of the Two Sisters and re-location of the Capital, allowed the area to grow unstewarded by pony-kind, resulting in its impenetrable and unpredictable state.
Less reputable sources said the forest had existed prior to the rise of Nightmare Moon and that in fact, it was left over from some far older conflict, involving the first war between Black and White Magic.

If Luna and Celestia knew the answers to this mystery, they had never seemed inclined to answer them. Celestia at one point had said that the forest should not be blamed on her sister, which was as ambiguous a statement as it was damning. But then again, she’d also said, when pressed by a historian, that it would be “cheating” to just recount all her knowledge on the subject.

The fact that the Tree of Harmony had existed there, unknown to all ponies but the princesses for over a thousand years, indicated that Celestia and Luna might have had very good reasons to discourage ponies from venturing into its expanse.
As if ponies didn’t have enough reasons to avoid it to begin with. Almost all of the wildlife was territorial and hostile toward intrusion of any kind. The uncontrollable weather which plagued the area made even flying over it treacherous, and the gnarled, centuries abandoned pathways which winded through it made getting lost a certainty for any pony without a guide to point the way.

Evening Star hadn’t liked the place before it became a festering blight on Ponyville. It reminded her of too many unknowns, most of them having to do with her past.

She stuck close to Trixie, Starlight and Fluttershy (it had been determined the rest would stay behind to watch after Ponyville in case of another attack) and tried very hard not to jump every time she heard a branch snap or a creature growl, somewhere off in the distance.

The entire journey was so ominous that she was actually surprised by the fact that they didn’t encounter anything on their way to the castle.

But of course, what they ended up finding at the castle, proved bad enough as it was.

The Castle of the Two Sisters was startlingly different to all that she’d come to expect from Princess Starlight’s castle, and completely antipodal to all she’d read of Celestia and Luna’s palace in Canterlot. Massive holes appeared in the exterior walls of the castle, causing the whole building to groan nastily whenever the wind picked up. The place wasn’t just overgrown, it was half-garden, thanks to the hardy vines and weeds of the Everfree, which had slowly pushed their way up through the massive stones that formed its base.

The only bit of civilization relatively untouched was the library. Starlight confiscated all of grimoires from there and locked them away in her castle, if only to prevent another “Inspiration Manifestation” fiasco. The remaining volumes had been protected by a minor charm, if only for posterity.

As the four arrived and began to, with varying levels of enthusiasm, inspect the dusty tomes. Evening Star had just made it through the first seventeen, when she heard it. From the nearby entryway to the stone staircase which spiraled above them, she heard sound of some creature slowly ascending the tower.

“Did…did any of you hear that?” Evening Star asked.

They all looked up from their work in surprise and more than a little bit of concern.

Evening Star blushed. “It umm…must have been my imagination…”

She turned back to her book and tried to re-focus her efforts on finding out if this history of aqueducts would be of any help.

A moment later, she heard that same scrambling noise, this time accompanied by the uncomfortable, but persistent feeling of being watched. She glanced around, even lighting up her horn and performing a simple spell to sense magic (i.e., invisibility) in the surrounding area.

When her divination failed to reveal anything, she turned to stare at the base of the spiral staircase. Sure, as she could smell the mustiness of the library, she could still feel the gaze of something staring at her.

“Trixie…I’m going to check up the stairs…would you mind coming with me?” Evening Star asked.

Trixie looked up from the book she hadn’t really been reading and nodded. “Of course…but only if you…” With a flash of blue, she was standing right beside Evening with that same cocky smile she had before any performance. “…let me go first.”

As she said it, her horn lit up and three globules of pale blue light shot out of it and swirled up into the stairway, illuminating the cracked steps.

While Evening could have done without the theatrics, she appreciated Trixie’s company in this dim, eerie castle far too much to complain about them at the moment.

She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Perhaps another vile form of plant life. Perhaps some multi-headed monstrosity from the depths of Tartarus.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t to be quantified so easily.

The room at the top of the stairs. Half of it was completely devoid of color. It was as if the noon light that passed through the window, became that of a florescent bulb. The stones which formed the floor of the chamber, no longer contained the muddy browns and grays of real rock. Each was identical in coloration to the others. And the various pieces of once plush furniture which sat in various states of decay, were just as lifeless as the light which illuminated them.

And the more she looked at the room, the more Evening began to notice all the details that weren’t there. The deeper you went toward the center of the circular chamber, the more indistinct everything became. Shadows grew darker, darker than merely the absence of light, until they looked like splotches of ink on a poorly drawn sketch. And the objects in the room, at least those closer to the center, they seemed to have less dimension to them, somehow.

Instinctively, her body began to freeze up. There was something this room and the dullness which had overtaken it, which made her brain scream to run from it and never look back. It was wholly worse than all she’d expected, if only because it wasn’t monstrous or terrifying in any explainable way, but merely wrong.

Then Trixie gingerly lifted a hoof, as if about to step into the room.

“NO! DON’T!” Evening grabbed Trixie’s leg and dragged her away from the entrance, back down the first few stairs.

That was when The Dullness moved. At first, she thought it might have been some kind of ooze, which had solidified over the scene and whose essence increased in viscosity in its center. But whatever it was did not shift toward them. It expanded outward, so that the steps they’d been standing on a moment ago, now held that same, colorless, obfuscation.

“What is it?” Trixie asked. Her wary curiosity had turned into profound terror at the sight of the thing, moving.

“We have to get out of here now.” Evening Star said, pushing Trixie down the stairs and trying very hard not to look back at The Dullness, to see if it was still moving.

Then she saw it below her, crawling up the stairs to meet her.