Mare Doloris

by TinCan

Rating: everyone
Tags: Nightmare Moon, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Sad
Length: 57640

It was the perfect moon for a hermit, except for one little problem; I wasn't alone.

Yellow sun; wet, green planet; barren, dust-ball moon. When I saw the images from the surveyors, I knew instantly that this was the place where I'd set up my hermitage.

The captain told me there were intelligent creatures on the planet, but she doubted they would venture beyond the atmosphere for centuries. That meant I'd have the moon all to myself for six standard months before her ship came back to resupply me.

Six months of peace and contemplation with only the Increate and the sound of my heartsbeat to keep me company. No distractions, no neighbors, no mad aliens with their endless demands.

Solitude. Silence. Paradise.

Or so I thought.

(Kudos to Lunae Lumen for correcting the Latin in the title)
(Added AU tag due to the IDW comics)

Published 2012-11-04 07:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2015-01-31 16:19:03 UTC

Disembarkation

I was sleeping in my cabin when the captain called me over the intercom.

"Esteemed guest, we've nearly arrived. Do you wish to see the world from afar?"

When traveling between the stars, one swiftly gets tired of looking out the window. I had left mine closed for weeks now. Other than the galactic plane, all one can see is the pinpricks of stars against the abyss. Planet-dwelling creatures like myself soon find the sight oppressive when we cannot turn to soil or cloud for relief from its starkness.

Still, I decided it was reasonable to watch the world I'd chosen approach. I unfurled myself from the perch, shook the stiffness from my coat of scales and floated from the cabin to the bridge. Several of the crew greeted me or genuflected as I arrived. The captain gruffly ordered them to attend their duties, but nodded to me in welcome.

The sight did not disappoint. The almost-familiar blue-green planet and its white moon, my moon, shone in the blackness like precious jewels on velvet. The survey expedition's images had done justice to neither.

The ship's navigator, a hominid, pointed to the moon and began babbling excitedly and recording images of it with his headset. The captain growled at him again. He fell silent, but continued recording.

I asked her what he had said.

“Please, don't let him trouble our esteemed guest," she replied.

I insisted that I was not troubled, simply curious.

She explained, embarrassed. "These apes, they make good navigators because have a genius for finding patterns. Their weakness is to see them everywhere, even in meaningless piles of dust. He says he sees the profile of an animal of his homeworld in the surface of this moon."

The navigator babbled again.

"Pardon," she added, dripping sarcasm. "It's an animal not of his homeworld, but of myth. In other words, a nothing-at-all."

I wished to explain to her that the Increate allows such signs to appear, even in ancient dust, and waits countless ages for a single creature to behold them and understand. I tightened my jaws instead. It is not meet to contradict a captain before her crew. Perhaps I also feared the remote possibility that it might encourage the hominids to make pilgrimages here. I would not give away my peace before it was even attained!

I thanked the captain for this opportunity and returned to my cabin to prepare for the final step that would sever me from civilization.

Some hours later, the captain called me to her quarters as her crew prepared the jolly-boat that was to ferry me and my supplies to my new home.

Expecting this was simply a final formality, I began by thanking her and her crew profusely for carrying me to my destination. Before I could compliment further, she waved the words away.

"The crew is most dismayed to see our esteemed guest depart."

I could not in all honesty say the same, but I replied that I was touched and honored by their concern.

She gave me a wry look. "They're superstitious worms. The voyage has been peaceful, and they attribute this to our esteemed guest, the holy anchorite."

I assured the captain that, though not technically an anchorite, I would daily remember her and her crew before the Increate and make intercession for their safety.

To hide her contempt, she changed the subject. "The crew has observed lights on the planet."

I did not understand the significance of this and asked if there were fires or volcanic activity.

"Something worse: industrial civilization."

I told her I was perfectly aware that the planet was inhabited. My solitude would not be impinged by creatures on an adjacent world.

"The power to make a trip to their satellite is or will soon be within their grasp."

I allowed that this was possible, but vanishingly unlikely.

She shrugged. "As I told the crew, but they're certain the primitives will make a moonshot at any moment, our esteemed guest will end his days in a zoo or on some bloodstained altar, and his deity will curse the ship that brought him here."

I was speechless.

The captain reached into a locker, withdrew two objects and placed them on the table before me. I recognized one as a focused light weapon and the other as a translation machine.

I protested that both devices were antithetical to my purpose.

Her spines twitched in annoyance. "Our esteemed guest may destroy or bury them later if he wishes. Simply bring them to the moon to allay my crew's fears and I will be very pleased. Humor them and I will see to it that nothing delays our return unduly."

I doubted they would allow that regardless, but I was grateful for a final example of the society I was rejecting. Fear, deception and coercion ruled the day. I took the two objects in my claws and thanked her.

I asked blessings of the Increate on the ship and crew as we descended to the lunar surface, and this seemed to buoy their spirits somewhat. Still, the atmosphere was somber as the jolly-boat's legs settled into the dust.

Due to a fancy of the navigator, our course had brought us right to the lower edge of the "eye" of the creature he saw figured in the darker regions. My first view from the surface was from these highlands at the rim of the great crater, looking out across the smooth "sea". I had never walked the surface of an airless world before. The most distant objects seem impossibly bright and sharp and the too-close horizon is as dark and abrupt as if the world were suddenly broken off. The few rocks studding the landscape cast fuligin shadows across the pale dust.

My suit was working perfectly, though its movements over the scales on my back would take some getting used to. The crew and I unloaded my supplies and set up my shelter swiftly and without mishap.

While we worked, many of the sailors kept pausing to look out over the barren plains with trepidation. I assumed they were simply unused to such bare open spaces after spending months in the cramped corridors of their vessel. As we were completing construction and waiting for the habitat's atmosphere to finish brewing, one of them approached me and began grunting at me over the radio. I fished the translator out of one of my suit's pockets and activated it.

"—bad place. Nothing can live here. It's not right for living people to be here. Something else is here that hates us."

I confess my reply was rudely flippant and sarcastic. It may have overtaxed the translator, because the sailor did not appear to understand. After a few seconds of silence between us, I showed him the captain's weapon. He seemed marginally satisfied.

Not long after, though it felt like an eternity, the crew boarded the jolly-boat with much well-wishing and dubious advice and finally, finally took off. I was alone at last.

As the first deed of my new life, I removed the weapon from its holster and threw it as hard as I could over the lip into the great crater. With only this world's feeble gravitation tugging it back, it sailed so far I didn't even see where it landed.

Satisfied and exhausted with my work for the day, I returned to the shelter, peeled off the suit, curled myself into a ball of scales atop my new perch and immediately went to sleep.

Discovery

I awoke in a world that had become timeless. Gone were the duty bells and hisses and rushing limbs from the ship. The days of this tide-locked satellite were the months of its planet. I didn't even notice a change in the angle of sunlight flowing through the heavily reinforced and polarized window in the ceiling of my cell.

After completing my "morning" duties of prayer and a devotional exercise, I broke my fast with an algae cake, then began setting the prefabricated shelter in order. The batteries were charged and standing by; pure solar during the day sufficed for all the habitat's needs. Hydroponics was up and running. It would be able to take most of the load off the atmospheric mixer once the plants and cultures had reached maturity. Facilities for cleansing myself and recycling waste stood ready to serve. The air was sterile and cool, and, best of all, not leaking into the outer vacuum.

After the check, I unpacked the necessities. My library, an icon, and a memento mori of personal significance fit neatly on the fold-out shelf along one wall. The rest of the crates and canisters contained supplies for my mundane needs and could be safely ignored until later.

Does it seem strange for an eremite to be giddy? I was distracted and tingling with excitement throughout this entire routine. The cell was simply a place to curl my scales, ultimately no different than my cabin in the ship. What I longed to do was travel out beneath the empty sky and fully immerse myself in the silence and peace of my tiny world.

On one claw, a hermit should practice self-denial, weaning himself away from the endless bellowing of the body and its desires. On the other, the hermit does what he does because it is good. That I had an easier time seeing that than many others was no fault! Why should I not be glad?

After re-donning my suit and double-checking its status, I cycled the airlock and emerged into the bright, black sky of day. My soul moved within me at the sight, and I only got a few steps before I tumbled and embraced the dust with joy and gratitude.

Rolling onto my back and staring up at the blazing star and its thriving planet, music poured from me. In a fit of fancy, I activated the translator and sent my praises by radio, blessing the Increate in every language with bursts of low-frequency radiation. I imagined the waves falling unheard and unsuspected all about the strange creatures on the world above me. I wished them nothing but good. So long as they remained in their sphere and never troubled me, I was sure they were the most just, benign and righteous species ever born.

All ecstasies pass. I bounced easily back to my feet in the microgravity some time later and set to exploring my surroundings, loping up the scree on all sixes to the ridge of the eye crater. Running on the moon was like flying and swimming at the same time. With each leap, I expected to feel a wind whistling through my ears. The only sounds were the pumping of my hearts, the rattle of my scales and a subtle shuffling of my muscles that I'd never dreamed could be audible.

The crater was far too large to circumnavigate, but I began traveling along the ridge anyway. At least there was no danger of getting lost as I might face among boulders and hills in the lowlands. I felt the stillness begin seeping into me, bringing me into a world where I was no longer a citizen, a worker, or even an "esteemed guest." Now I was only a creature. It was wonderfully liberating.

And so I lived out my first long day on this world in a happy daze. Sleeping, meditating, studying, exercising, and tending my tiny garden and little house occupied all my time and thoughts.

The only thing I came to miss was smells. Smell of soil after rain, smell of decent cooking, smell of the females of my species all began to haunt me. I dreamed of them and awoke tear-stained.

Well, I consoled myself, even one so suited to the solitary life must feel some privations! I was sure these pains would pass either through self-mastery or inevitable fading of memory.

As the long evening deepened and the stark line of the terminator became visible on distant hills, I decided to take one last stroll along the lip of the crater. Once night fell, I would have only the distant stars and the reflected light of the planet to see by, and the danger of becoming lost or injuring myself would greatly increase. I doubted I would spend as much time outdoors until the horizon fell beneath the sun again, and wanted to take full advantage of this last chance.

I suppose I ventured farther than normal. The landmarks on either side of the ridge became unfamiliar to me. There were more large rocks littering the slopes, the remains of ancient meteor strikes or moonquakes, perhaps. I was gazing across the field of boulders and monoliths when I saw them.

You who dwell on inhabited worlds must know what it's like to think yourself alone and suddenly find yourself observed. The sudden icy feeling of shame and fear and vulnerability was maybe a hundredth of what I experienced. I threw myself down into the dust on the far side of the ridge and felt as if I would die right there of shock. I'm ashamed to admit it, but my first reaction was to clutch at the empty holster at my side.

It had been two figures. side-by-side, sitting atop a rock with the sun behind them. I had been walking on the ridge, silhouetted against the black sky. There was no way I could have escaped their notice.

Could I stay on the inner side of the crater and run back to the cell, keeping its wall between me and them? The idea was absurd. No one can disguise their tracks in the pale, soft dust of the moon. They could follow me back to my abode whenever they pleased. I pressed my faceplate into the ground and groaned. Even here, I couldn't escape the fear and anxiety that came with the presence of other creatures. The crew's predictions of my eventual fate seemed much more plausible now.

There was nothing to do for it. If I didn't seize the initiative here, they could just follow my tracks and find me at any time. All it would take would be punching my habitat full of holes, or wrecking my solar collectors, or blocking my door, and I'd be doomed. With a prayer to the Increate, I turned on the translator and radio and forced myself back over the ridge.

They were still there, looking straight at me. I hauled myself erect and gazed back, trying to look a little imposing, but not too much. I greeted them in the name of the Increate, source of all, and said that I meant them no harm.

They made no response.

I told them I simply wished to be left alone in peace, and asked whether they had any quarrel with me.

No reply, no movement.

It occurred to me that radio communication is not necessarily a prerequisite for a spacefaring civilization, though it really helps. Maybe I would have to touch my helmet to theirs and speak to them directly. I slid down from the ridge and approached them slowly, holding my front claws open and pointed upward as a sign of peace.

I clambered up their rock and found myself face to faces with a pair of statues. I wanted to laugh and scream at the same time. The panic that coiled around my guts softened into dread. I was not discovered, not yet, but neither was I alone. Someone else was here, or had been here and logically could return.

All things created bear the signature of their makers in some fashion. I studied the statues for clues as to theirs. The two images depicted a species unfamiliar to me. They had large heads with erect ears and enormous, intelligent-looking eyes. Each had four limbs, ending in a single toe. Oddly-shaped things sprouting from each statue's head, neck and rump were most likely hair. I discovered their faces were not actually turned to the ridge, but higher, gazing into the starry sky with expressions of awe and wonder. The slightly smaller of the two had placed its toe atop the other's in what looked like a gesture of affection.

Both were the same color as the native stone, but there were no chips or tailings nearby to suggest they had been produced on this spot. What sort of mad artist would carve sculpture and then move it out into the middle of nowhere? I searched around the base of the boulder for tracks, and found them. They were U-shaped, matching the feet of the statues, but slightly larger. Bizarrely, though the footprints clustered around the boulder, there were none leading to it or away. Whatever brought these here could defy gravity.

Something moved from the corner of my eye and, in my surprise, I stumbled into one of the statues. It crumbled into powder at my touch.

The motion I had seen was only the terminator, the stark, razor-edge division between day and night, crawling over a nearby hill. Darkness would soon cover me.

I looked down at the remains of the statue. It was only packed dust. How could something like that be transported or made on site, much less hold itself together?

There was no time to ponder further. I would return to my cell under cover of darkness, replenish my oxygen, and then hunt the inner slope of the eye crater for the sidearm I had so blithely discarded.

I hadn't retraced my steps a kilometer when a horrifying sight met my eyes: more statues, and then more. Dozens! Had they been there all along, and I simply hadn't noticed them until the low sun made their shadows stream across the landscape?

No, impossible. There were too many, some even perched atop familiar landmarks. Whatever had made these, I was now following behind it. The thought slowed my pace.

The sun soon won our race and plunged me into the night. There is no twilight on airless worlds; night is instant and complete as soon as the horizon overtakes the sun. The only way to find the ground is to look for where the stars end. In spite of this, I didn't dare turn on my suit's lamps as I picked my way home.

After what felt like years, I spotted the red beacon light that marks the location of my hermitage at the base of the crater's outer slope. It was visible for tens of thousands of ells in most directions. I needed to turn it off. As I approached, I noticed, to my dismay, that I was too late. Another statue was barely illuminated at the edge of the beacon's ruddy glow.

This one was larger, and of a more fanciful design, with a pair of vestigial wings and a long spike or antenna protruding from its brow. It lay couched, with its head positioned to stare at the beacon.

I fumbled with the panel at the base of the beacon and shut off the light, glad to hide the bizarre sculpture in shadow.

And then I saw the eyes. Blue in iris and sclera, faintly luminescent, gazing fixedly at me out of the darkness.

That was not a statue.

Desperation

The horrible sight, predatory eyes staring from the infinite dark, tapped into some primal part of my brain.

The voices of my ancestors, from their trunks and warrens back on the cool, wet forests of home, rose up from the depths of my instincts and gave their unanimous command:

"curl up into a ball and release a foul odor until the scary thing leaves."

We are, alas, not a species known for an excess of martial prowess. Or dignity.

As I was in the sealed environment of a less-than-supple space suit, the wisdom of the ancients was worthless. Even so, the glands on my neck began producing the rotten-flesh scent without my conscious intention. I gagged.

The blue, shining eyes with their slit pupils rose up and began advancing on me. There was something uncanny about them. The dust-statues had surprised me, but I had thought they were beings like myself. Not so the owner of these eyes. It seemed as if the intensity of their gaze alone could rupture my suit if they remained on me any longer.

The suit...the suit!

I was not entirely defenseless.

I began backing away from the thing in the dark with my lower four limbs while I fiddled with the control panel on my left forearm.

The creature increased the speed of its approach, eyes narrowing in malice.

Choking on my own defensive scent, I let it draw closer and closer.

Closer...

I could see the web of filaments in its irises. The slit pupils were opened wide to catch the meager starlight.

Now! I clenched my own eyes shut as tight as I could, consigned my anima to the Increate, and mashed a button on the suit controls. The twin lamps on my helmet emitted a split-second flash at maximum intensity.

Whirling around, I fled in the direction of the crater, not pausing to see whether my trick had left the creature blinded. Finding my way in the darkness was easy; as long as I kept ascending, I would reach eventually the top. Somewhere on the inner slope of the crater was the captain's sidearm, and on it I placed all my hopes for survival.

I had never killed anything larger than an insect, yet I knew I could pull the trigger on that thing without hesitation. I did not wish to kill, but I was ready to do anything so that I would not die.

A small corner of my mind found it amusing. Before I had made the decision to withdraw from the worlds, I had spent sleepless nights toying with the idea of self-annihilation. And over what? Petty trivialities: heartbreak, betrayal, misfortune. The lot of all. Now, hunted and friendless in the dark, I loved my life more than I ever had, or even imagined I could.

As I reached the ridge of the crater, the darkness of the rise suddenly gave way to the diamond-studded sky all around me. A great leap carried me into the sky, and I spread all six limbs to land in the soft dust of the inward slope.

It did not go as planned. After a few seconds, I had still not felt the ground beneath my feet.

I began to panic. Was there some enormous hole I had blundered into? Several more heartsbeats passed in the air, and my nerves could take no more. I raised my forelimbs to re-light the suit's lamps, but as soon as I looked down at my claws, I froze in shock. An aura of blue light shone around the suit's gauntlets, no, around my entire body!

All space travelers know what an azure glow means: Cerenkov radiation. The tell-tale sign at the edge of a warp field. How was this possible? Was I about to be ripped into a burst of particles?

I tentatively reached over and pressed the button again. The lamps flickered and came back to life. There was the steep ground still below me, growing neither father nor nearer. I was suspended in space a mere few ells off the ground.

And then something started pulling me backward, away from the crater and back down toward my cell. My limbs windmilled uselessly in the vacuum.

I tried to treat the situation as being in freefall and flicked my tail to rotate as I'd learned to do on the ship. The ground slowly rolled by beneath me, and then I faced the horizon upside-down. There was my dwelling, there the beacon, and next to it, the thing with the terrible eyes. My course would take me directly to it.

That was my first good look at the creature in white light. It was nearly the same gray-white color as the moon, or maybe it was only covered in dust. A deep blue, glittering cloud hung behind it, flowing as if disturbed by an impossible wind. Unlike the statues, it bore some sort of rigid headgear and breastplate as well as boots, but other than that, it was naked. There was no breathing apparatus, no shell to deflect cosmic rays, not even insulation to protect it from the chill. According to my own suit, the surface temperature was a mere hundred kelvin. It did not seem bothered by the cold.

The spike on its head glowed with the same blue nimbus that surrounded me. Was it bending space itself? I am no engineer, but I have seen the devices we use to flaunt the lower laws of the universe. Their scale means even the largest vessels have to be built around them, and nothing short of an annihilation furnace or the output of several linked fusion engines are sufficient to power them. Yet there it stood, doing the same thing in miniature with no visible apparatus or power source.

It brought me to a stop right before its face, squinting in the light from the lamps. I felt the rolling instinct tugging at me again, but fear of damaging the inside of my suit stopped me. The glow around its horn and myself vanished, dropping me unceremoniously on my head next to the beacon. The creature's mouth opened and shut a few times, and its lips twisted to form phonemes, but of course no sound came out.

Still upside down, I blinked at it, shocked to still be alive.

Towering over me, it bared its teeth in a snarl as if it were my fault sound didn't carry in a vacuum, then launched into a more animated fit of pantomime speech. It raised one of its front legs and pointed at the beacon light, then at the beacon's controls, then at me.

I righted myself and double-checked my radio and translator. I had left both on after I had tried to talk to the statues, and they were still active.

Voice cracking, I asked it if it could hear me.

Its blue eyes rolled in a surprisingly normal-looking expression of irritation. One of its legs swept out, caught me by the back of the head, and roughly forced my helmet against the beacon's control panel. I squirmed and flailed, but I couldn't get its foot off of me. It let me up for only a moment, and then slammed my face against the panel again.

To my horror, a crack began to crawl across the faceplate, the barrier standing alone between myself and the airless void. There was no deadly hiss of depressurization yet, but I doubted it could take any more abuse. I ceased struggling and held up my front claws in abject surrender.

The creature leaned down to my level, causing its floating hair to roll about me. It silently yelled at me again, punctuating each non-word with a stomp into the dust next to the beacon's controls. My scales rattled at each stamp, and the beacon began leaning to one side, so great was the thing's strength.

I finally understood. With fumbling claws, I reached out and turned the switch to re-light the beacon. The surroundings were once more flooded with crimson light.

Its spike glowed blue again and it flicked its head curtly. The same web of force that had carried me before now tossed me in an arc across the sky to crash-land before the door to my cell.

To try again to find the weapon would be foolhardy. My suit felt like it would break down at any moment, my oxygen was nearly depleted and my body was aching all over. Not knowing what else to do, I opened the airlock and crawled back inside my home, wretched and defeated.

As soon as the airlock was pressurized, I tore the damaged helmet off and took great gulps of air not scented with my miasma. It only took a few minutes to barricade the inner door of the airlock with all the supply containers I was able to move, and only a second to flip the breaker that sent power to the airlock's outer door. Even as I did it, I knew all this would be useless if the creature chose to enter.

Next to the door, there was a narrow slit of a window. I peeked through it. The creature was still just outside. It lay on the ground with its back to the habitat and stared into the light of the beacon as though mesmerized.

Seeing it silhouetted in the red light, something clicked in my mind. The image across the face of the moon that had so excited the navigator; long neck, protruding snout, large eyes, spike from the brow...it was the thing right outside my door. Oh, how smug and pious I had felt to recognize it as a sign when the captain dismissed it as mere chance! Oh how shrewd I had thought I was to trouble the navigator about it no further, lest his interest draw others to my moon!

In my self-congratulation I had forgotten that signs, especially great ones, can also be warnings.

What could I do? I could think of nothing. I was at the brutal beast's mercy. With numb claws, I took the icon from the shelf and clutched it to my chest. I shut off the habitat's interior lights, curled into a scaly ball in the corner and lay there in the darkness, trembling and befouling the air.

Creation

I don't know whether I slept or not. All I know was that I had been lying there in a ball, waiting for death, or for anything at all, for some time when I heard a noise from above the ceiling. Here it comes, I thought numbly. Crushed like a bug.

For a little while, nothing more occurred.

Then the noise again. It was't the sound of blows or footsteps, but a steady rattling hiss, like sand carried by a desert wind. Was I being buried? I uncurled, re-lit the interior lights, and placed the tarnished icon reverently back on the shelf.

I was strangely calm. One can only experience any emotion, even fear, so long before numbness sets in, I learned. As a fasting ascetic eventually becomes insensitive to the pangs of hunger, one who sits overlong in the shadow of death begins to forget how to dread it.

A grim fatalism gripped me. The thing outside could end me at a whim, but for now it had refrained. It behooved me to use whatever time I had left in an upright and rational manner. Right now, that meant finding out what made that noise. I shuffled over to the skylight and looked up.

I flinched. There was a face on the other side of the glass.

It took a moment before I registered the lack of luminescent eyes. Fetching a portable lamp from a crate, I confirmed my suspicions: it was another one of the dust statues. The level of detail was truly impressive. The statue's snout was even wrinkled and its nostrils splayed out where they pressed against the surface of the window.

The sculpture, like the two I'd found during the excursion, did not appear the least bit imposing close-up. If I was reading the image's expression correctly, it was supposed to look curious and benign. Was the being that nearly bashed my head in responsible for making these things? It didn't seem possible, and yet I'd seen no one else.

A spark of hope rekindled. Perhaps there had been some sort of misunderstanding or a faux pas? Maybe my scaly, hexapedal, form was just as frightening to it as its eyes were to me! Do the sages not insist that all creatures of the Increate can dwell in harmony if they but choose to? It had treated me roughly, but I had been ready to blast it to ashes based merely on my frayed nerves and its startling appearance. I was not just some paranoid shut-in unable to deal with others; I was a hermit! I should be the better being!

Thus resolved, I poured myself a bowl of water from the cistern, sipped it and checked the view out my front window.

I nearly choked. The slope outside my hermitage, as far as the beacon's glow reached, was covered in statues by the hundreds. I fetched a field glass from the crate that had held the lamp and rushed back to the window.

It wasn't so much a statue garden as a scene; an enormous moon dust diorama. The closest statues were helmeted and barded like the creature. Each had either wings or a spike, but none had both. Some of these faced the rest of the crowd, as if keeping them back, while the majority stood in a single rank, watching my home with expressions of grim determination.

Behind the armored statues was a massive horde of...I suppose one would call them 'civilians'? Dust in the shape of unclothed creatures of every size stood in attitudes of gawking onlookers. Most were trying to see over or around the armored statues. One was reared up against the skewed beacon, several small ones were placing their own feet in my footprints, and others were gathered in little knots as if having discussions.

I was dumbfounded. Why would anyone do this, and how could it be done so quickly? Through the field glass, I could see the intricate details on each figure: eyelashes, inlay on armor, facial expressions. Though the same general designs were copied here and there, it was still an astounding accomplishment.

Motion and a familiar blue light in the distance caught my attention. The same azure glow that had carried me across the landscape was shining somewhere beyond the edge of the beacon's illumination. My hearts began pounding, and I threw the bowl aside so as to grip the field glass with both forelimbs and refocus.

The light was drawing nearer, and within its radius there was a constant flurry of motion.

I realized what I was seeing when the beacon's light also fell upon it. The tall blue-eyed creature was walking with proud and stately pace through the crowd of statues, its head-spike blazing like a torch. All the statues adjacent to it were wrapped in glowing fields of force, and they seemed to quicken, turning to face the creature and bowing low to it with lifelike motion. After it passed them by, the glow moved on and they remained inert as before. I had seen artistic use of warp fields and gravity manipulation such as this before, but never used on so many objects or with such precision!

What did it mean, though? Why the inanimate crowds and meaningless pomp? Why were the statues all so much smaller than it? For whom was this elaborate puppet show intended?

It had now reached the line of statues in armor. They glowed, saluted smartly, and cleared a path, two breaking rank to flank it. The three stepped up to my doorstep. The creature turned to face the crowd, waved to them and began making a soundless address to the deaf, motionless statues. It would have been comical were it not obvious that I was the subject of its speech.

Then, something very strange happened, if that word has any meaning after the events just described.

There was a flash of blue light in the midst of the statues. A single, tiny one broke from the crowd and ran up to the creature, its footfalls leaving no marks in the dust. It had its own tiny spike and set of wings; I could see them clearly when it passed close by my window. The miniature statue leaped on the creature and wrapped itself around one of its forelegs, shaking fearfully and mouthing frantic words. The creature started and looked down at it, surprise written on its face.

My confusion redoubled. How could it be surprised? Wasn't it controlling these things?

The creature's shining eyes softened and it raised its other foreleg to stroke the little statue's dusty hair. Its mouth moved as if it were speaking words of comfort. Gently, it pried the statue off and set it down in the dust. The childlike sculpture's glow faded and it de-animated, still looking fearful and uncertain.

Then the creature turned back to my door, raised its head back, and brought its spike down with a crash that shook the entire habitat. There was now a sizable dent in the outer airlock door.

I glanced uncertainly at the boxes I'd piled against the inner door, regretting that I'd bothered with them at all. My spare excursion suit was in one of them, and I didn't have time to dig it out and get it working.The barricade wouldn't hold against a determined assault, not from that thing outside, and if it had to break down the doors to get in, well, vacuum appeared to trouble only one of us.

I returned power to the airlock and flipped the switch to open the outer door, praying the creature would understand that it had to wait for the chamber to pressurize.

The outer door lifted, nearly catching at the dent. The creature smiled triumphantly and stepped in with its two guards in tow. While the lock cycled, I hurriedly pushed the containers out of the way.

Hermits' cells are not spacious or complex. There was no place I could hide where I wouldn't be found out in mere moments. I'd have to meet the creature. I detached the translator from my damaged suit and hung it around my neck by its lanyard. The being had tried to talk before. Perhaps now that it would be in an atmosphere it would be more successful.

The light above the inner door flashed green and the airlock slowly rose open. The instinctual impulse to roll up rose in me again, and I only barely resisted it. It was as if the mere proximity of this thing provoked fear, regardless of my own will. Instead, I simply stood there in the middle of the room, waiting for whatever came next.

After all I'd seen so far, I had no inkling of what to expect.

Reprieve

Once I had readied and donned my spare suit, which took far longer than she would have liked, Nightmare Moon dragged me into the now-filthy airlock. Even before the inner door shut behind us, her patience reached its end and her spike flared, forcing the outer door open. I called to her to stop and wrapped my limbs around a pylon, expecting the sudden decompression to throw us and most of the loose objects in my abode out onto the moon's surface.

Instead of blasting into the insatiable maw of the cosmos, the air remained right where it was, held at bay by a faintly-glowing blue field. Nightmare Moon turned and smirked at me, amused by my fear.

"As pleasant as it is to hear another voice after lo these many years," she said, "if you ever shout an order at me again I'm going to rip the tongue right out of that funny little mouth of yours."

The inner door fell to and she strode out of the airlock, carrying the atmosphere around her within a blue, transparent bubble. The sand glowed and swirled up to either side of her, coalescing into a pair of guards to replace the ones she'd left inside.

I gulped, untangled myself from the pylon and followed her back into the night, shutting the outer door silently behind me and lighting my suit's lamps.

I ran to catch up with her. As I approached, one of the guard statues fell behind and turned to face me. I tried to skirt around it, but it, or rather its creator, anticipated my move. The statue lunged with amazing speed and body-checked me to the ground. Unlike the other statue that had crumbled to nothing at the slightest touch, this animated one felt like solid stone. I looked past it to Nightmare Moon, but she walked on up the slope, paying me and her guard no mind. The statue gave me a threatening glare, and then cantered back into formation. I picked myself up and followed at a more respectful distance.

As before, the other statues stirred to life and parted as she drew near. This time, instead of prostrating themselves, the crowds silently leaped and cheered, tossing dust confetti to swirl in the nonexistent air and strewing dust petals across the path before her. She would occasionally pause in her progress to wave to her artificial admirers.

The sight was less mysterious in light of what she'd told me. As a prisoner in an oubliette would scratch pictures on the walls or fashion figures from trash to ease her loneliness, Nightmare Moon used her tremendous power to build and move these puppets in parody of her former subjects.

But something about it still didn't fit. Why would she surround herself with fawning, adoring images of the people...the 'ponies' she hated and planned to kill? And they were all so much smaller; even the largest were childlike in proportion to their maker. In spite of this, it seemed they were meant to be adults. Some of these statue ponies had yet smaller ones that they held in a way even a quasi-mammal like myself could recognize as parental.

This was the result of some sort of social morphism, perhaps, where rulers towered over their people like the hieratic scaling found in ancient carvings. I wondered if the effect was natural or engineered.

On the other claw, it could just be artistic license. Or egotistical delusion.

She reached the lip of the crater well before I did. This time her guards allowed me to catch up and and roughly pushed me inside the bubble of air. Nightmare Moon stood gazing into the black pit inside the crater.

"It's in there?" She said. "Where?" Her voice sounded distant and tinny through my helmet.

I admitted I wasn't sure of its exact location.

"What do you mean, you don't know? You left my means of escape sitting outside in a hole, and now you don't remember where?!"

Lamely, I began to reply that I'd dropped it, but between my lights and her sharp vision—

"Royalty does not scrabble around in the dirt," she sniffed, lifting me off the ground with her power. "Find it, and do not even think of returning empty hooved... or pawed, or whatever those wriggly things are."

She launched me over the edge, sending me bouncing and rolling hundreds of ells down the inner slope of the crater before I could arrest myself.

Dusting my faceplate off yet again, I made a note to schedule some sufficient penance for myself once all this was over. No matter how necessary the act, the amount of pleasure I'd take reducing another being to ash would demand expiation.

But I was getting ahead of myself. I needed to find the sidearm. It should be easy to spot; its landing would have left a crater in the otherwise undisturbed landscape and the object itself was metallic and reflective. My wrist panel indicated my air supply was at 98%. There was plenty of time.

Air at twenty-three percent. Still no weapon. Whenever my lamps fell on a spot where the dust had been disturbed, it was only my own trail.

Maybe it wasn't here at all. How hard had I thrown it? An absurd vision of the weapon tumbling forever in orbit around the moon tickled a morbid fancy.

I raised my head to look back at the ridge. Nightmare Moon was still there; I could tell by the blue glow. Would she let me replenish my air and resume the search? She thought I held the key to her escape, true, but she was also quite mad. Who could say how she'd react if I failed?

Returning my gaze to the valley before me, I spotted something in the distance from the corner of my eye. I turned the helmet's lamps on the spot, but I could see nothing. Wonderful, I thought, hallucinations. Perhaps my air supply was staler than I knew.

As I looked away to resume my search, I saw it again at the edge of my vision. This time I darkened the lamps and looked directly at it. There was another blue light in the crater with me, much fainter than Nightmare Moon's. I hurried forward to investigate.

What I found was another moving statue. It sat upon a small mound, looking about warily and wearing an expression of poorly-feigned innocence.

Was this a joke? Clearly the prize was hidden beneath it, so Nightmare Moon had known where it was all along!

I took a closer look. This dust pony was not like the others. It was the small one that had wings and a spike; the one that had accosted Nightmare Moon at my doorstep.

...The one that had caught her by surprise! Could there be other forces in play here? She hadn't mentioned any, but I was at a loss to explain how this statue could work at cross-purposes to her otherwise.

Whatever power gave it form and motion, it didn't want me to see the object hidden under the mound. As I approached, the statue stood to face me, extending its feathered wings and menacing me with its spike.

It feinted and I leaped back out of its reach. The animated guard earlier had felt as solid as stone. I was not eager to discover whether this little one could puncture my suit with the lance on its brow.

I looked about for a rock I could throw at the statue. I doubted this would be effective, but I was short on air and otherwise out of ideas. The little statue watched me quizzically as I hunted the ground around it.

The dust inside the crater particularly fine, with no stones larger than pebbles. Despairing, I sank to my knees and buried my head in my claws. I now had my choice of deaths: to be pierced by this statue, to return and face the wrath of Nightmare Moon, or to dither until I asphyxiated.

Something heavy pressed against my shoulder.

I whirled around. It was only the little statue nuzzling me. It wore a sympathetic expression, unblinking in spite of my lamps shining directly on its face. I noticed it still kept itself interposed between me and the mound, however.

Otherwise out of options and feeling utterly foolish, I tried to appeal to the compassion of an ambulatory pile of dust. I held my claws together in a supplicating pose, then pointed to the mound and back to myself. The statue frowned and shook its head.

I showed it the suit's control panel (could its eyes even see?) and pantomimed choking to explain what would happen when my air ran out. It appeared troubled and directed my attention to the ground before it. I looked. The statue began tracing signs in the dust with the tip of its toe. First it drew a circle and pointed to the landscape around us. Next it made a larger circle and pointed to the planet near the horizon. above the smaller circle it scratched a long-legged figure with wings and a spike clearly meant to be Nightmare Moon.

I nodded to show that I understood so far. It grabbed my helmet to keep the light steady.

Next, the statue drew an arrow from the picture of Nightmare Moon to the larger circle. It raised a foot and stomped on the planet-circle until there was nothing left but another crater. Its large gray eyes looked up into mine, and it shook its head again, beseeching me not to let this come to pass.

So, independent confirmation. Better yet, whatever this thing was, we were on the same side.

It also occurred to me that Nightmare Moon might simply be playing a trick; using this as a test of my loyalty. I was past caring for subtlety. If I died, I died, but if there was a chance I could get the weapon back, I would take it.

I rubbed out the arrow with my gauntlet. I pointed to the mound behind her and then slapped my other claw down on the image of Nightmare Moon, destroying it. I looked up to see if the statue understood, but it was looking at something behind me and above. Blue light and a hiss of air swirled around me.

"Pangolin, you lazy, disobedient beast!" said a too-familiar voice at my back, "I send you on the most important errand of your life, and you decide to go and play in the dirt with a filly instead?"

I frantically wiped away the rest of the drawings and opened my mouth to make an excuse, but Nightmare Moon was not done.

"And you," she continued, turning to the little statue, "Do you like it here? Is it pleasant? Do you want to stay here forever? Maybe you think everyone will love you when you're a good little pony who does what she's told?"

The statue cringed back, unable to return Nightmare Moon's stare.

"They won't! They never have and they never will! I am the only friend you will ever have, and I am getting. Off. This. Rock. If you won't help me, then just get out of the way!"

The target of Nightmare Moon's rage curled up on the ground and began to shake as if sobbing. The prisoner put on a conciliatory expression and stretched one of her wings around the weeping ball of dust.

While this scene was going on, I seized the opportunity and began digging up the mound. After only a few clawfuls of dirt, my gauntlet struck something solid.

"There, there. I'm not mad at you," she cooed to the statue. "I just want you to trust me. Haven't I always been there for you? Everything I do, I do for you. Now is no different! We'll be back home with the air and the water everywhere. Won't that be nice?"

The statue slowly nodded.

"And when all of the mean ponies see us, they'll be so sorry for what they did, and I'll make sure they never do it again! Everything will be perfect."

Looking miserable, the sculpted pony cuddled closer to Nightmare Moon and the blue glow animating it faded away. With one sweep of her wing, she reduced the statue back to dust.

A chill ran down my spine as I brushed the grit off my find. It still seemed to be charged and in working order. Now was the moment of truth.

I told her I had found what I sought.

Her head flicked up to look at the thing I held in my claw.

"Then do what I told you to. Send me back to Equestria."

I asked what would happen to the little statue.

She snorted and rolled her eyes. "Do not concern yourself with her. As much as I'd like to be rid of the needy little lamprey, we're quite literally inseparable."

I wiped the dust from the weapon's lens, disengaged the safety and set the output to maximum power. A message on the weapon's control plate warned me that firing at this intensity voided the warranty and could be hazardous to the user due to the risk of atmospheric flash-heating. Not having an atmosphere to worry about, I pointed the emission aperture at Nightmare Moon's center of mass.

Something stayed my claw on the firing stud. No matter how much I hated her a peaceable creature does not turn into a murderer overnight. A voice within me cried out against killing the being before me. She had threatened me, beaten me, and fantasized about slaying a world, but she was a living person; the fashioning of the Increate. She was not to be lightly disposed of like a mad beast.

After all, it was my carelessness that had put the world above in danger. Had I not blundered into her prison, all would still be well and she would be in no danger of escape. Things would have continued as they had, and none need die. I would be killing her to cover up my own mistake. What right did I have?

With a shock, I realized I had become the same as the beings that sent me fleeing to the solitary life. I was looking to murder and deceit as the solution to my problems. I burned with shame.

Reason rallied against the flood of emotion. Whatever I did now, in less than five standard months, the ship would return to this moon. If she was still here, she might be able to use her powers to get on board and threaten or cajole them into taking her down to the planet, or anywhere else. It was too great a risk. I could recriminate myself later, but now I had to do whatever I could to keep Nightmare Moon away from her intended victims.

As a sop to my conscience, I gave her a last chance to repent. I asked if she was sure she wanted to go through with this and kill them all. A thousand years is no short time; what if things where different now?

"What is it to you?" she spat. "You claim you came here because you wanted an empty world. Do you have a problem with me making another?" She spread her wings, closed her eyes and tilted her head back. "Enough talk. Send me now or else."

I sighed. She'd had her chance. I hardened my heart, steadied my aim and depressed the firing stud.

The weapon vibrated and shrieked with a noise like the universe rending. Nightmare Moon vanished in a burst of light erupting around her like a second sun. It was the air she'd brought along turning to plasma. My suit saved me from being blinded and broiled, but the wave threw me off my feet and stunned me.

I returned to my senses flat on my back staring up at the stars. My ears were ringing, and spots swam before my vision. The weapon lay beside me in the dust, its forward end glowing and half-melted. Slowly I rose to a sitting position.

In the midst of a field of molten glass, the night-black figure still stood with her starry hair floating behind her. Her armor glowed white-hot, but her body was unscathed.

She opened one blue eye at me.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Get on with it!"

I collapsed back into the dust.

Resignation

"What do you mean, 'broken'? Fix it! Make it work!"

I would soon be broken as well if Nightmare Moon didn't quit shaking me around like a rag doll.

She'd have to wait if she wanted me to reply. Outwardly, I was still half-stunned by the thermal blast. Inwardly, I was reeling from the failure of my little assassination plot. She hadn't been so much as singed. She was demanding I try it again. Ineffable Increate, she didn't even realize I'd just made an attempt on her life!

Tossing me aside, she levitated the ruined sidearm before her. She pointed the mis-aligned aperture squarely at her face and squeezed down the firing stud again and again with increasing force until the grip splintered. The blue field around it shone brighter as she tried to twist the weapon back into its original shape. This proved to be too much for the abused piece of hardware, and it shattered into several smoking, sparking pieces. She cradled the debris in her forelegs, mourning the failure of the thing that should have killed her.

Were I not trapped on an inhospitable planetoid with an insane, homicidal, indestructible creature with powers beyond my understanding, I might have found it a bit humorous.

"No, no, NO!" she howled. "This can't be happening! The prophecy..."

One by one the bits of my weapon slipped from her grip to clatter and clink against the glassed surface.

As it stood, I wasn't in the mood appreciate the absurdity. Killing Nightmare Moon was clearly beyond my capabilities. When the ship returned she'd surely realize what it was. Whatever arms the crew carried would likely be as ineffectual as mine had been. No doubt Nightmare Moon would be able to persuade the survivors to take her anywhere she wished once they realized their position. Nothing could prevent the prisoner from seizing the vessel short of the captain scuttling it, consigning herself and the entire crew to death.

More blood on my claws.

Nightmare Moon stormed over to where she'd thrown me, visibly furious. It seemed as if my role in this tragedy was nearing its end. The bitter part of me found it fitting. If only I had listened to my hierarch when he advised simply learning to cope with the world as it is, none of this would have happened. I'd be miserable and alienated, but at least I wouldn't be responsible for unleashing a homicidal maniac on an unsuspecting world. Being the first victim of her rampage was the least I deserved.

She loomed over me, her flowing hair melting into the black sky. Her armor now only glowed cherry-red and the plasma around her had cooled back into gas, but I still felt the heat through my suit. I realized I hadn't truly seen her enraged, not until now.

"This is all your fault," she accused, her voice softer and colder than ever. "You failed me. No, you betrayed me."

It was all true, though not in the way she meant. Still lying on the ground, I declined to reply.

"It was all a trick, wasn't it? She put you up to this. She thought it'd be fun to kick me around some more, but instead of getting her own precious hooves dirty, she made a monster and sent it up here to torment me. Admit it!"

Wearily, I shook my head and explained I'd known nothing about her or the ponies or any prophecy before she herself had told me.

"Don't you call me a liar! Nopony calls me a liar anymore! 'Oh, the young princess is just saying each of her tiny stars is a sun to make herself seem more important!' 'Oh, the young princess claims her moon rules the tides because she's jealous of her sister!' And do you know what she told me?" Nightmare Moon batted her eyes, put one toe on her breastplate and adopted an expression of vapid innocence. " 'Why sister dear, don't let it get to you,' " she trilled in an airy, condescending voice, " 'they'll come around in time. Remember, our duty is the same no matter what they think of us.' " She dropped the act with a snort of disgust. "Us? Hah! Easy for her to say! She was loved, adored, worshiped!"

She raised one of her hard, flat feet over my head. In the light from my lamps, the dust coating the bottom made it look like its own little moon floating in the sky.

"I won't be slandered or insulted anymore. Anypony who hurts me will receive swift justice."

I closed my eyes and tried to keep my mind from thinking of all the things I'd rather do than die here on this Increate-abandoned rock. It was no use.

After several moments, the deathblow still hadn't arrived.

Again surprised to be alive, I reopened my eyes to look up into their counterparts. They were... different. Something had broken inside Nightmare Moon's anima. Instead of the cruelty, mirth and anger they'd held before, her eyes looked weary and tormented, like those of the little statue. They stared straight through me. She gently lowered her foot to the ground next to my head.

"Justice? Since when is there any justice?" she whispered. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. Everything was supposed to go right for once. They'd all wake up and it'd still be my night all around them and they'd have to see it, really see it for the first time. That's all I wanted. All I had to do was say 'no' to her. That's not so bad, is it? But she... she said... that look on her face, I—"

One drop of water splashed onto the outside of my faceplate and then another. The air was still hot enough and its pressure low enough to evaporate both in seconds.

Abruptly, she turned from me and started walking away. "I want to rest now," she quietly announced. "At least there'll be air and warmth. That's... something. Maybe it won't be so—"

Her voice was cut off as the edge of the air bubble passed over me.

Mutely I rose and stumbled after her as she strode out of the crater. I'd been turned around so much inside the crater, I wasn't sure which way led back home, but she seemed to know where she was going. I had enough air left to get back to the habitat, but I'd be cutting it fine.

The Nightmare Moon who left the crater was a completely different creature that the one who had entered. Her head was low, she dragged her armored feet and even her hair had lost some of its gravity-defying buoyancy and motion.

The reason for this was obvious. My lie had dangled the promise of freedom before a prisoner and snatched it away in an instant. Bizarrely, I suspected I'd feel like less of a heel had my murder plot actually succeeded. There is no use applying reason to such gut reactions.

We neared the ridge. The statues were still there, frozen mid-cheer. Nightmare Moon paused, then stepped between them with trepidation. Her spike glowed anew.

The dust ponies shuddered, took on the spike's blue glow and slowly began to move. She hurried on through the crowd, clearly worried about something. I didn't understand what was going on. What caused Nightmare Moon's sudden change in demeanor? What was she afraid of?

Something heavy struck the back of my helmet and staggered me.

I scrambled forward and turned to look behind me. The statues were as animated and excited as they'd been on the way out, but with one major difference:

Now they were angry.

The mass of artificial ponies reared, shook their forelimbs in fury and silently shouted insults and imprecations at the two of us. As I watched, one of them bent over and scooped up a mass of moon dust, held together in a clod by the same power that animated the statues. It took a three-legged step and flung its missile at me.

I reflexively turned and braced my back scales to absorb the attack, forgetting that it would put my suit's air supply in the projectile's path.

Thank the Increate, the clump of dust wasn't as solid as the guard had been. Instead of smashing into me as a rock, it splattered and clung like mud across my back. Several more gobs of flying moon-mud followed it. I hurried on to try to catch up with Nightmare Moon.

The wretched pony was trying to push her way through the mob, but making little progress. The statues pelted her with dustballs, swiftly undoing the bath she'd given herself only a few hours before. The bolder ones actually ran up to her, kicking and biting. Of course, the pony who shrugged off a full-power blast from my weapon had nothing to fear from such attacks. Other than leaving pale toe-prints and teeth marks on her black hide, they did her no physical harm.

Psychologically, it was another story. She made no attempt to fight back, instead shying back one direction and then another as the crowd closed off every avenue of escape. She tried to use her wings to ward strikes from her face, but the statues kept grabbing or biting them and pulling, trying to rip them from her sides.

Why didn't she just extinguish her spike and quit granting motion to the statues? Were they not under her conscious control?

An alarm buzzed inside my helmet. Less than one tenth of my air supply remained. If I didn't get back indoors in the next few minutes, I'd choke to death on stale air, provided these statues didn't finish me first.

Most were venting their rage on the unresisting giant, but a few, not content to throw clods at a distance, were advancing on me with cruel and ferocious expressions. Again unable to roll in my suit, I tried to menace them with my claws. These are more suited to digging and tool manipulation than tearing flesh, and the padded gauntlets blunted any intimidation value they might have possessed. While the others had my attention, one statue seized my tail in its jaws and began dragging me toward the horde surrounding Nightmare Moon.

As soon as I got within the air bubble I called out to her, pleading with her to make the statues stop.

She looked at me dismally through a layer of dust broken only by a pair of muddy tracks running from her eyes. "Oh Pangolin, what's the use? They hate me. They always have." She lay down on the ground and covered her head with a wing. Another salvo of missiles splattered over her side while a pair of statues tried futilely to grab her tail.

Frantically, I told her to stop the statues before they killed me.

"Everything dies too soon anyway," she muttered from under her wing. "It doesn't matter what I do. You'll die and I'll be here forever. What a cruel, pointless world."

Two other statues joined the one dragging me by the tail. Each grappled one of my middle limbs and began pulling, threatening to tear me apart between them.

For her benefit, I screamed a brief description of what was happening to me.

She snorted, sending a puff of dust swirling from beneath the wing. "You're lucky. You can die anytime you like and get away from here. If you're going to abandon me too, quit gloating about it and just leave me alone!"

My suit and flesh stretched painfully. I didn't doubt they could pull me into thirds with a bit more time. It looked like I wouldn't be able to die of asphyxiation after all. It was like some sort of bizarre cosmic joke. How badly must one have failed at being a hermit to be killed by a mob?

I silenced the nagging voice of self-accusation. I hadn't done anything wrong, I was just horribly, terribly, unbelievably unlucky. I'd taken a one-in-nigh-infinity gamble that the moon I settled on wouldn't be a cell for an insane, violent super-being and lost. A cruel, pointless world indeed. Why should I suffer for whatever happened to this wretch all those ages ago?

And then I realized I didn't have to. I am not proud of what happened next.

I yelled that there was another way for her to escape.

Every statue stopped, turned its head to look at me and then froze in a tableau. Nightmare Moon's wing shifted to reveal a single blue eye.

"You're just saying that."

I adamantly denied this and told her everything. A vessel would come to resupply me in about five more of this world's days. Surely they could take her someplace far away from this prison and from those who'd wronged her!

She stood again, rising above the forest of frozen figures. A shadow passed over her visage and her expression returned to the familiar cruel smile.

"Why would I want to do that?" she asked, walking over to me. The statues she touched were obliterated back to dust. "I already have a world waiting for me right next door!"

I had finally done it. To save my hide, I was collaborating with her plan of oecumenicide. But... she would have found out eventually anyway! It ultimately didn't matter! Still, I felt dead inside as she freed me from the three statues with a flick of her wing and dragged me back along with her.

"Come, Pangolin. If we have some time to kill, we can return to my new abode, clean up, maybe have a bite to eat... and then you can explain to me why you didn't see fit to mention this earlier."

I gulped.

Respite

Nightmare Moon dropped me unceremoniously to the floor as soon as the outer airlock door shut behind us.

My suit told me that the air she'd brought back had already pressurized the chamber and was not still too hot nor yet too cold to breathe. I wasted no time removing my helmet and taking a huge gulp of the fresher air.

I instantly regretted it. The flash-heating it had received from my weapon had left the oxygen in the form of ozone. My lungs felt like they were on fire.

The exiled princess smirked to see the shoe on the other foot and nonchalantly stepped inside, leaving me coughing and convulsing at the threshold. She withdrew even more of my water and gave herself a second ablution, once again dropping the mud in the airlock, splattering me.

After I had regained my breath and crawled into the habitat proper, I saw she was peering through the window of one of the hydroponic vats.

"Ah!" she exclaimed. "So this is where you keep the food."

Before I could do anything, she wrenched the lid off the vat and stuck her head within. Chomping and tearing noises accompanied by small grunts of pleasure soon followed.

I spluttered and insisted that my garden wasn't food. Most of those plants were meant to supplement the atmosphere and provide for my psychological well-being. A few produced edible fruit, but none should be eaten leaf, stem and root!

She raised her head from the vat and laughed, trailing torn greenery. "My garden, Pangolin. If you didn't want me to eat these, you should have brought something less delicious." She resumed grazing. "Maybe it's that I haven't had a bite to eat in nearly a millennium, but these blue fern things are wonderful!"

The effects of alien plants on creatures with different biochemistry were unpredictable, I cautioned. It could be poisonous to her.

Nightmare Moon suddenly sobered. She chewed thoughtfully and looked at me through narrowed eyes. "No, I don't think that's the case," she said.

Petulantly, I asked how she could be so certain.

"Because if these were poison, you'd want me to eat them all up."

The conversation's turn caught me completely by surprise.

"Do you think I'm stupid, Pangolin? Do you think I'm a fool because I didn't have all these shiny toys when I found you?"

I asked for clarification, trying my best to feign innocence.

She seemed to enjoy the chance to air her suspicions. "You don't want me to return from exile. You've sided with the usurper and the rest of those ingrates against me. Anypony can see that," she declared, rising from the vat and pacing back and forth across the little habitat. "And yet, when you mentioned that crooked little wand, you were so excited, hunting around in the valley for it until it nearly killed you."

Of course. Of course she'd see through my ruse. If I could scheme and lie convincingly, I wouldn't be here in the first place, now would I? My eyes wandered over to the memento mori sitting on the shelf. At the moment, it seemed somewhat redundant.

"And it failed. And you were so disappointed... but, what a failure! You see, it just occurred to me, if I were a mere monster like you or the ordinary puny sort of pony, that wand of yours would have reduced me to a spot of ash. Wouldn't that have been just terrible?" She stuck out her lower lip in a show of feigned dismay, but broke into an uncharacteristic burst of giggles after a couple seconds.

Trying to allay her suspicion, I reminded her about the ship. I was providing her a means of escape, just as she wished!

"Of course you are," she said with a snort. "But when the wand failed and I was so discouraged that I couldn't keep... ahem. You waited until your life was in danger and you needed to create a distraction to mention that little tidbit. Would you have told me otherwise, or did you hope to sneak away when I wasn't looking?"

Nightmare Moon paused in her pacing and allowed a grin to split her face. "I suppose I should be thankful; that's the first time that sad sack's done anything helpful." She hiccoughed, then giggled again.

I tried to make another excuse, but she cut me off.

"Oh come off it," she sighed. "You thought you could kill me with that thing. Well, you're wasting your time. You can't. It just doesn't work."

The prisoner looked askance. "I should know. She's—hee hee!—she's tried enough times."

"No matter what you intended, you are here for the fulfillment of the prophecy," she continued, louder. "I did the ciphering myself just now. The longest day of the thousandth year is coming up in, oh, about five months, when you claim your friends will swoop in and pluck you out. So, o pawn of—" Her head swung back and forth. "Where in Tartarus is that buzzing noise coming from?"

She grimaced and flicked at her ears. I heard nothing out of the ordinary. What was making her so twitchy?

"...So, o pawn of fate, here are my terms. Give up your pointless attempt to harm me and, if you obey me and prove your worth, I'll let you remain as my vassal. Keep trying stall my destined return, and I'll use you as practice for what I'm going to do to those ponies. Am I perfectly clear?"

I should have seen this coming. Often I had prayed for suitably ironic punishments to befall killers and deceivers, and now my prayers were answered. I had tried my claws at murder, so I would either lose my mind watching a world perish or my intended victim would torment me to death. I nodded to her.

The huge pony blinked at me. "That's it? You expect me to believe you're just going to give up that easily? Surely you have, I don't know, some horrible organ-liquefying wand or something ready to spring on me." Another hiccough followed the statement.

The sarcasm I used to keep society at arm's-length re-emerged. I told her I must have left it in my other scales.

Nightmare Moon burst into roaring gales of laughter, stamping a dent into the floor with one armored foot. Maybe some jokes are better in translation? "I... I don't... that really wasn't as funny as all—" she choked out before breaking down in mirth again. "What is (hic) what's wrong with me?"

She was certainly mad, but if this sort of behavior was new to her too...

Hope, that weed of the anima, sprouted anew from the barren soil. Perhaps her hide was invulnerable armor, but say she took some harmful substance and placed it into her own bloodstream...

She came to the same conclusion. "It's those plants!" she gasped. "Poison! you villain, you knew I couldn't resist!" She continued, still shaking with laughter and hiccoughs.

I distinctly remembered telling her not to gobble up my garden, and reminded her as much.

"Just, ha ha, just a trick of reverse psychology. It won't work! I have the nature of the unicorn; I can instantly—" Her horn flared with blue light for a split-second, but it fizzled and dissipated.

"Blasted noise! Can't focus," she groaned. "You cruel monster. Just burning me up would at least have been di—(hic) dignified."

I simply sat and watched her struggle against the toxins. If there was such a thing as destiny in the universe, surely this was it! She was right; it looked like an awful way to die. I was glad I hadn't poisoned her intentionally, but nonetheless glad it was happening. It wasn't as if I had the ability to save her even if I wished to. Everything was sorting itself out after all, and I didn't have to so much as lift a claw! All I had to do was keep away from her until she succumbed.

She tried to take a step toward me but stumbled and fell. I edged away, easily staying out of her reach. Still weakly laughing, she blinked and squinted at me, struggling to focus. "I don' deserve this," she said, her speech beginning to slur. "Th' world hazzit in for me. I juss wanna get my (hic) licks in. Izz hopeless, I know." She tried to stand and failed. "You unnerstand, right? They hurt you too. You said... you said you came here to... get away..."

Her head sank to the ground, her eyes slid shut, and she heaved a weary sigh. Even her hair ceased its rolling motion and drifted to the floor, partially covering her face. I waited a couple minutes. She was completely still.

Good riddance.

Were it not disrespectful to the dead, I felt as if I could dance around my cell, so great was my relief. I no longer had to fear the wrath of Nightmare Moon! It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from my scales. Already I had begun thinking of this interlude of terror, desperation and attempted murder as an adventure. It was as perfect as a fable; I'd stood fast and proven myself against adversity, while my foe had, sadly, encompassed her own destruction through lack of prudence. This lesson would surely aid my pursuit of purification in solitude.

...No. This wasn't right.

The universe is full of evil and injustice. The strong take what they can, the weak suffer what they must, but no one is strong enough to escape unscathed. I was weak, so I fled to the wilderness. She thought herself strong, so she yearned to fight back against whoever wronged her. Whatever she did and whatever she deserved, this had been a miserable, forlorn creature who had met her demise unprepared, friendless and unmourned. Even if it was necessary for the greater good, her death was still a tragedy. I spoke the traditional prayer for the dead over her remains and swore to give them a proper burial.

After all, the corpse would start to stink before long. For now, it would have to do just to cover the thing until I could repair one of my suits and rig up some way to carry the carcass outside.

From one of my supply chests, I withdrew the largest covering I had: an emergency tent designed to hold an insulated atmosphere in the event my shelter was breached. I unfolded it and dragged the heavy fabric over her.

When I reached her head, I stopped short and stared. An azure star twinkled at the tip of her spike. Every so often, a spark would crawl down the spike and disappear into her body.

I licked the pad of my suddenly-trembling claw and held it before her nostrils.

She was breathing. It was so slow and faint I couldn't even see her side rise and fall, but it was there.

I let go of the tent and fell back on my haunches, my new-found peace and well-being crashing down around me. I should have known a real ending could never be so pat. What could I do now? Force failed. Poison failed. She had lived a thousand years in alternately freezing or irradiated vacuum. What else was there that could stop her?

I cast my eyes about the room. There, against the far wall stood my little shelf. The memento mori repeated its wordless warning of the futility of looking for peace in schemes and tools. The polished eyes of the icon regarded me with gentle reproach. Bookended between them was my library.

I was already bone-weary, but the night was, after all, still young. I removed the library's tablet from its cradle and began my research.

Author's Note

Somehow this chapter had two views before I published it. What's that all about?

Rest

I doubted she'd remain unconscious for more than a few hours; already her breathing was stronger and the blue point at the tip of her spike glowed more brightly. I wished I could rest myself, but what would she do if she woke before I did, still believing I'd intentionally poisoned her and knowing I'd tried to shoot her dead? Such questions make sleep difficult to attain.

Instead, I watched the text scroll across the surface of my tablet through tired eyes.

My library was well-stocked with memoirs, sayings and biographies of the great hermits and ascetics. There were enough narratives and legends where the wise and holy recluse was troubled by vicious beasts or bandits to be a sub-genre. Of course, the heroes always won. The wild animals became tame and peaceable with kindly treatment, and the wild people were uplifted and reformed by their host's righteous example.

It didn't look promising. Try as I might, I couldn't find a single one where the hermit poisoned the well by blasting his tormentor with weaponized radiation. Those sorts probably died unknown and didn't get books written about them.

I decided to pursue a different tack.

The captain had remarked that the image on the moon was a legendary creature of the navigator's culture. He was probably a 'Terry;' they made up the vast majority of hominid spacefarers since the diaspora. What had Nightmare Moon said before her meal caught up with her? That she had the nature of the 'unicorn'? I searched for that, as well as "Terra" and "myth."

There wasn't a lot of fiction in my library. I dove into any sort of escapist trash during my youth, and anyone can see where that got me. Still, the search managed to dredge up an entry from Encyclopedia of the Wonders of All Worlds, a collection of myth and folklore that had somehow escaped my frivolity purges.

Under "Myths of Terra: Fantastic Creatures: U"

The unicorn owes its quasi-existence to a mixture of linguistic ambiguity, honest ignorance and outright fraud. A primitive Terran historian's written description of a now-extinct land mammal was fancifully interpreted by the inhabitants of an adjacent continent, their assumptions influenced by the smaller quadrupeds native to their region. This misinterpretation was cemented by enterprising seafaring hunters who passed off the spiraling drill-like teeth of their prey as unicorn horns.

Now I remembered why I'd kept this one: it was perhaps the most un-romantic treatment of the legendary one could ask for.

The text was broken by three images. The left one was a huge, stocky thick-skinned land animal with a horn on its snout. On the right side was a bullet-shaped sea creature with a long spiraling spear sprouting from its face. Between the two was, apparently, the unicorn.

I studied the image carefully. There were differences. The head was longer and narrower, there were no wings, the tail was more whip-like with only a tuft of longer hair at the tip and the creature had two toes per limb instead of just one. Still, the picture looked more like Nightmare Moon than it did either of the things upon which it was supposedly based. I read on.

This scheme greatly increased their profits, as it was believed that unicorn horn possessed the power to nullify poisons.

I blinked and re-read the sentence. She had implied that the poisons would not affect her because she had the "nature of the unicorn." But... how would she know about that, if they were just the ancient imagining of an obscure species from the far side of the galaxy? Did Terrans engineer Nightmare Moon's species in the image of their myths? I was fairly certain the Terrans didn't even have space travel a thousand years ago, much less the ability to manipulate genetics on this scale. Did the ponies come to them long ago, and this world was but a far-flung colony regressed to pre-spaceflight levels?

It felt as if I had discovered something important, but I had no idea what to do with it, or what it meant. The Increate's cosmos is far stranger than anyone can fathom.

Next I called up the extensive report the surveying team compiled on this star system. I'd seen it before when I was trying to decide where to set up my hermitage, but that time I'd only skimmed it and looked at the pictures. It had seemed like an obvious choice. It was only two leaps away from a trade lane, they assured me natives weren't going anywhere soon and no power had yet laid claim to the system.

Also, the planet and moon had a comforting familiarity. With the oceans of liquid water and the large, single satellite, they could have been my own homeworld and its companion during an earlier, idyllic age before the rest of the galaxy beat a path to our door.

I smiled for the first time in a while. This was how things should be. A hermit star, untroubled by the worlds beyond its reach.

Or, it had been. I'd come here and ruined everything. Thanks to me, the ponies and whatever else crawled about on the planet were five months away from the prophesied return of a powerful, undying enemy. It really would be better if everyone just stayed at home.

As I was the one who upset this delicate system, it was my responsibility to set it right. As simply killing her had failed, I had to use whatever negligible influence I commanded to convince Nightmare Moon to abandon her plan of genocide.

If that worked, maybe I could get her to spare me as well.

Maybe this report would give me some real insight on her species. Most of it I could barely even parse. Solar irradiance, mineral compositions of the major bodies, orbits of navigational hazards and so on meant nothing to me.

To my dismay, the life on the planet was given relatively short shrift. As it turned out, none of the surveyors had even entered the atmosphere, content instead to observe from afar. The report estimated at least five distinct civilized groups on the planet, and gave each a some sort of technological development rating using a scale I'd never heard of.

More usefully, there was a list of the ear-marks they'd used to arrive at the rating and the images by which they'd been identified.

I scrolled past pictures of crop rotation, a bulbous lighter-than-air craft, and local-scale weather manipulation (it seemed oddly advanced for a society traveling around on dirt roads with animal- or combustion-powered vehicles, but I am no xenoarchaeologist). Did she care about things like this? Would the thought of all the art, labor and genius that she would end with her revenge stay her metaphorical claw?

Under "communication," one of the entries stopped me short. "Radio broadcast" it read. Instead of a satellite image, there was an icon representing an audio recording. I instructed the tablet to replay through the translator and after a few seconds of static a cheerful masculine voice began chirping in my ear.

"—And that's all the local news for the hour. Now over to Sun Shower with the weather schedule for the week."

"Thank you, Soundbite," a feminine voice replied. "Well everypony, things are on schedule for another perfect Nightmare Night this year."

My ears pricked up. A day dedicated to her? Now this would surely have an impact!

"The weather patrol is planning for clear skies over Fillydelphia for the next four days, with southwesterly winds topping out at about two leagues per hour. Daytime highs in the mid-sixties, with our beloved princess supplying some extra heat on the evening of the 31st to keep the trick-or-treaters warm."

"Better be careful," Soundbite interrupted. "A full moon and clear skies means the Mare in the Moon will have no trouble spotting all the little fillies and colts out there!"

"That's right," Sun Shower said, just as upbeat as before, "so all you kids make sure your costumes are ready and you've got plenty of candy or she'll gobble you up!"

"Yes, let's see if we can keep Filly's zero-ponies-gobbled record intact for another year!"

The two announcers laughed. I stopped the playback.

This didn't bode well. The ponies had some sort of holiday or ritual related to Nightmare Moon, but they certainly didn't believe her return was imminent. In fact, it seemed as if they didn't think her real at all. To them she was only a bogey out of folklore!

I doubted this would please her.

A noise from the other side of the habitat caught my attention. Had she awoken already? I spun around and hid the tablet behind my back, mind racing for something to say.

Nightmare Moon slept on, though the light from her spike, or rather, her horn (though what an inefficient location for a horn!) had grown such that it was uncomfortable to look directly at it.

I cast about for the source of the noise. It was coming from the far side of one of the large supply boxes I'd used to make my pointless impromptu barricade. The lid was up, and whatever was behind it was carelessly rummaging through its contents, tossing tubes, cans and other containers out into a messy pile on the floor.

As quietly as I could, I skirted around the edge of the room to get a look at what was doing this.

The little statue again. It was darker than before, formed of the wet mud Nightmare Moon had washed from her coat. Remembering its actions last time, I boldly approached it and quietly requested the reason it was tearing my home apart.

It continued its search, ignoring me. Could it actually hear with ears made of compacted dust? It could apparently see through eyes of the same material, so it seemed reasonable. I reached out and tapped it on the shoulder. Without looking, it pushed my claw away, then reached down into the bottom of the box. Straining, it hauled out a large cloth sack of brewing beans I'd picked up on impulse at my homeworld's spaceport. A flick of its spike cut a hole in one end of the container and dumped the contents back into the box.

This was just too much. I grabbed the sack and tried to pull it away from the little statue. As if it expected this, it simply let go, leaving me reeling off-balance with the torn, empty bag in my claws. Diving into the box again, it emerged with its forelegs full of packaging material, which it held out to me with an expectant look. I stared blankly at the offering.

It rolled its gray eyes and stuffed the insulation into the bag. Confused, I stood there and held it open as she repeated the process three more times. When the container was full, the blue light moved across the rent and it stitched itself back together before my eyes. The statue smiled at me and indicated I should follow it before skipping on silent feet over to where Nightmare Moon lay. I followed with trepidation, trying futilely to keep my toes and scales from making noise.

The living statue pointed to the thing I was carrying and then to the incapacitated pony's head. It took me a second to understand what it meant. It had made the sack into one of those head-cushions creatures who have to sleep on the ground seem to enjoy so much. Of course! A peace offering; a sign of goodwill. The obvious thing to do, but...

I'd have to wake her up to give it to her.

The statue motioned impatiently to me as I hesitated. Why couldn't it be the one to disturb her? The two of them were clearly on better terms. I tried to hand the cushion to it, but it refused to take it and pointed insistently at Nightmare Moon. It didn't want Nightmare Moon to return to the planet either. I supposed I ought to trust it.

There was nothing for it then. This was a better idea than anything I'd come up with, after all. I just had to hope that she'd be in a good mood instead of destroying me on the spot as I had tried to do to her.

I whispered her name.

She didn't stir.

I tried again, louder.

Nightmare Moon grimaced and pulled the collapsed tent over her head. "Hgoway. Znot ev'nin yet."

I looked at the statue and shrugged. Maybe later?

It rolled its eyes again, walked up and gave the pony under the tent a little kick in the side.

Nightmare Moon waved a wing to try and ward her tormentor away but only succeeded in throwing most of the tent aside. Finally, she stretched and rubbed her eyes. For a moment, she seemed to forget where she was.

"Ugh, what a horrible dream," she groaned, "and it seemed to go on forever too. Upon my life, no more midday snacks, I mean it!"

The huge midnight-dark pony squinted blearily at me and suddenly recalled where she was. Her expression passed from shock to dismay and settled on the familiar cold anger in the space of a second.

"So, come to finish me off, have you?" she said.

I glanced back at the little statue for support, but there was only a small mound of mud where it had once stood. I should have seen that coming.

Nightmare Moon noticed the object in my claws. "Oh, I see. Smother her with a pillow while she's sleeping, is that it? You're as stupid as you are vicious. If I could suffocate, I'd have done it sometime in the last thousand years, hm?"

Her highness looked uncomfortable, I explained, so I had provided her with a blanket and made this "pill-oh" that she might rest easier.

The cold blue eyes were skeptical, but she pulled the sack from my grip anyway. "It'll probably explode," she grumbled, "or burst forth with spikes or come alive and try to eat me." Nonetheless, she fluffed it, lay her head upon it and pulled the tent back over herself, this time turning her back to me.

I just stood there, not knowing what to do. Had the gesture worked, or was it only a temporary stay of execution?

"I'm not going to kill you, Pangolin," she said, as if reading my thoughts.

Though I should have left it at that, I asked her why not.

"Because I gave my word," she replied. "I said I would spare you if you helped me get home, and you are. I probably should've made a nullifying clause for also trying to assassinate me, but it's too late for that."

I told her I was very grateful for her mercy.

She snorted derisively. "It's not mercy, it's honor. I keep my promises. Nopony else does that. They just say whatever's most useful at the time. None of them were ever grateful either. I finally get some thanks and it's from a monster that tries to kill me. Typical."

There was a pause.

"But, er, thank you for the pillow and blanket," she said with chagrin. "I'm not an ingrate like the rest of those ponies. I don't take things for granted, even gifts from a beast like you."

Was there anything else I could do for her?

"Just leave me alone until I can finish washing your poison out of my blood. I'll put you to work then, you'll see!" she paused to yawn. "We'll prepare for my glorious return. I'm... I'm gonna..." Her voice trailed off into a soft sigh, and then she began to snore.

The knowledge that I was safe for the moment caused my weariness to come crashing back down on me. How many hours ago had I left on that fateful final walk around the crater's rim? I felt as if I'd been awake for days. It was all I could do to climb up onto my perch and suspend myself by my tail before sleep overcame me too.

Nightmare

The warm evening wind sighed through the boughs of the park. Clouds of dust and pollen swirled in the shallow shafts of sunlight that slipped through the canopy above me. The moss and ferns tickled my feet as I passed. The only thing missing were the smells; dirt, flowers, fellows, and the occasional stench of an alcohol- or methane- breather who'd wandered through on shore leave.

As is the way of these things, I did not question why I found myself lost in one of the provincial capital's public parks on a breezy spring evening. No, there was a far more pressing issue on my mind.

Namely, how could I escape before the sun set?

The park was only safe in the daytime. Criminals, rowdy sailors, gangsters and worse sorts controlled it after dark, or so everyone had always warned me. I had avoided the artificial wilderness as much as possible for that reason, and couldn't have navigated the park even without the rapidly lengthening shadows. The twisty paths seemed to meander in circles or branch into ever-darker and more overgrown regions.

I was completely alone. There was no friendly face I could ask for directions or join with for safety. Then again, at least I hadn't run into any of the ne'er-do-wells yet either.

No sooner had I thought this than a twig snapped behind me. I turned to see five strangers materialize from the trees. Their scales were etched with obscene words and images, their postures were low and hostile, and each one carried a gleaming stiletto. None of the thugs spoke, but grinned evilly and flourished their weapons as they moved to surround me.

I tried to break through their ring and flee, but they kept blocking me, shoving me back into the center and swiping at me with their blades. I tried to climb the tree they had herded me toward, but the trunk felt as hard as stone and as smooth as glass. Out of options, I wedged myself in a crevice formed by a tree's roots and curled into a ball. It wouldn't do me any good. Those stilettos were designed to kill those of my species; slender enough to be thrust between scales and easily long enough to pierce vital organs.

As I sat there waiting for the stab that would end my life, quiet, pitiless laughter floated down from the tree.

"Oh, this is just adorable," the voice from above said. "They're waving those oversized needles around like it makes them scary or something. You lot are about as fearsome as kittens playing at being tigers."

I heard the criminals step back, trying to find the source of the voice. I myself unrolled just enough to peek into the branches above.

Nightmare Moon reclined on a limb with a single foreleg dangling, not merely unconcerned but outright enjoying the spectacle unfolding below.

The thugs were not impressed. One snarled and produced a sidearm from the holster at his waist. He drew a bead on the jet-black creature.

"Look, Pangolin," she called to me, "he's going to try and send me home too. What a helpful little monster!" Blue light flashed from her horn and the weapon disintegrated into black smoke, followed by its wielder's arm. With a bestial scream, he fell back to writhe in agony on the dirt before turning entirely into vapor. The other thugs melted back into the trees, no doubt in search of easier prey.

I uncurled and regained my feet, still staring at the spot where the unlucky aggressor had been. Behind me, Nightmare Moon left her perch and glided to the ground, landing on a patch of moss with an earthy thump.

An errant thought nagged me. Something wasn't right about all this. Something was out of place.

I turned to her and admitted my confusion. Did she know what was the matter?

"Oh, I'll tell you what's wrong," she said. "I'm not hearing 'thank you for saving my worthless scaly hide from those ruffians, your highness! You're the greatest princess ever, way better than what's-her-snout!' "

Of course! Where were my manners? I apologized and assured her that my family would see to it that she was richly rewarded. My brother could make sure she wouldn't get into any legal trouble from slaying that thug.

Something seemed off about that too.

She shook her head and laughed at me. "That won't be necessary. We're not really here. You're dreaming, idiot."

Dreaming?

Everything came back to me. I wasn't on this world anymore. I'd gone to a supposedly-uninhabited moon to embrace the solitary life, but instead found this mad alien and been dragooned into helping her insane plan to murder a planet. ...And now I was even dreaming about her. Dismay was apparent on my face. She appeared perturbed.

"Hey! What are you moping about? Did you want to dream about being shanked by a bunch of burly strangers? We can do anything now!" She turned in a circle, drinking in the twilit arboreal scenery. "Oh, how I've missed this," she said to herself. "I haven't been able to visualize my own world right for centuries, and of course there's been nopony else to dream-walk with." She completed her circuit and faced me again, giddy with excitement. "So, why don't you give a visiting dignitary the royal tour? How's the nightlife?"

I scowled and crossed my arms. Bad enough that I have to deal with Nightmare Moon during my every waking moment, I told her, but there was no way I'd waste my nights dreaming about her! I tried to recall what little I'd read about lucid dreaming. Maybe I could just make her disappear.

For the briefest moment, she looked hurt, then tossed her mane and affected haughty aloofness. "You're not dreaming about me, dunderhead. I'm actually here, inside your dream."

I laughed. That was nonsense. I explained it to her slowly, enjoying the chance to talk down to the creature that so terrified me in the waking world. The natural philosophers all agreed that dreams were jumbles of disconnected thoughts that only seemed to have coherent progression in retrospect. To share the dream of another is impossible, I asserted. Why, she might as well claim to have drunk from the oasis in a mirage or visited the backward room seen through a looking-glass.

"For your information, I've done the latter," she retorted. "Honestly, mirror-worlds aren't all they're cracked up to be. The speculars are even ruder and more thoughtless than the ponies they have to mimic."

What obvious fabrication! I was about to give a scornful rejoinder when she continued:

"These 'natural philosophers' of yours, how do they go about 'discovering' that the dreamlands don't exist?"

By experimentation, I replied, caught off-guard by the question.

Nightmare Moon smiled in a way that reminded me of the thugs from before. "Well, you're about to be a natural philosopher too! If this is a dream, you can do whatever you want here." She raised an eyebrow. "And don't even pretend you aren't itching to get back at me. You've just been bottling it up because you're a coward. Now, if I'm merely your own mind's phantasm of Nightmare Moon, then nothing will come of it and you can say and do anything your evil little heart desires. But!" She raised a single toe to wiggle in my face. "If I'm the princess herself, visiting your dreams, then I'll remember every bit, and I will not let you get away with it!"

If she was the real Nightmare Moon, I reminded her, she'd given her word not to harm me.

"Pangolin, Pangolin, Pangolin," she chided, running an armored toe down my back with a noise like a xylophone's scale, "I always remember my promises. I only swore to spare your life, not that I wouldn't harm you. Try me and you'll find that even mortals can live through quite a bit! ...But I digress. You were saying something about how foolish it was for me to be telling you that I'm actually here telling you things?"

I clamped my jaws shut.

She patted me patronizingly on the head with her wing. "Well, you may not be a philosopher, but at least you're smart. Now, shall we be off?"

Nightmare Moon caught me up in the blue light from her horn, opened her wings and flapped them three times. The ground seemed to fall away below us as if it had been dropped. As we passed above the treetops, the lights of the provincial capital's skyscrapers and spaceport glowed on the horizon around us. The flying pony oohed appreciatively, seeming to forget me.

"Towers of light everywhere! How beautiful!" she exclaimed. "You know, when I'm done dealing with my rebellious subjects, I'll have a bit of free time on my hooves. Maybe..."

I barely heard her. I am afraid of heights. This may seem odd coming from a creature descended from tree-climbers and limb-perchers, but being suspended over five hundred ells from the ground by nothing more than the power of this hateful dream-invading beast scared me out of my wits. Part of me knew this was all in my imagination, but that part was drowned out by sheer instinctual terror. I flailed and screamed in the air.

As I panicked, the landscape began to wobble and fade. I must have been waking up.

"Hey, no! Stop that at once!" Nightmare Moon commanded. "Quit acting like you're falling or I'll drop you for real!"

The next thing I knew I was in freefall, the dark ground rushing forward to meet me. I threw my claws before my eyes just before the impact.

I awoke in a heap on the floor beneath my perch, head aching. I'd never fallen from the perch before. It shouldn't be possible for me to inadvertently lose my grip, especially in low gravity.

Nightmare Moon, awake but still resting in her makeshift bed, regarded me from across the room. She smirked but said nothing.

My rattled brain struggled to make sense of what I'd just experienced. It had been unlike any other dream I could recall. Was it true? Did she move among my thoughts even now? No! Of course she couldn't see into my mind. Hadn't I deceived her before? Why would it matter whether I was awake or asleep?

Perhaps hypnosis then? No, it couldn't be that either. She'd been laid low by the plants she'd stolen from my garden at the time. The dream must have simply been nonsense conjured up by my subconscious mind.

"Did you have pleasant dreams, Pangolin?" she asked innocently.

Not wanting to admit how much the thought of her had disturbed my rest, I simply expressed incomprehension as to how I'd fallen to the ground.

Nightmare Moon nonchalantly removed one of her greaves and polished the shiny black toe it had covered against her coat. "No mystery there. I meant it when I said I'd drop you for real."

Though she wasn't looking at me, she appeared to enjoy my astounded reaction.

Going into dreams as if they were real places of their own was impossible. But she'd done it. She knew what had happened. What kind of power, what kind of understanding, how precise a control over her environment was necessary to perform such a feat?

Her dream of killing a planet was sounding more feasible all the time. And she'd found the brief glimpse of my own homeworld alluring...

My duty to convince her to spare her own had just taken on an extra degree of urgency.

Matins

Even if my cell had been annexed by a superpowered lunatic, I still had my duties, both sacred and mundane. Refusing to speak to Nightmare Moon further about the dream, I went through my 'morning' routine of using the waste reclaimer (she had the decency to avert her eyes, but the groans of disgust and gagging noises were completely uncalled for), washing, and checking the habitat's systems. The batteries were at the predicted charge and internal temperature and pressure were within acceptable limits. I had expected the oxygen levels to have dipped from the large creature sharing my atmosphere and helping herself to my garden, but the mixer was still only working for one.

I glanced back at my guest. She gave me a perturbed look in return. "What?"

She wasn't breathing, I informed her.

"Oh, don't you wish. Of course I'm breathing, fool," she said, exhaling sharply to emphasize her point.

I clarified. I meant she wasn't actually drawing oxygen from the air. The report had said the planet had a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere like my homeworld, so I simply assumed—

"I'm fine. I don't need to pluck wisps of gas out of the air any more than I need to eat or drink." She paused to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Just having some air in there is enough. You can't imagine what it's like, going around for centuries with your lungs and your gut totally empty. Not hungry, not choking, just... nothing. Eventually, I thought maybe... all I had was this accursed dust so..."

Nightmare Moon shivered and began rocking back and forth, staring off into space. "She did it to me... all her fault... nopony lifted a hoof to help... never really cared," she said in a small voice. Suddenly, her face twisted into a mask of rage. "I'll make them pay... I'll make them pay!"

It seemed like a good idea to distract her from dwelling on these grudges. Remembering the way she'd reacted to the gift of the statue's pillow and how eager she'd been to eat, I told her it would be no trouble if she wanted to breathe normally. The atmospheric mixer was more than capable of making up the difference. I had no idea whether this was true or not.

At the sound of my voice, the pony snapped out of her vengeful reverie and re-composed her normal haughty countenance. She looked down her nose at me and laughed mirthlessly. "How sweet of you to offer. You think I'm going to trust you just because you did one halfway-decent thing for me? I bet the air's full of some kind of deadly gas that monsters are immune to."

Feeling as if I'd escaped yet another disaster, I shrugged and said she could suit herself.

She seemed to have nothing further to say to me, so I hastily finished my checks and began my morning office. Perhaps it seems odd that I'd stick to my schedule with Nightmare Moon's attack on her homeworld looming and myself no longer, by definition, a hermit. To tell the truth, I think I needed this at least as much as I did air and food. A small assertion of my independence, proving to myself I was still on my chosen path in spite of all that had happened.

The reading was one with which I was already familiar. It was the chapter of deeds where a world-ruling emperor of old is warned by a prophet that a servant of the Increate would visit him in disguise that very night and extract justice for his stamping on the faces of the poor and bringing war and terror to his neighbors. The emperor threatened the prophet with torture until she revealed he could turn the servant's wrath aside with mere hospitality and goodwill.

The emperor then laughed, thinking he had thwarted the Increate, and instructed his guards and slaves to throw wide the palace gates, welcoming all, even the most diseased beggar, for that one night.

The rest of the story is well-enough known that I need not go into detail; how every enemy and rival the emperor knew, and many he didn't, descended upon his home that night, forcing him to honor and grant boons and pardons from the greatest to the least, lest he offend the divine servant in disguise. The servant was the last to appear, saying it was so impressed with the emperor's manners it would take a new disguise and return the next day. And so it continued every day thereafter, until both subjects and foreigners praised the emperor as a model of mercy and generosity.

It had always bothered me that the account ended before revealing whether the emperor learned to accept this oversight or withered away in paranoia and powerlessness. His empire must have eventually crumbled, too, with no word on whether this divine intervention slowed or hastened its fall.

In the story I found myself living, the ruler, Nightmare Moon's sister, was an unknown quantity. Did she live as though the prophesied return of her imprisoned sibling was drawing near? Did she actually deserve the wrath that Nightmare Moon vowed to bring down upon her? Did she have the power to simply lock the prisoner back up? Clearly the pony lounging behind me thought her victory as inevitable as her return.

I chided myself for letting my mind wander and began the next duty of my office; an hour of uninterrupted spoken prayer. I shut off the translator, removed it and placed it on the floor beside me. This was between myself and the Increate. I lit an hour-stick of incense before the icon, then knelt.

First, confession. There was no shortage of misdeeds to own up to this time. Hatred, presumption, despair, falsehood and, of course, murder, were among the heaviest chains on my anima. I too was like the emperor who had to be threatened into decency.

I asked for pardon and true repentance for myself and (though the insincerity set my teeth on edge) safety and swift travels for the captain and crew of the vessel that bore me here, as I had promised. Then, throwing myself prostrate before the icon, I begged for courage and wisdom and insight, not for my own sake, but so that I could bring this age-old conflict to a peaceful resolution, so none need die or be imprisoned. If I died, so be it, if only no other had to suffer for my mistakes!

My claws dug into the grip-enhancing surface of the floor. More than ever before, I felt as though my prayers dissipated into the cosmos, unheeded by any being.

It wasn't the case.

"Who are you talking to, Pangolin?" said a voice right behind me. I flinched and slowly turned. There stood Nightmare Moon, the translator, reactivated, floating beside her. Her expression was unreadable.

"Don't play dumb," she said when I made no response, "I saw you whispering into this."

My icon, wrapped in her blue glow, floated from the shelf to join the translator before her face. "How does it work? It's got some sort of voice-sending enchantment, hasn't it?" She turned it over in the air. "I know you can hear me!" she shouted to the metal figure. "Answer me! Who is this?"

Of course, there was no reply.

"I heard you plotting against me with whoever this lets you speak to," she accused, light from her horn washing back and forth over my icon as if inspecting it. "How are you hiding its power? Tell me how it works at once!"

Feeling much like I had on that awful day when I was roped into teaching a children's doctrinal class at my sanctuary, I explained that there was no inherent significance to the icon; it was merely an aid to focus one's attention on the divine.

"Pangolin, I thought you were through telling lies," she said, sighing theatrically. "If you won't tell me how your toys work then I'll just have to take them away." The icon floated down the ground, and she set an armored foot lightly atop it. "Last chance; fess up or I make this fellow short and wide."

I think Nightmare Moon was expecting me to cringe or plead, as she seemed surprised at the look of utter disdain I gave her instead. Had she really never seen an icon, a shrine... an idol, even? How barbaric! Yes, I was conspiring, I told her. I was conspiring with the very foundation of the universe! If that put her and me at odds, then perhaps she should reevaluate her goals.

My uninvited guest was slightly taken aback by my outburst. She glanced down at the icon, studying its molded features.

"The foundation of the universe could use a bit of polish. No, I think this is a conduit to some super-being the same way your little death-wand was a vehicle." She thrust her foot downward, collapsing the icon effortlessly. The shriek of the warping metal sounded almost like a living being. Despite my earlier words, I flinched at the casual desecration.

Nightmare Moon raised her hoof and kicked the remains of the icon to me. What once had depicted the Increate as one of my species was now an irregular disc of wrinkled metal impressed with her boot-print. As I traced its edge with a claw, the dark pony grinned down at me, no doubt expecting to amuse herself at my dismay.

I wouldn't give her the satisfaction. An icon is but a symbol, and this was an icon still. Before it had symbolized the Increate as source and end of all. Now it was far more pertinent to my present condition; the Increate who suffers with the downtrodden and afflicted. A timely reminder.

Without a word, I picked it up, turned and reverently placed the smashed icon in its original place on the shelf. I knelt once more and, since prayer attracted her ire, skipped to silent contemplation. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the sharp, fragrant scent of the incense.

She allowed me to sit in peace for about a minute before letting out an exasperated growl. "Are you doing this just to annoy me, Pangolin? We both know that thing didn't have a single spark of magic before, and I washed it with my best disenchanting spell just to make sure. Who do you think you're fooling?"

Not rising or turning this time, I crankily remarked that I was a hermit, not a sorcerer, and knew nothing of their arts. I had not know that she was an adept in the manipulation of the unseen world.

"You hadn't known? How did you think I dragged you through the air or brought the dust to life? Hidden strings and mirrors? What do you think this glorified icepick jutting from my skull is for, dolt?"

She called that magic?

"You don't? What in the great starry beyond do you call magic, then?"

I sighed and gave up trying to meditate. When I faced her again, her disdain had been nearly eclipsed by bewilderment and curiosity.

She was the first I'd ever met, I told her, who thought of magic as some inborn trait or effect of biology like her horn. After all, could not my claws be considered magical by the same definition? I could use them to move things from place to place, or create art and mechanisms endowed with movement.

Nightmare Moon was unconvinced. "What tortured logic. So if casting spells with my mind through my horn to alter the world isn't magic, what do you imagine is?"

Magic, I explained, is not based in biology, physics or engineering, but instead is a disreputable branch of economics.

"Oh yes, what could be more magical than the dismal science?" she stated flatly.

I harrumphed. If she was going to disbelieve everything I said, she might as well quit wasting time talking to me at all, I snapped. Didn't she have a genocide to plan?

Unashamed, she lay down and rested her head languidly on one of her front feet. "Yes, but at the moment I'd rather see you twist yourself into knots making up nonsense. Do go on!"

I suppose she did need further education, at that. I adopted a lecturing tone. Beyond the comprehension of mortal beings like myself, or even her, vast powers moved through the cosmos, needing no vessel or world, and they sometimes dealt with us in pursuit of their own ends. These ends, though often inscrutable, were generally held to be wicked. She could think of it as how one might bribe a corrupt bureaucrat or make a deal with a gangster. An exchange of services and goods at its heart, but the things given and asked were not things that either party ought to have or do.

Her eyes widened slightly. Something I had said bothered her, though she tried to hide it in her voice. "This is worse than your magical claws. Supernatural bureaucrats for hire? Now I've heard everything. What, pray tell, do these mythical creatures want from your magicians?"

That, I admitted, was something into which an honest being should not inquire too deeply. All I knew was stories, but in those, the price was always something bad. Acts of violence toward the innocent and weak or spreading falsehood and distrust; great and terrible crimes to tiny, innocuous ones that had some horrible unseen ramification.

She actually started at the last bit, and then looked at me through narrowed eyes. Apparently she was familiar with this sort of magic, despite her previous claims.

"You... how did... no! You're just trying to trick me again, to pull her back out! There's no such thing as that kind of magic!" she insisted. Without warning, she rose, made a high-pitched noise of frustration and stamped both her front feet, adding another pair of dents to my floor. "Argh, it never fails! This prophecy is the one thing, the one thing in my life that's guaranteed to go right, and it gets fulfilled by—by the most nasty, false, vicious monster ever spawned from the stars! Why can't you just let me have this? What's wrong with you?"

What was wrong with me?

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME??

I told her what was wrong with me. My world, my species and my family were torn apart between vast interstellar powers, my hierarch kept rejecting my petitions to go into the cloistered life and when I finally struck out on my own to get away from it all and live in peace, a giant alien with a thousand-year-old grudge ambushed me, seized my home, nearly beat me to death with her 'magic' statues and only spared me because my destiny, my very reason for being, was to help her slaughter millions, nay, billions of strangers in some ludicrous vendetta!

I paused to catch my breath. This was only the second time I'd raised my voice to her, and the first time in anger.

She appeared genuinely surprised.

"Ludicrous? Grudge?" she spluttered. "The things I've suffered! The crimes they've committed against me! How can you possibly cast me as the villain?!"

I observed that heroines generally refrained from reveling in the extermination of their enemies' children.

"You're just ignorant," she said, looking at me with less anger than I had expected. "There's never been a cause more just than mine, but I guess I'm going to have to spell it out for you."

With folded arms, I told her I was listening.

"You'd better be. Once you hear what they've done, you'll be falling over yourself to be my vassal. It all started at the coronation. Officially, we were co-rulers, but her throne was a whole quarter-cubit taller than mine. A quarter cubit! Everypony could see it! Of course, I was naive then. I extended her the benefit of the doubt and assumed the designer had made a mistake, but she later let slip she'd inspected them beforehand and expressed her oh-so-tender concern that making my throne as large as hers would call attention to my 'diminutive stature,' really, she used those exact words and—"

...And so began the longest month of my life.

Miseries

On my homeworld, there is a shrub called the fleeceflower. It blooms in the spring with very un-fleecelike little blue blossoms. Its namesake appears when these are pollinated, producing a fertilized seed encased in a thick pale-blue puff of fuzz. This covering allows it to be picked up and carried far afield by the wind. Great masses of these seeds drift over the plains in late spring, clinging together until they appear as fleecy, low-flying clouds.

I mention this only that the analogy will be clear when I say that listening to Nightmare Moon's endless litany of wrongs and sufferings felt like being stoned to death by fleeceflower seeds.

The pony royal seemed to be blessed with a perfect memory for every time she'd been slighted. A visiting dignitary had broken some protocol concerning her. A courtier spread sordid palace gossip about her. A servant had been slow to obey her commands, clearly out of spite. On and on it went.

And her sister, always her sister! None of this mysterious creature's actions had any purpose but to harm her sibling. Every word was some veiled insult. Every deed either a prank at Nightmare Moon's expense or showing off to make her look inferior. Every seeming kindness was only condescension to humiliate her.

The spiel had gone on for hours and hours. insult after insult, woe after woe. She wasn't even looking looking at me anymore, just staring off into a corner and occasionally punctuating an especially horrible trespass with a stamp or a flick of her tail. I had the horrible feeling that I was eavesdropping on an inner monologue; the mental soundtrack that had accompanied all those years out there on the barren hills.

She hadn't been lying about not having to breathe either. She went for hours, then days without so much as pausing.

The content was, for the most part, as bad as the quantity. Maybe one in every couple dozen complaints could have been grudge-worthy, so far as I could tell through the haze of her paranoid editorializing, but the rest seemed to me to be pure fluff and uncharitable assumption. Whenever I thought her complaints couldn't get more petty or specious, another came along to prove me wrong. After detailing the things she'd suffered at the claws of the third generation of palace staff, the topic veered from her grievous woes back to her co-ruler and what the two of them actually did.

"She ruled the day and I ruled the night. That was supposed to be fair. Half for each of us, yes?" she asked me.

I supposed that explained why she had felt personally insulted when her subjects failed to be nocturnal. A moment of blessed silence alerted me that she expected a response. I nodded noncommittally from my seat on the floor.

Her lip curled into a sneer. "Idiot! Imbecile! You're as foalish as I was back then. It was a joke, just another subtle barb digging under my skin. Oh, she told me how very important it was. How many threats menaced our ponies from the dark, what a heroine I'd be to face them! She even implied that she couldn't overshadow me then. I would stand alone between the dangers of the night and our beloved subjects, and they would finally give me the praise I deserved."

It didn't work out that way, I inferred.

"No! No it did not!" she snapped back. "And don't you dare say I failed either! If anything, I was a victim of my own success. I protected them so well at night they soon forgot there was anything to fear. Instead of huddling in their little houses or keeping the watches with me through my night, they all just... they went to sleep. That was my reward, to spend all my waking moments alone, guarding those careless, thoughtless ponies."

Would that be a problem for her? I pointed out that she could follow them into their dreams.

"Ha! Who told you that?" she asked, grinning triumphantly that I'd finally admitted it. "It's true. I had to; not all the threats and monsters live in the waking world, after all. It was going to be perfect; I'd meet my subjects face to face, so to speak, delve into their hearts and rescue them from their greatest fears!" The grin dropped from her face, her head lowered and she barked a short, scornful laugh.

I asked her what had happened.

"How many dreams do you remember, Pangolin? Across your entire life, how many can you still recall?"

It was difficult to say with any certainty. No more than a dozen, perhaps.

"Yet you dream every night. It was the same with my ponies. I'd meet them there and we'd get along splendidly. They were always so amazed, so delighted that one of their rulers cared enough to go to such lengths for their well-being." Her eyes hardened. "And then her accursed morning would come, and they'd awaken and forget it all before they were done with breakfast! When I returned again the next night, it was as if they'd never met me. You see how she's got it rigged? That nag had it all worked out so that everything important, all the honor, all the adoration flowed to her and her alone! Everything she let me have was trash, scraps and thankless labor. She didn't let them remember me!"

The brain's tendency to prioritize waking memories over dreams for long-term storage was a common trait of nearly all beings that experienced consciousness, I said. How could it be a matter of Celestia allowing or forbidding anything?

She shook her head furiously. "You know nothing. I had found a way! I had worked something out and she wouldn't let me have it! It wasn't fair; I was in the right! They'd all be dead without me anyway!"

When she noticed that I had no idea what she meant, Nightmare Moon collected herself and explained. "Shortly before I was betrayed and sent here, there was a sickness among our subjects. Most adult ponies had the strength to endure it and recover, but many of the children did not. The victims would lose consciousness near the end and, after several days of feverish slumber, they perished in their sleep.

"Naturally, my dear sister couldn't bear having her whole civilization of sycophants thus reduced, so she and her unicorn toadies put all their knowledge to work trying to concoct a spell or medicine to cure the plague.

"I, of course, am no slouch at magic either, as you've seen. Instead of 'collaborating' and letting her steal all the credit yet again, I put my unique skills to a far better use. I went among the nobles, then the servants, and even among the commoners. I told them I could save their children who had fallen into the deathly sleep."

I nodded, trying not to imagine where this anecdote was going.

"There were so, so many! We filled an entire hall of the palace with their little pallets and beds. Fillies, colts, even tiny foals. My power was enough, though. The sickness still festered in them, but I soothed their pain. I nourished them from my own magic, and I forbade the plague from taking their lives.

"And then we dreamed, all together. A mere four weeks, but it was the most wonderful month I'd ever had! A few cried for their mothers at first, as might be expected, but, ha-ha, it works both ways."

'It?' What did she mean?

"It wasn't long before the youngest dreamers began to forget. They forgot about the sunlit world and my sister and even their own parents. There was only our starry dreamlands, all their little friends, and myself. I was their closest friend, their only princess... their mother." She closed her eyes, took a slow, deep breath and smiled dreamily, treasuring the memory.

I encouraged her to continue. How did it all end?

She snorted in annoyance at having her reverie interrupted and crossed her front legs. "How do you think? That nag saw that I was happy and dropped everything just to ruin it all! The children were fine, they were having the times of their lives, but she pretended she had to 'save' them with the miracle cure she and her hooflickers concocted. Save them from what? From me? Why did she have to horn in?"

I took a moment to try and understand what she was complaining about. Celestia administered the cure to the children Nightmare Moon had been protecting, allowing them to awaken and return to their families in health, and this was a bad thing?

The princess-in-exile stomped across the habitat toward me in a fury. "She stole them away. I had saved them! They loved me! They. Were. MINE!" The last word flew from her mouth with such volume and force I was literally blasted off my feet.

"Oh, but that isn't all." she continued at a normal volume, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "She wasn't the least bit sorry. She acted like she was doing me a favor by not mentioning 'your little indiscretion' when she took them from me and sent them back to their families. The children all forgot, too, and they soon made me regret I'd bothered at all. One of them had just become the next Lord Kittiwake and behaved about as horribly as his father had. Why, at the Grand Galloping Gala that year..."

And so the tirade continued, and then continued some more. My life consisted of listening to this interminable retelling all day, every day. For lengthy periods, she didn't even seem to notice whether I was paying attention, so lost was she in her recollections. She kept at it while I ate, while I maintained the habitat, while I mended the damage to my suits, and especially whenever I attempted to perform any of my hermitly duties. She probably blathered on even in my dreams, though, as she had complained, I could barely recall these within an hour of waking save for a vague feeling of disdain and unease. The horizon finally fell below the sun and still she wasn't finished.

This is not to say I tuned her out. To the contrary, I bore as much as my mind could take and noticed a pattern begin to emerge. Though it had began chronologically, she shifted into a stream-of-consciousness retelling, as one incident reminded her of another. She would recount in minute detail all the things that her subjects and others had done, but would inevitably return to 'that nag, Celestia,' the mastermind behind it all. She had utmost faith in her sister's malfeasance and masterful powers of manipulation, certain that everything she'd suffered ultimately happened by Celestia's will.

It seemed like a promising angle to argue. After waiting a couple more days more for her to pause so I could get a word in edgewise, I made a suggestion. Shouldn't she reserve her ire for the usurper and leave the others alone? Couldn't she at least wait and see if removing this one factor from the equation would make things better before turning on the rest of the planet?

She frowned sourly and shook her head. "It's easy to be soft-hearted and magnanimous when you've never been around them, Pangolin. That nag's so clever, but she's wrong about them. Completely wrong."

I asked what she meant. Wrong about what?

"Way back at the beginning, when we first set eyes on the mortal ponies, we didn't know what to make of each other. They were so puny and slow-witted and scared of everything. Even the strongest ones were like foals next to us. I didn't think they were even worth our time. She took me aside and admitted I was right. They were like foals, but that was why we had to care for them. She said that someday they'd grow up to be our peers instead of just our wards."

And it had taken longer than she liked?

"Please, I'm nothing if not patient. It wasn't slow; it simply didn't happen at all.

"Now where was I? Ah, yes. Anemone. Assistant to the Lady Chamberlain during the thirty-third year of our reign. So kind. So sympathetic. She reached out, wanted to be my friend. I thought she was sincere, but no sooner had we grown close than she started wheedling and whispering. Could I do her the tiniest favor? Could I suggest such-and-such to my sister? For her? Surely I wouldn't refuse the request of such a good friend, would I?"

I remarked that she was repeating herself; I was sure I'd heard this account a couple days ago.

She looked me in the eye and slowly shook her head. "You're thinking of Amphora, the fifth steward, and you're almost right. It follows a pattern. They do the same nasty things, over and over again, generation after generation. One batch goes back into the dirt and the next one is just as stupid and evil, if not worse. Do you know how many times some enterprising courtier has tried to butter me up as a stepping stone to my sister's ear? Guess."

Inwardly bemused by the bizarre mixed metaphor, I gave little thought to the question and put it an even twenty, certain it couldn't be that many.

"Thirty-seven, actually, and evenly spaced over the span of my reign. Whenever those mayflies forget what happened last time, another amoral fool steps up to try her luck." She stared out the window at the stars. "And they are lucky, really. They can go through their lives fooling themselves that things are getting better or worse. They don't live long enough to see that it's just a cycle. They don't improve; they don't grow up. It's always the same and I'm always at the bottom of the heap." Her eyes fixed on me again. "That's why I'm going to break it. It's all pointless and ugly and deserves to be ended."

As much as I hated to admit it, these last words struck a chord in me. They sounded far too much like the drunken ranting I'd spouted beside my brother's pyre not long before I booked my voyage here.

Apparently she noticed the faraway look in my eyes.

"You begin to understand. Do your kind live long enough to see it, Pangolin?"

Not wishing to give her more ammunition, particularly against other species, I simply noted that I had studied history, and learned of the rise and fall of the great stellar empires.

She nodded in understanding. "So it even stretches to the stars. Of course it does; why not? The emperors are the worst, too. Whenever a unicorn was foaled with so much as an extra spark of magical power beyond its peers, it would go and try to carve out a little empire for itself, enslaving everypony it could and attacking the ones it couldn't. Petty tyrants were the bane of our first couple centuries of rule."

I inferred that they eventually stopped, then. Wasn't that a sign of moral progress?

"No!" she snapped. "The only progress was that she was getting better at controlling them. We each had vastly greater magical powers than the common ponies, and plenty of time to learn to use them to their fullest. If a unicorn wanted to reach the apex of its power, it needed Celestia's support. She even started a little school to groom the most promising ones and ensure their loyalty. In time, she'd cornered the market on magic. Other than the occasional upstart with a relic, no pony would dare challenge us anymore. It was pointless, though."

Against my better judgment, I groused that I wouldn't think it pointless if someone would drive away all the crowned thugs who wanted to make my own world just another gem in their scepters. At least the stability would actually let people mind their own business and live in peace!

Nightmare Moon gave me a reevaluating glance. Her voice when she continued was the quiet, deadly-cold tone she used to express the utmost extent of her anger. "You think you've suffered more, is that right? You think I'm whining. You don't even believe me, do you?"

Her tendency to accurately figure out what I was thinking given time enough was rather troubling.

For the sake of tact, I loudly denied the charges, but she wasn't having any of it.

"Well, let's hear it! What are your petty problems? What tiny ills trouble a mortal mayfly so free of responsibility he can just take off on a jaunt between the stars when he's feeling sad? Did you lose your favorite dolly? Did you fall and scrape your knee? Go on, give me a laugh!"

That... that ignorant, arrogant, self-obsessed, vicious, hypocritical villain! How dare she, the same type as the grasping despots who had ruined my homeworld, make light of the way her ilk had treated me and mine! I drew myself up to my (admittedly small) full stature, took a deep breath and prepared to give her a piece of my mind.

"Oh, and don't take more than ten minutes." she said, interrupting just as I was about to begin. "My time is too valuable to be wasted by the likes of you."

In spite of her claim, I think she was pleased that my first half-minute was lost to speechless apoplexy.

Construction

After taking several calming breaths, I attempted to tell Nightmare Moon about myself, my people and our many troubles.

As has undoubtedly become clear by now, economy of language is not among my virtues. Were that not enough, I was further hampered by my audience's incessant questions, snide comments, and minute-by-minute updates of how much time I had remaining.

Still, I think I managed to do as best I could given the circumstances. There was time for an overview of our pre-contact history, how five agressive interstellar powers deemed my home system a vital strategic location because it was one of the few bridging the gap between the 2b and 3a arms. Each coveted it for their own, but they were unwilling to bear the cost of fighting one another directly in such a narrow spatial bottleneck. Instead, they clandestinely meddled in our affairs.

I related how the alien empires armed rebel groups to incite civil wars, bought corrupt politicians and magnates and controlled organized crime along with a hundred other little ways of breaking our spirits and seizing control of our world through subtlety. Though life had gone on, beneath the veneer, our own physical and moral weakness before these greedy, faceless powers was destroying us within as surely as any bombardment or invasion from without.

I had finished the grand overview and was just about to begin relating the history of my own great family and my personal connection to all this when she cut me off. Her outrage seemed to have cooled and she looked at me differently than before.

"Time's up, Pangolin. I'll admit, I was the tiniest bit moved by your story. It's as nothing next to my misfortunes, but then you've only been around for the narrowest sliver of my lifetime, after all.

"I can see the moral you were slowly crawling toward," she said, giving me a look of tired forbearance. "You've got it backward if you think to compare me to those foreign monsters picking your own apart. Your problem is that it's your fellow monsters are too much like my nasty, selfish, unthinking ponies. If they hadn't collaborated and sold each other out, those big star-monsters couldn't have caused near as much trouble for them." She nodded to me with the slightest flicker of sympathy in her eyes. "Of course you couldn't rid the universe of the whole lot of them as you ought, but removing yourself was the next best thing. You were right to turn your back on them."

Her approval galled, but I forced a smile. That she thought she could understand and relate to me could only aid my task to convince her to spare her people, couldn't it? Still, the idea that we were similar... that I had abandoned them... that the best course of action was their destruction, these thoughts gnawed at my hearts. Hadn't I as much as admitted this when I left home with the intention of spending the rest of my days on this moon? Was the hate that drove her to revenge twin to the impulse that had brought me out here, on a prophesied errand to release her?

I felt very cold.

Nightmare Moon abruptly tossed aside her makeshift blanket and rose to her full height. "Well, that's enough of bygones, wouldn't you say?" she asked, shaking her mane and appearing to be in high spirits. "It's better to look to the future. Now that we're agreed on a course of action, it's high time we began preparations for my glorious return." The towering dark creature strode to the door. "I'll need you to fill a building with air as you have this little cottage."

What was she talking about? What building?

And we were not agreed, I protested. If she'd only let me finish, she'd see that—

With her so-called magic she dragged me across the floor and pressed my face against the pane of a window. The desolate landscape rolled on as it ever had, colorless beneath the light of the sun. There was the beacon. There was the edge of my field of solar collectors, there the slope of the great crater, there the nearer hills below...

There was a new hill.

I could just make out a whirlwind of activity around it; glowing with that blue light of hers, living statues were excavating and quarrying stones, then laboriously moving them into place on the dome-shaped structure. It was enormous; hundreds of thousands of cubic ells, at the very least! She must have had her creations constructing it the entire time she'd been yammering at me.

But what was it for, I asked.

"You'll see once you've made it ready," she began, still smiling at me. "I'm sure you'll like it; it was your idea, after all!"

Having no idea what she meant and quite certain I, in fact, would not, I objected that I didn't have anywhere near enough gases to fill so vast a structure. The atmospheric mixer was designed for a small habitation like this one, not some vast uninsulated complex! Besides, how did she know we could trust those dust ponies? I reminded her of what happened last time we went among them.

Her smile drooped into a pout. "I am in complete control of all my powers, thank-you-very-much," she said, clearly offended. "Quit making excuses, Pangolin; your laziness gets less amusing by the moment. Don't expect me to believe that making a tiny bit more air is impossible for a monster that travels between the stars and keeps a little wand that throws solar fire. Put on your armor, get the air-making machine and whatever else you need, and do as I say!"

Well, I'd said my piece. If I didn't even try, it would surely go worse for me. She'd have her way, and there was nothing I could do about it. I had a spare mixer. It was only a miniature emergency model, but between the main mixer and my mostly-recovered hydroponic garden, I should be able to escape choking to death. Hopefully once the spare burned out futilely trying to pressurize the edifice she'd built, Nightmare Moon would give up whatever bizarre plan she was trying to enact. Maybe once she saw with her own eyes the limits of what my technology could accomplish, she would realize she'd asked the impossible?

Ha. And while I was at it, maybe she'd repent of her plot to wipe out her species, pledge herself to the service of the Increate and set up her own hermitage on the opposite side of the moon, never to bother me again. It seemed about as likely.

In such a situation, the path of least resistance appeared to be the only reasonable choice. I was sure by now that she'd make me regret whatever course of action I took. As she had ordered, I suited up and loaded the extra mixer, a battery, and a few spare canisters of oxygen and nitrogen gas onto a rugged little crawler cart. I had intended to use the vehicle to help move supplies to and from my cell when vessels came to resupply me. When I had arrived here, I expected these infrequent visits would be the units by which I measured a peaceful, blissful life. How long ago it seemed!

And yet it was still several months before the ship would return.

We stepped outside the habitat for the first time that long day. As before, Nightmare Moon pulled the air from the airlock along with her, hemming it in with the power of her horn. She made no attempt to help me pull the trolley through the soft dust, but between its large wheels and the minute gravity I managed it myself.

We were halfway between my dwelling and the new hill when I felt the weight of my cargo abruptly and significantly increase. I looked back to see what was the matter.

They say that if each heart skips a beat one after another, the victim will be dead by the last. I can report from personal experience that this is not true, for crouching atop the pile of hardware and materials, a mere couple ells from my head, was another glowing dust pony.

I shouted for help, pulled myself free from the cart's harness and leaped across the airless plain to catch up with my hated guest.

Utterly unconcerned, she turned to look where I was pointing, then laughed. "Get down from there!" She called to the animated dust, "He's far too feeble to pull all that junk and you at the same time."

The dust pony unfolded a pair of useless wings and leaped off the cart. It was only then I noticed that this was the little statue I'd seen three times before. It silently laughed at me as well, and waved a front leg as if greeting a now-familiar acquaintance.

I hunched down in the dust to try and gather my wits after the shock. Whatever the rest had done, this one had helped me in the past, I reminded myself. It acted as if it wished to prevent Nightmare Moon's return to the planet. Though it seemed to somehow have a close relationship with Nightmare Moon, it had never made any move against me. Its presence ought to give me confidence.

"Quit lollygagging, both of you," Nightmare Moon said harshly. She turned and continued walking toward the new hill.

I harnessed myself to the cart again and followed the staggered line of prints the exiled princess left in the dust behind her. The little statue got behind the cart and pushed.

It's pathetic, I know, but when I felt the weight of the cart lighten, tears welled up in my eyes such that I almost stumbled. That whole long month I'd been cooped up in my cell, listening to Nightmare Moon's endless complaints against her people, there hadn't been a single kind word or deed from either of us to the other. I had sat listening, plotting and hating her, and she had treated me simply as a thing at which to vent, pitying only herself and scorning all else, thinking nothing of having me sacrifice every second attending to her wishes. All that time with never a smile or a pleasant thought... helping me bear this load, an ordinary, decent, normal act, was like an oasis in the midst of the desert. I do not think the pony or the dust noticed my emotion.

As the three of us approached our destination, I marveled again that something of this size could be the work of a month. What had looked like another pale hill from my dwelling revealed itself as an elaborately designed structure. The dust ponies that had been finishing it were nowhere to be seen, but the outer wall was filled with arched niches, each containing images in a variety of postures. I was amused for a second at the thought of moving statues carving normal ones, or perhaps them posing just so and then de-animating, but when I looked more closely at them my merriment choked and died.

The postures I could recognize were troubling, and every single one's eyes rolled to track us, their expressions ranging from stern disapproval to malicious hatred. My two companions didn't seem to notice anything amiss about this.

Simply to break the terrible silence, I asked Nightmare Moon what these statues really were.

"It would be a waste to explain it to someone with such asinine misconceptions about magic," she said, ascending the short, shallow flight of stairs to the entrance.

As the little statue and I wrestled the trolley up the first step, I apologized for my earlier dismissal. She was the expert and I the lay-being, after all.

Nightmare Moon paused at the top of the stairs next to one of the statues flanking the pitch-black passageway leading within. "Very well," she said and beckoned to the statue. It was a horned wing-less one, much like the 'unicorn' in the book I'd read. The blue glow of her power suffused it and it clumsily climbed down from its pedestal and knelt before her. Its face, still sullen and hostile, belied its posture.

"Magical power," she began, "must express itself. It wells up in the innermost being and flows outward into the world. However, its outward effects can only reflect the inward nature, like so." She flicked her horn in a counterclockwise loop, and the statue's expression changed to one of blissful adoration.

"Of course, as princess and rightful ruler of the night, my own powers are immense. Because I can't actually use them as I ought imprisoned here, It seeps out, wasted, and takes, among other things, the form of these stupid dustballs representing the injustice I've suffered at the hooves of the ponies." As she spoke, the statue's head slowly turned away from her until it was pointing straight backwards, a position that I was certain would be fatal or at least excruciating for a flesh-and-blood pony. Its smile now looked hollow and mindless, a mockery of true expression.

Nightmare Moon apparently found the sight as disconcerting as I did. She took a step back and blinked. "I... huh. That's new." She said. "When my attention's on them, they're only able to do what I wish."

Why then, I asked, did she twist its head?

She appeared flustered. "It's... it's an image of a pony so of course it's going to misbehave and try to make me look foolish. It has to be true to that nature too, doesn't it?" It looked to me as if she was primarily trying to convince herself. Her horn's glow redoubled and the statue awkwardly rose, still mutilated, and returned to its pedestal.

'Only able to do what she wished' indeed! Instead of calling her on the obvious falsehood, I asked about the one next to me, helping me pull the cart up the stairs. Why did she speak to this one and never to any of the others? Was it special somehow?

"That one? Don't concern yourself. Just quit blabbering and bring those things inside." She turned and disappeared into the pitch-dark passage leading inside the structure.

The little statue smiled mysteriously at me and shrugged. The gesture seemed even more natural after the other dust pony's chilling behavior. I felt no doubt that it was something entirely unlike the rest, though composed of the same substance.

The two of us finished lugging the trolley up the stairs (which I was sure Nightmare Moon could have done with minimal effort in the blink of an eye, the haughty, thoughtless villain!) and followed the princess into the darkened interior of this new structure. I still had no idea what she had meant when she credited me for inspiring this edifice, only that I was sure the answer would not be a pleasing one.

Reconstruction

The interior of the great dome was almost entirely hollow. The light from my lamps, Nightmare Moon's horn, her eyes and the statue's glow were the only illumination. We stood in an open central area, supported by a ring of columns. A wall about five times my standing height stood up around the edge of the room, and behind it was some sort of stair-step terrace rising to touch the outer wall. A single monolith stood alone in the exact center of the chamber. It all looked like a cross between a temple and some sort of stadium or arena. Every ell of the walls and pillars was engraved with intricate bas-relief.

Before I could interrogate Nightmare Moon about it, I felt a rumbling and shifting of stone beneath my feet. The building must have been collapsing! Terrified, I abandoned the cart and sprinted on all sixes back toward the exit just in time to see a huge slab of glowing blue stone slide over the passage, completely blocking out the daylight. Seconds later, the rumbling ceased.

"What's wrong now, Pangolin?" Nightmare Moon called after me, sounding quite pleased with herself. "I'm just making sure we're sealed in nice and tight. There'd be no point putting air in here if it could just escape outside, would there? Get to work." My legs turned to jelly. Few things are more dreadful to the dweller of inhospitable worlds than being separated from one's permanent shelter. Path of least resistance, indeed! I felt as I had when the search of the crater seemed fruitless. Would she let me out when it became clear that my paltry supplies of nitrogen and oxygen were unequal to the task of filling the room?

With trembling claws, I plugged the emergency mixer into the battery and attached containers of compressed gas to its intake feeds. I flipped the switch to activate the machine, which coughed, sputtered, then purred as air began to spray from the funnel at the top. According to my suit, this artificial cavern was just slightly warm enough to keep the elements in a gaseous state.

While the mixer worked, the little statue amused itself by covering and uncovering the output funnel, seeming to enjoy the feeling of air rushing from the device. Nightmare Moon, for her own part, simply sat at a distance and watched, looking from myself to the mixer and back, growing more and more unhappy by the minute.

When the first pair of canisters ran out and I moved to disconnect them and replace them with fresh ones, she finally spoke up. "This is taking far too long," she complained, "and you clearly didn't bring enough of those air bottles. There's hardly two breaths to rub together in here!" Her magic picked me up off the ground and shook me so roughly my jaws rattled. "I've had just about enough of your tricks, Pangolin! You had to know it wouldn't be enough, you must have! This is sabotage!"

Of course I knew; I warned her that this would happen beforehand! I didn't have enough materials to create that much atmosphere, and even if I did, there was no way I could carry them all here in one trip! All this I said and more, but it only seemed to make her angrier.

"I made my case; I told you what they did to me! Any decent being would be falling over itself to help me, so why are you still dragging your hooves? I warned you what would happen if you tried to work against me again, didn't I?" she raged, shoving me against the inner wall of the arena and holding me there. I twisted to take the force on my side rather than my own air tank. Pain shot through my body and I felt several scales crack and chip against the inside of my suit. "Maybe I'll seal you in here until nightfall with nothing to breathe but this measly little puff of air, how would you like that?"

I would die! If she left me here, I'd choke and die. If she beat me more, she'd either crush me to death or my suit would rupture and I'd freeze. She'd given her word!

She grew more enraged as I spoke, but took her weight off me, letting me slide down to the floor. A bright white scratch marked the stone where I'd been forced against the wall.

"Milking my mistake for all it's worth! Twisting my words to save your miserable scaly hide! You horrid monster, just keep pushing me and I'll—uh?"

She suddenly stopped mid-rant and turned to look behind her. The little statue was tugging urgently at the sparkling curtain that formed Nightmare Moon's tail and silently mouthed words at her.

"What?! What do you care?" the pony asked, still furious.

There was a pause while the little statue presumably responded.

"I know you think you're being good, but it doesn't work that way," Nightmare Moon said, her voice softening to the same benevolent, maternal tone she'd used to speak to the little statue before. "Do you remember how we got into this in the first place? If you don't keep your guard up, he'll walk all over you, just like all the rest. This monster won't behave until he understands we won't let him get away with anything else."

To my dismay, the statue seemed swayed by this line of argumentation. I was about to speak up in my own defense, but the dust pony wordlessly spoke again, this time raising a foreleg to indicate its horn and then pointing to the mixer.

Nightmare Moon screwed up her face in distaste. "That must have been his plan all along, to force me to labor like a commoner. Why should I degrade myself?"

"...Well, yes, It would be a waste after all the time it took to build this place," she allowed, her resolve weakening. "And to fly again, on real air, not just dragging myself around by my horn..."

A small smile returned to her face, and she addressed me once again.

"Pangolin, in spite of your unforgivable laziness and negligence, I've decided to make up for your severe shortcomings out of the goodness of my heart."

I had no idea what she was about to do, but thought it wisest to express my gratitude for bearing with me.

"Yes, well, my mercy and forbearance are far greater than any other pony's, but you still manage to push their limits somehow. See to it that this doesn't happen again. Now, behold the power of the true princess of the night!"

The entire cavernous chamber was thrown into stark azure illumination by her horn, the central pillars and monolith casting inky bars of shadow across the distant walls. The small atmospheric mixer, with two empty canisters still attached, began to hum and rattle. The lights on its side blinked on and off rapidly in meaningless combinations. Then the impossible happened. A gale of fresh air blasted from the empty mixer, howling like a hurricane. I threw myself to the stone floor, trying to minimize my profile against the storm. Dust swirled across the ground, the walls and ceiling creaked and I felt the weight of the air without press against my suit.

The air she had created from nothing. Or... from magic? From her mind? My rudimentary understanding of physics was unequal to the task of explaining what was going on. If she could do this, and she disliked the vacuum, why hadn't she long before? Was the mixer necessary somehow?

It took less than a minute to fill the whole room with what my suit called 0.97 atmosphere. As the roar from the mixer subsided into the usual humming and putting, I raised my head to look about.

A strange, sourceless illumination filled the dome, as if the air itself were shedding light. Borne on the wind still circling the sealed arena, Nightmare Moon was soaring around the ceiling, wings spread wide, laughing with giddy abandon. I don't think I'd ever seen her this happy before, not even when she was bullying me or shoving my garden down her maw.

It certainly looked like a lot of fun from where I was standing. I doubt there's a single intelligent flightless species that hasn't been a bit jealous of winged creatures. On the floor below, the little statue leapt and danced about, sharing the princess's excitement.

When Nightmare Moon ended her flight a few minutes later, she seemed in much better spirits. "Excellent, excellent," she said, giving her wings a shake before folding them back to her sides. "It's true what they say; once you learn, you never really forget how, even after centuries."

"Now, Pangolin," she said, trotting up to me once more, "Have you figured out why I had this place built?"

I shook my head and quickly shut off my suit's lamps so I could face her without shining its lights into her eyes.

"My original plan when I got free was to simply rain down judgment on the whole lot of them equally, starting with whoever first fell beneath my shadow, but while I was telling you of the crimes the ponies committed against me, you were constantly telling me that they were not the ones I ought to go after. I have decided to take your advice."

Beneath my helmet, I gaped. Had a miracle just occurred? Was Nightmare Moon about to renounce her vendetta against the rest of her world? Was this dark dwelling to be a more permanent habitation where she could live out her exile in relative comfort? I was beside myself in surprise and anticipation.

"Your nasty, devious little mind possesses a certain low cunning that does not come naturally to those of us who rule." She grudgingly admitted. "But credit where it's due; your plan has merit! I must deal with Celestia immediately and decisively once I return. She may have already squandered her trump card sending me here in the first place, but if anypony can hope to resist me, it'll be her. Once she's out of the picture for good, why, I can dispatch the rest of them at my leisure!"

I sagged in disappointment. Worse than useless! My exhortations had only gotten her to strategize instead of just raging.

If she noticed the effect her words worked on me, she didn't care. "To make certain that I can wipe the floor with the usurper without a hitch this time, I have constructed this little training studio. Here I will test myself against her until I'm certain of victory."

How did she plan to do that? Wasn't her sister back on the planet lording it over the her subjects?

A horrible thought came to me.

Was... was I to stand in the role of her opponent? Cold sweat seeped from between my scales. I stammered that I was very fragile, and reiterated that the slightest rupture of the suit, even in this atmosphere, would cause me to swiftly freeze to death, violating her oath.

She laughed at me again. "Pray don't flatter yourself, Pangolin. Unless you had that metal wand back I wouldn't bet on you against a cranky foal." She tapped the side of her head. "No, Celestia is in here. I will draw her forth and give her a form, and then we will see who is the greatest princess!"

Oh, another dust pony then. Wouldn't that be like playing a game against oneself, though? I voiced my doubts as to how this could teach her anything she didn't already know.

"Just when I think I've heard the limits of your ignorance you go and say something like that," she observed, slowly shaking her head and clicking her tongue in an exaggerated show of disappointment. "You may not have noticed over the last month, but my memory is perfect. Do you understand what that means? Everything I've been telling you about my past is as clear to me as the moment it occurred. I can go back and count the lashes on the eyelids of the first pony I ever looked upon. I have suffered the presence of my sister for several mortal lifetimes. I know her. She as good as lives in me.

"But... we've never battled. Not in earnest. So, I will take all my memories of her and grant them a portion of my power and they will act as she would. It won't be as strong as true Celestia would be, naturally, but it will weaken me enough that we'll still be in parity."

Nightmare Moon stood before the monolith in the center of the room and began casting what, to my ignorant eye, looked like her mightiest spell yet. Air began whipping around the room again in a gale and her horn shone so bright that I had to tint my visor to keep from being dazzled. A network of glowing fissures crawled across the surface of the stone.

Panic seized me. She was going to make one of those creepy, hostile constructs in the image of the being she thought hated her the most and grant it powers comparable to her own? I couldn't begin to express how unwise this idea seemed. What if it proved too much for her? Speaking loudly to be heard above the wind, I reminded her she hadn't exactly covered herself in glory the last time those things had turned violent.

"Thanks ever so for the vote of confidence," she shouted back, rolling her eyes and continuing the spell. "Since when are you even concerned about my well-being, assassin? If my sister's double somehow manages to cast me down before I can destroy or dismiss her, then all your problems will be over, won't they?"

Chips of stone began falling away from the monolith and disintegrating into fine, white powder as they struck the floor. As they were removed, a skeletal form began to emerge from the rock. Its proportions were similar to Nightmare Moon's, save that it was marginally taller and sported a longer horn.

"Oh, right!" the night-black pony suddenly exclaimed. "You can't get out of here unless I open the door, can you?" She half-turned her head toward me and smiled coldly. "Better hope I win, then!"

By this time the glowing stone skeleton had been entirely freed from the rock and stood up to its shins in the fine powder, undisturbed in the center of the howling winds. Then, even the powder too began to shine and flow upward over the skeleton, sculpting itself into the form of its flesh.

The end result was quite intimidating. It was the largest and most detailed dust pony yet, clad like Nightmare Moon in boots and a breastplate, but wearing a pointed diadem instead of a helmet. Its hair was even more voluminous than its creator's, trailing off from either end of its body in great floating curtains, lightly whipped by the edges of the surrounding vortex.

The wind died and the light of Nightmare Moon's horn receded to a single point sitting at the tip. She paced in a circle around the new statue, admiring her work with a mixture of pride, scorn and the faintest hint of apprehension.

Before it was too late, I asked if I could move the mixer and myself to somewhere safer than the arena floor before battle was joined. It was not that I had any doubts about her promise to me, I hastily added, but in the thick of things, and with that thing not exactly being herself anymore—

"You want to join the rest up in the stands? Be my guest." She said.

The... rest? I raised my gaze to the rows of benches rising around the arena pit.

Hundreds upon hundreds of pale gray faces stared back down at me, glowing faintly with the blue light. One, its head still twisted backward, smiled with too many teeth and beckoned for me to come up and sit beside it.

I suddenly found myself hiding beneath the trolley, shaking and stinking.

Nightmare Moon snickered. "Suit yourself."

She turned back to the still-inert statue of her sister and raised the glowing star at the tip of her horn until it touched the stone point of her counterpart. There was a pop of static and the star vanished, plunging the room into absolute darkness. Even the spectating statues had lost their glow.

I heard faint sounds of movement from the blackness. Then, a voice:

"What is this? Guards! Chamberlain! ...Hello?"

It did not belong to Nightmare Moon.

Reunion

"Can anypony hear me? What is this place?"

The translator rendered the voice sweeter and softer than Nightmare Moon's. It also lacked the night princess's eternal undercurrent of boiling anger and bitter resentment. I lowered the device's output volume so as not to give away my hiding place.

A point of light ignited in the center of the room, confirming my suspicions: It was the newly-made statue of her sister that was speaking. Its stone horn glowed a golden yellow and I could clearly see the dark hole of its mouth move as it walked in a small circle, taking in its surroundings.

"So cold here..." it subvocalized, "and I feel heavy and light all at once. Is this a dream?"

A more familiar voice chuckled from the darkness. "A nightmare."

To its original's credit, the simulacrum did not cry out or flinch, but swiftly turned in the direction of the voice. A globe of light floated from its horn and rose to the ceiling, illuminating the arena with a radiance like daylight. Even so, I couldn't see Nightmare Moon anywhere, and apparently neither did the statue. It quickly turned one direction, then another, scanning the room.

I dearly wished the cart under which I was hiding had not been painted bright red. It stuck out like the proverbial broken digit in the room of gray and white stone.

However, before its blank eyes fell on me, Nightmare Moon spoke again from behind one of the pillars on the far side of the chamber. "Do you recognize me, your highness? Do you know where you are now?"

The simulacrum's eyes widened, but it said nothing.

"Of course you've forgotten, haven't you? Who could blame you? It's been such a long time." Nightmare Moon continued, her voice dripping scorn. I saw a black figure steal between the columns behind the fake Celestia's back.

The stone pony appeared shocked, but continued to keep mum.

"Well? Nothing to say?" Nightmare Moon snapped impatiently. "Go on, tell me how this was necessary for the greater good! Say how much you love me! See if I fall for it again." She stepped from behind another pillar and into the light, staring directly into the statue's face, sapphire eyes blazing with hatred.

Clearly anguished, the false princess lowered her gaze and her head until the tip of her stone horn nearly touched the floor. "Luna... I—," she choked.

Nightmare Moon reared. "That is NOT MY NAME!" she screamed, shaking the room. As soon as her front hooves struck the floor, she launched herself toward the stone Celestia, horn glowing like a brand and leveled to stab.

The statue of her sister just stood there, head down, not even trying to prepare for the charge. Were not Nightmare Moon's target made of rock and dust, I would have covered my eyes rather than see the gruesome aftermath.

It was a good thing I didn't. At the last moment, Celestia's head shot back up. Her long horn caught the attacker right in the pit of her left front leg and launched the enraged pony in an arc through the air. She struck one of the room's pillars and bounced off, leaving a frightening spiderweb of cracks in the stone. Just before she crashed into the floor, Nightmare Moon opened her wings, righting herself and softening her landing.

"Sister, you don't need to go through with this!" the stone Celestia pleaded. "Everything can go back to the way it was if you'll just—"

"The way it was?!" Nightmare Moon screeched, snorting and pawing the ground. "I'd rather die, and I'd much rather kill you all!" She charged again.

This time her target tossed her gray head, throwing that prodigious mane out before her to obstruct Nightmare Moon's vision. The attacker took the bait. As she charged blindly through, the stone pony sidestepped and kicked the night princess as she thundered by, knocking her through another pillar halfway across the room.

I scooted forward to see if the ceiling had been damaged, but other than a few cascades of dust, the roof remained stable.

"Agh..." The pony groaned, lifting herself from the debris and back onto her feet. "Always got another trick hidden in that giant tangle, don't you?"

Celestia looked on Nightmare Moon with pity in her eyes. "Sister, I'm begging you. If not for me, for your own sake: stop this! I don't want to have to hurt you any more."

"You arrogant, condescending nag!" Nightmare Moon shouted back. "You think you can go easy on me? You think you can knock me around until I give up?"

Instead of replying, the image of Celestia tried to cast a spell. Her horn glowed again and she began to shimmer and fade out of existence. The light around the stone spike suddenly vanished with a pop and she instantly returned to opacity. The living statue blinked in surprise. "How are you blocking my teleportation?"

Nightmare Moon sneered and lowered her voice. "There's no escape from this place; you saw to that. You locked me up here to rot forever. How fitting that you're now stuck here too. Conquer or die, princess!"

"No, I'd never... that's not true!" Celestia insisted, more wounded by the accusation than any of Nightmare Moon's attacks. "I didn't abandon you, my sister. One day, when you're well again, we'll rule Equestria as we were meant to; side-by-side. I swear it!"

"As we were meant to!" Nightmare Moon repeated in a mocking, nasal falsetto. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe I don't want to 'share' a throne with you?" As she spoke, her hair seemed to stretch and grow behind her until it was a swirling vortex of stars. "And don't pretend your own wishes are the same as what's meant to be. I know the prophecy as well as you. My night will be supreme!"

The stone pony took a step back and began casting another spell. "And what of our subjects? Surely you know—"

She was cut off by a roar of thunder. A bolt of lightning flew at her from the swirling vortex above Nightmare Moon. I was temporarily blinded and deafened by its report. When my senses returned, The simulacrum was still standing defiantly, surrounded by a transparent bubble of golden light.

"Oh, I know exactly what I'm doing, sister dear." Nightmare Moon said, releasing blast after blast of electricity into Celestia's defenses. "Once I've done for you, I'll give them what they've got coming!"

The golden dome shuddered, buckled, then shattered into shards and sparks beneath the unrelenting assault. The statue that had sheltered beneath it reeled back, stunned. Arcs of electricity crawled up and down Celestia's form, leaving scars of fused glass in their wake.

Nightmare Moon slowly advanced on the copy of her sister. "Why don't you fight back?" she asked, fury giving way to incomprehension. "You have the power. If you don't stop me, I'll kill you, and then I'll kill everypony else. Don't you even care?!"

Celestia flopped into a couched posture beside a pillar and stared at the ground. "I can't do it! I exiled you because I can't do it!" she sighed. "Sister, I'm so tired. All those years... I thought I could help you; that maybe time would heal you; or that I'd find a way to save you from this once and for all, but..."

The dark princess impatiently waved the rest of the comment away. "It didn't. You can't. There is nothing to heal. All you can do is fight. Fight me and I'll grant you a swifter end than you deserve."

The damaged statue refused to rise.

This certainly wasn't what I'd been expecting to see when she said she'd give form to the memories of her most hated adversary. She too seemed uncertain and confused by the stone pony's refusal to cooperate. Perhaps her hatred of the true Celestia was misplaced, her memories embellished? But she'd said this thing was her memories given form and motion. Why wasn't this one behaving as she expected?

As I pondered this, something pressed against my side. I yelped, sprung up and knocked my helmet against the bottom of the cart. It was only the little statue again. It huddled next to me, watching the scene unfold with the dismal, anxious look it tended to wear around Nightmare Moon. I scooted sideways to give it room, but it moved closer to lean against me again, and spread a small wing across my back. It seemed comforted by my presence, but I felt as though I was half-buried by a chilly landslide.

While this was happening, Celestia had raised a toe to her eye, and she seemed slightly confused when it found no tears there to daub. "If I do as you wish, will you spare our subjects?" she asked.

Recognizing my own suggestion echoed in the mouth of the statue, Nightmare Moon shot me the briefest sidelong glare.

"After a manner of speaking. My only request is that you get off your rump and fight back with all your force. The only way to save them is to kill me."

"Kill my sister?" Celestia shook her gray head as if unable to conceive of the idea. "No, never! I love you, Luna. I never meant to hurt you. Please, just let go of your grudges, abandon this plan and I'll make it up to you! I'll do anything!"

Nightmare Moon gasped, then drew back with a guarded expression. "This is a trick. You won't fool me again."

"It's no trick," Celestia desperately insisted. "Take the throne! Rule night and day both as I have! Lock me in a dungeon just as long as you've been waiting here! Just stop all this! Stop poisoning your mind with hatred, stop letting jealousy eat you, stop destroying yourself!"

The princess of the night actually wavered, warring within. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Had Nightmare Moon forgotten she was dealing with a statue, a figment of her own mind with no powers but what she'd given it? Beside me, the little statue leaned forward. I was certain its eyes would be shining with hope were they not made of dull, unreflecting dust.

"You were happy, once," the stone pony said. "Things weren't perfect, but you were happy. You told me so. If you kill me and go through with all this, it won't make you happy again. Everypony, everything on our world will die and turn to dust, and you'll be alone in the night, no different from here." She scraped a hoof through the thin layer of sand that coated the floor. "This isn't your prison, sister. The real prison is within," she tapped the hoof to her breast, "and you can walk out of it whenever you choose. But if you don't, you'll just make new prisons for yourself wherever you go, even to ends of the universe."

Nightmare Moon took a single step forward, wide-eyed and shaking with tension. "You'll let me rule? You'll give me complete control? They'll thank me for the day?"

"And the night, as they ought," the fake Celestia said, looking up from the floor to meet the pony's eyes.

"How do I know you'll keep your word?"

"You don't have to believe me; you can punish or exile me however you like. I know you can rule our ponies justly."

As it had back in the crater, something once again broke within Nightmare Moon's anima. She stumbled toward the statue, gaping and trying to come to grips with what she'd just heard. "I... I guess this is acceptable? It's just... I never expected you'd be willing to..." She shook her head. "Have I been lying to myself all this time?" Suddenly, she broke into a gallop, tears streaming from her eyes. "Oh...oh Tia! I acc—"

Celestia's expression changed from desperate sincerity to mocking hatred as if with the flick of a switch. With a motion almost faster than my eyes could follow, She swung her head just as Nightmare Moon threw herself forward to embrace her. The glowing stone horn struck the dark pony full across the face and knocked her to the ground, dazed. Before she could rise, Celestia leaped up on her hind legs and motioned again with her shining horn like a conductor's baton. The pillar she'd been lying beside took on the horn's golden glow, cracked, and toppled down on Nightmare Moon as she tried to stand. There was a crash and a pathetic squeak.

With a roar like a hundred waterfalls, the unsupported half of the arena's ceiling collapsed, burying the pony beneath what must have been, even in that slight gravity, hundreds of tons of jagged, broken stone. Sunlight shone in from the gaping hole above Nightmare Moon's impromptu cairn, but a transparent golden roof of magic power still trapped the air within the dome.

The stone Celestia sank back onto all fours and shook her head sadly. "Stupid horse."

She turned and walked right up to the trolley, until all I could see were her legs like four pillars and the trailing ends of her mane and tail. I didn't dare move or even breathe.

"Come out, little one." she said sweetly, then called me by name, my real name. "We have things we need to discuss."

The words weren't coming through my translator; she was speaking to me in my native tongue.

Consequences

I recovered and re-installed the translator into my suit as quickly as possible. As acid as Nightmare Moon's tongue could be, if I had to choose, I'd take the verbal abuse over the physical any day.

Once she had a comprehending audience again, the princess brightened and repeated what she'd been saying before in a gush of words.

"Did you see me, Pangolin? I did it! I crushed her! Literally!" she said, beaming and jumping about atop the collapsed ceiling. "She was so certain she'd won, but I was just tricking her. Thought she'd killed me, but she was wrong! I changed myself—a spell—thought I'd lost it ages ago." She leaped back to the arena floor and circled around me. Her smile faded. "While you two were conspiring together, I was watching! You couldn't see me; I turned myself into a vapor, but I was there. I saw everything. What were you talking to her about for so long? If you're from the stars, how come my sister knows your language?"

The circling reminded me of an aquatic predator closing on its prey. What could I say? What story would allay her suspicions?

No, I chided myself, no more thinking like that! No more self-serving lies. If I had been honest, if I had been treated her decently from the beginning, no doubt our relationship would be on far better footing than this constant back-and-forth of abuse and deceit.

I told her everything. An evil thing had taken control of the statue, something that was using her; grooming her as a weapon against her people. I told her it wanted her to kill without thought or hesitation, like a mad beast. I told her it blamed me that she had not, and tried to get me to abandon her, first through cajoling, then threats. I had, of course, refused. It had demanded that I work with it and gave me a couple tasks to accomplish, but I would see my scales rot before I obeyed. Why, if that little statue had not distracted it at the right time, it would certainly have killed me for my defiance!

My explanation was met with a curt snort and narrowed eyes. Why should I expect any different? It was an outlandish story, and I had lied to her before. Still, I pressed on.

Couldn't she see what had been happening, I pleaded. Some alien power was trying to control her, to make her into something terrible! If she was not to be a pawn in some evil being's great game, she must reject it and forswear its plan to 'bring about nighttime eternal.'

Nightmare Moon's eyes widened at this. "She told you that, did she?" the princess said, voice low.

I already knew she planned to kill all life on the planet, but to do it in such a drawn-out, lingering fashion! It wasn't just. The worst villains deserved a swifter demise than that, to say nothing of the children, innocents and blameless beasts she'd slay on her homeworld!

"You don't even know what you're talking about. My vengeance will be like nothing ever seen beneath the stars."

Before I could contradict her, she continued. "But as a matter of fact, I do know that an alien power is trying to make me dance to its tune. How could I have failed to notice? It hasn't exactly been subtle."

She did? Hope faintly stirred within me. Nightmare Moon was definitely too proud a being to allow herself to be led wittingly.

"Furthermore, I agree completely. This interloper is my enemy, and wants nothing more than to bring me to ruin! I'd be a fool to obey it."

Yes, yes! She understood! Increate be praised!

The pony gave me a wry smile. "After all, it already tried to burn and poison me to death."

...Oh.

Well, she had a point, but there really was another being at large seeking her anima's ruin! I swore upon the Increate to attest to my honesty. I told her my theory about the 'misbehavior' of the other statues all having a common source. I admitted that I had tried to kill her, but that I now deeply regretted my murderous behavior. Having seen the creature that was working toward her spiritual demise, I did not wish to be like it.

"You really believe what you're saying, don't you?" she said wonderingly.

Of course I did! She saw through my lies before, why couldn't she see my honesty now?

Nightmare Moon sighed and sat in the middle of the floor. "I know what's going on here," she announced, looking weary.

I was telling her what I saw! That was what was going on!

She nodded knowingly. "You saw and heard exactly what she wanted you to. None of it was true."

But that made no sense! Why would the artificial Celestia pretend to yield, then fight back only to sacrifice itself charging into that terrible cloud? They had nearly reached a compromise; wouldn't her sister have left it at that? For that matter, if it was merely made of Nightmare Moon's memories, how could it comprehend a language she herself did not?

"No! It was all lies! She'll say whatever she has to if it'll give her what she wants. Just like you, just like all of them, but she's smarter about it than the rest." She hunched her shoulders sulkily.

What did it want, then? It seemed the altercation ended badly for it.

"My sister only miscalculated for once in her life." A flash of doubt passed over her features. "Maybe I did make her wrong."

It was clear I couldn't convince her of what I'd heard. I changed the subject. Maybe she was right, I admitted, and I was completely wrong about what was going on around me, but I knew what was going on within. Before, I had seen Nightmare Moon as a problem, a disaster to be averted to save beings like myself. When the fake Celestia tried to get me to abandon her, I had realized my own injustice. She too was a being who suffered and hoped and lived. All my high ideals were mere hypocrisy if I did not also care for the ills of the creature right before my face in addition to the unknown strangers. Perhaps, (I thought to myself) the others of her race were just as cruel and ornery as their deposed ruler!

She dismissed my earnestness with a wave of a hoof. "Words, words."

She should allow me to prove myself, then. How could I help her? How could I make her life better? I placed myself at her disposal and parted my jaws in what was meant to be a friendly smile.

Nightmare Moon drew back, suspicious. "She told you to do this, didn't she?

Just the opposite, as I'd already mentioned.

The pony seemed at a loss for what to do, then noticed the cart lying upside-down beside the wall and smiled at me unkindly.

"Very well," she said, sticking her nose in the air. "You certainly don't deserve it, but I'll give you a chance. As the conquering heroine, decorum requires that I travel in the proper fashion. No more of this trudging around through the sand like a helpless exile. I need to be above the crowds."

I had no idea what she was getting at. On my own world, those of greatest status were permitted to remain in positions of safety, bellies to the ground, while those of lesser rank showed their un-scaled undersides as a sign of respect and obedience. To exalt herself seemed... lowering, somehow. I asked whether she was going to start flying again.

"Flying? Of course not! There's no air out there to lift myself through, and self-levitation looks ridiculous."

But what about the dome of air she could carry with her? Would that not serve?

"Ugh, know-nothing ground-pounders!" Nightmare Moon grumbled. "That's just as bad as pulling myself about by my horn. No, I'm going to ride home, and you're going to pull me. You should be honored; stallions used to fight for the right to draw my carriage."

I looked to the trolley, then back at the huge creature looming above me, and then off into the middle distance.

"Or perhaps you weren't sincere about wanting to help me?"

Not so! It was just, I didn't see the point when we were the only ones out here. Furthermore, the disparity in our sizes meant that—

"Pangolin, I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to think very carefully before you answer. Were you going to make a comment about my weight?"

Without a word, I hurried over to the cart and turned it upright.

She smiled. "That's better."

A single flap carried the princess onto her new chariot, the top of which was just large enough for her to sit without hanging her toes over the edge. I doubted the non-slip surface was very comfortable. When I started to gather up the canisters and the mixer which the statue had strewn about the arena, she made an impatient gesture.

"Just leave those there. I'll need them for next time."

Next time? Before I could ask what she meant, the magical force patching the ceiling suddenly vanished. The pressure equalized with the vacuum with a bone-rattling thump and more pieces of debris tumbled from the ceiling. My ears popped painfully, and for a single, terrible split-second I was pulled skyward in the wake of the escaping gases. I crashed back to the arena floor.

Atop the cart, once more encased within a smaller bubble of air, Nightmare Moon laughed uproariously, rolling on her back waving her legs in the air.

After recovering, I stumbled to the cart and back into the zone of air. "Do you do that on purpose?" she asked, still giggling. "Fall that way, I mean. Whenever you drop, you land about as gracefully as a one-legged earth pony, and usually on your head."

I curtly answered in the negative.

"Good, it's funnier that way."

I strapped myself into the cart's harness in grumpy silence. I was fortunate that the floor was flat and smooth and the gravity was negligible, or otherwise I don't think I could have moved her bulk at all. As it was, we trundled along toward the door, which she opened with her magic. The stairs, too, glowed with blue light and aligned themselves into a ramp, surely something she could have done just as easily on the way in.

We lumbered on more slowly through the sand in silence for a time. Then, unexpectedly, she spoke again.

"It's that clumsy armor you wear. The helm is heavier than the rest. Use that giant tail of yours as a counterweight next time. Just swing it in the direction you don't want your head to go."

I stopped and turned to look at her with honest surprise. Did Nightmare Moon just give me... helpful advice? To keep me from hurting myself?

My wordless reaction of disbelief was a greater insult than any rejoinder I could have concocted. She stiffened and tossed her head back. "I can't have you breaking your neck the next time there's a little tremor," she explained, refusing to look at me.

I got over my surprise, thanked her for the suggestion, and promised to try it the next time the opportunity presented itself.

"Just save your breath and keep pulling. I'd hate for you to run out of air before we got back," she said sourly, apparently interpreting my response as a sarcastic dig at her violent tendencies.

Well, if the shoe fit...

Turning her attention away from me, Nightmare Moon began using magic to amuse herself. The plain to either side of us glowed and rippled, then a column of sand leaped over the path ahead, hanging in the air and shaping itself into a triumphal arch bedecked with colorless flowers and bunting. I obligingly pulled the cart under it. As soon as we passed beyond, her attention left it, and the top-heavy structure collapsed back into nothing. She tried more complex shapes next; first paired statues (the immobile kind, thank the Increate) of herself rearing, touching their front hooves to create a gateway, then a trellised passage thickly overgrown with some sort of climbing plant whose leaves trembled as if stirred by a wind.

It was actually rather pleasant in the shade. If I squinted, pretended my visor was hiding the color, ignored the terrible silence and stillness of the air, and forgot my current predicament and company, it was almost as if I were back on a hospitable world. I complimented her on the artistry of the creations.

“I thought you didn't like it when I quickened the dust."

It was more than that. The ponies she'd sculpted were amazingly ornate and lifelike (I assumed) as well. It was simply harder to appreciate her skill when I expected them to turn on me at any moment.

The princess smirked at my explanation. "You mean you don't like it when strange figures appear out of nowhere and try to murder you?" she said, pretending to be mildly surprised. "What a coincidence; neither do I!"

I slumped in my harness. I really had sabotaged myself from the start, hadn't I? Were the roles somehow reversed, I wouldn't have trusted me an inch either. Like this very trip, winning Nightmare Moon's trust would be a long, slow, difficult slog. Stammering, I lamely insisted once more that I regretted my earlier behavior.

Her rage burst forth again. Even before she spoke I could almost feel the heat of it on the back of my head.

"Liar! All you care about is tricking me into doing your bidding! You want to make me like you? Then shut up! Just shut up and pull!"

Obediently shutting up, I placed one foot before the other before the next and got the trolley moving marginally more rapidly through the passage.

We came out the end of the trellised walkway to find a small crowd of dust creatures lining the path. These were not ponies of any sort, however. There were slouching long-armed knuckle-walking things whose long, pointed muzzles were filled with fangs. There were also four-legged winged figures. Half their bodies sported avian feathers and beaks, while the other half had sleek mammalian features. Behind this crowd of improbable beings rose the bulk of a gigantic winged reptilian. All of the statues stared at me hungrily. Was one of these moved by a force outside her magic? Were all of them? Had the thing that accosted me before grown impatient so soon?

My passenger chuckled. "Here, since ponies don't agree with you, I made these instead. Don't you like them better?" Nightmare Moon asked, knowing I did not and delighted by the fact. "Unlike some creatures, they never bother hiding their true intentions. It's 'steal this' and 'enslave that' and 'eviscerate the other thing' all night long! Even though I had to fight them over and over again through the years, their honesty was refreshing. I bet you could learn a thing or two from them."

Then these represented the other intelligent species on her world?

"I told you to shut up... and yes, a few of them, though 'intelligent' is stretching it a bit. Do you enjoy the company of your fellow monsters? I think they like you." The crowd fell into step behind us, keeping their distance but never looking away from me when I glanced back or wearing any expression other than naked hostility.

Instead of continuing to trade looks with the vicious things, I fixed my eyes on the shelter ahead, its beacon and the field of solar collectors glinting from up the slope. Just a little further. She always showed more restraint in the habitat; she didn't want to break it. just a few thousand more steps and I'd be back inside, away from collapsing ceilings and possessed statues and the eternal, radiation-sleeted, eye-popping vacuum.

I'd still be with Nightmare Moon, though, so the reassurance gave me only a limited sort of comfort. I reminded myself that she hadn't forgotten her promise about my life, and that a real living being to speak with (or at) was clearly a luxury of which she intended to take full advantage. For all her anger and insults and accusations and rough treatment, she hadn't left me alone for a moment. That was my 'edge,' as my brother would say; I was the 'only game in town.' I suppose I was a little like him now, playing deadly powers against each other to wrangle a bit of peace and security for their intended victims.

Considering how he ended up, I hoped not to follow in his footsteps too closely.

"Stop, you worm! What do you think you're dong?" Nightmare Moon suddenly yelled behind me. I stopped and looked backward (difficult to do while harnessed) and saw that she wasn't talking to me. The massive reptilian statue had drawn close to us, fangs bared. Behind it the rest of the mob were also advancing as if preparing to attack.

Nightmare Moon stood up in her seat, turned around and waved a foreleg in a swift gesture of dismissal at the statues. The blue cloud that accompanied her magic rippled over her horn.

The simulacra continued their approach undeterred. As I watched, frozen in fear, their sculpted faces distorted in ways I doubted were naturally possible.

"Hmph! I should have figured this would happen when I made monsters on purpose." She looked back at me. "Pangolin, did I tell you to stop? Get moving!" she ordered, clearly bothered but still yet to accept the fact that her creations could be controlled by another.

Of course, it was not as if I could have outdistanced those things even were I not burdened by the trolley and its none-too-petite passenger. I strained for all I was worth against the harness anyway and made the cart trundle forward again.

"I command you to stop!" Nightmare Moon shouted. "Not one step closer, you oversized dust bunnies!"

I shouted for her to just destroy them; they were being controlled by her true enemy! No doubt it would use them to kill me and further harass the miserable princess.

"Would you give it a rest for a second? I have everything under—" she snapped back at me, before dextrously ducking beneath a swipe the nearest statue threw at her. "—control!"

A fiery ray shot from the tip of her horn and raked over her attacker. The statue glowed for a second and then dimmed, reduced to a drippy mass of dark, cloudy glass. Despite the gruesome fate of their fellow, the other statues continued charging at the princess, and, laughing with battle-lust, she blasted them to slag one by one.

While the others kept her busy, one of the half-avian ones darted around and seized me, severing the cord of my harness with a flick of its talons. I called out for help, but Nightmare Moon was too engrossed in the carnage to notice.

The creature dragged me a short distance away, rolled me on my back, pinned me beneath a talon foot and leaned down until its cruelly hooked beak filled my vision. I cringed away, expecting it to peck at my eyes like carnivorous birds back home.

Instead, its beak parted and a familiar, chillingly calm voice whispered to me in my own language. "A reminder, little one: I am in control here. You have guessed by now that her oath prevents me from using her power to kill you. This does not mean you are safe. I will still complete my task regardless of what you do; destiny has decreed it."

Remembering what it had tried to do last time, I clasped my upper claws protectively over the translator socketed into the back of my suit. In a moment of uncharacteristic cunning, I activated the device's recording feature.

"You may keep your toy for now. It will serve me. You will serve me too. Obey my commands. Have her tell you about the Crystal Empire. Read in your library what unicorns are." It lifted the other birdlike leg and dragged a single hooked nail across my faceplate, leaving a stark white groove in the transparent material. "If you fail to do this, I will remind you again."

Inwardly smiling, I promised I would, then asked if it truly thought it could control Nightmare Moon. When I replayed this conversation for the princess, she would surely accept my claims. It was time to let the truth work for me for a change!

The statue's birdlike face was unreadable. "I think you do not yet fear me as you ought. Let me give you a lesson. It only takes one eye to read." It shifted its grip to hold my head still and reached for my face again with its free claw.

It had refused to rise to the bait! Self-congratulation forgotten, I began to panic and flail uselessly in its stony grip. If it opened my helmet, even within the zone of air... were we still in it? How hot was it? How much pressure? Was it still oxygenated? And the radiation, too! I hadn't checked my suit's readouts since entering Nightmare Moon's bizarre arena, and couldn't now while I was pinned. Did it know? Did it care?

Apparently it did not. With a single claw, it pressed down on the helmet's faceplate directly over my left eye.. fractures radiated from the spot, and a horrible high-pitched whistling alerted me that my suit's atmosphere was escaping through the minute hole it had created.

Something I couldn't see made it halt, withdraw that terrible point and look away from me. "This interview is over. Remember," it hissed, "I am never far from you." An orange glow spread across its head, then over its whole upper body as the simulacrum collapsed sideways, a molten ruin.

"Ha, you like that?" Nightmare Moon, still standing on the cart, jeered at the remains. A wisp of smoke curled from the tip of her horn. The wreckage of the other monster statues littered the ground around her. "I learned that trick from your friend down there. That's power from beyond the stars! You'll all get that and worse when I get my throne back, just you wait!" She resumed her seat, dangling her front hooves over the side and grinning smugly at me. "Looks like my 'true enemy' can't put up much of a fight."

I struggled to my feet, holding a gauntlet over the rupture in my helmet (a wasted effort) and trying to find the emergency patch I kept in one of the suit's many pockets. The effects of the escaping atmosphere were already making themselves apparent. My ears popped, my eyes ached like they wanted to leap out of my skull, my nostrils bled profusely, and I felt light-headed and woozy. Weakly, I called again to Nightmare Moon for help. The entire landscape seemed to tilt up and strike me in the side before I was aware I had stumbled.

My body refused to rise again. My eyes were clenched shut against the falling pressure and all I could hear was the whistling whine of my precious air bleeding away. Not now, I pleaded to the Increate and anything else that might be listening. Not like this! I had finally figured it out; I knew what I was meant to do!

The last sounds that reached my ears were the lowering hiss of my air running out, my suit's alarms warning me of the fact and that nasty, heartless princess saying something. Probably laughing at me.

I managed to curse myself for a fool before darkness and silence swallowed my consciousness.

Convalescence

The first thing I was aware of was the fire.

Not the still fire of the Increate, beckoning me from beyond, nor those of our own making that drive us from behind. It was a fire I had seen before, nearly a year ago.

Once again, I stood beside my brother's pyre, at night, alone. The other mourners, what few had been willing to show their faces at the funeral of someone with such powerful enemies, had departed long ago, finally driven away by my ranting. This was where I decided to embark on a journey into holy seclusion, to finally cut all ties with my kind and every other being in the galaxy.

It had been here that, drunk on both grief and spirits, I denounced everything I could think of. First, the low-life 'burglar' who had taken my brother's life for a pittance, the powerful alien conspirators who had undoubtedly put him up to it, and the law, well-oiled with bribes at every stage, which ensured only the expendable tool would take the fall.

Then I had cursed the mourners and well-wishers. Those who had been too scared of reprisal to show their faces, those that had mouthed conciliating fluff while pointedly failing to admit his death had been an assassination, those who wailed inconsolably yet hadn't lifted a claw for him when he was alive... myself among the latter number. What a horrible, unworthy lot we all were! What did he see in us that he thought worth the risk, nay, the certainty of being helped into an early grave?

Our hierarch had delivered an eulogy before lighting the pyre, but even he was too fearful to say more than that the deceased had made powerful enemies while trying to do good. The theme of the message was one we had all heard far too often before, 'where is the Increate when the righteous suffer?' As he droned out the stock answer, I came to a conclusion of my own. The divinity and its blessings were gone from this world because we had decided, as a whole, that we didn't really want them. Why reason did I have to remain a part of this justly doomed civilization? Then and there, I swore that I'd present my case to the hierarch one last time. If he refused me yet again, I would take my inheritance, buy supplies and a berth and set off on my own, with his blessing or no.

The memories evaporated, but the fire remained. Was this it, then? Was this reminder of death, failure and inferiority all that waited for me beyond life? It was fitting, perhaps. I was at last alone in my own desolate universe. Nothing was visible outside the reach of the flame; only darkness on all sides. Within the fire the remains of my kin, wrapped in a blanket, slowly collapsed into ash. The bleakest despair I'd ever felt suffused my being.

And yet, as I stared into the dying flames, waiting numbly for complete darkness to cover me forever, they changed before my eyes. They were no longer chemical combustion undoing flesh, scale and bone, but the roiling, fusing plasma of a star. I hung like an orbiting planet in the midst of the night. Like the pyre, however, the star was dimming and dying.

As I watched its light fade further, I became aware of a pair of luminescent blue eyes hanging in the blackness near the far side of the star. She was here, too? Of course she was! Why not? Why should I be able to escape from anything?! Maybe she was dead too, or trespassing in the afterlife was yet another of her incomprehensible powers. I raised a claw in somber greeting, but her attention was wholly fixed on the cooling star.

"Your night will last forever," she said softly, speaking to herself. I don't think she even realized I was there, wherever 'there' was. "They'll never mistreat you ever again. Nopony will, because there won't be anypony to do it. When every last one of them is silenced, you'll finally have peace. It's harsh, but it's the only way."

As when I'd dreamed, I had no trouble comprehending her language even without the assistance of the translator.

Well, better to get this over with than drag it out and be accused of spying on her. I cleared my throat.

The effect on the dark princess was electric. Nightmare Moon's eyes looked up, wide and staring, turning one way and then another to find the source of the noise.

"No, go away! I told you never to come back here! You have to stay away. This isn't for you!" she shouted into the dark, still not having spotted me.

I waved again.

"I—what? Pangolin? You!? How did you get here?" she said, astonished.

Odd as it sounded, I was just as uncertain as she. And who had she been expecting? When I began to ask where we were and what had happened to me I was swiftly cut off.

"No! Get out! How dare you come here? Don't you have any decency?"

Out? Where was there to go? How could I—

"WAKE—

—UP!"

My eyes, or rather, eye snapped open to stare at the ceiling of the habitat. As such things often go, the fire and the sun, so fraught with import, became merely the light set into the roof, which was flickering in a way vaguely reminiscent of fire through my closed lids. I'd have to check the wiring.

Then it came to me that I was in my habitat, still wearing my suit, sans helmet, and, most likely, alive. Yes, definitely alive; I ached too much and too diversely for it to be otherwise. My right eye was particularly pained, and I couldn't see through it. I tried to heave myself out of the unnatural and vulnerable belly-to-the-sky position.

"How did you do that?" a familiar voice demanded from nearby. "My dreams should be inviolate! Tell me how you snuck in there or I'll..."

I finally succeeded in rolling over onto my feet. Instead of replying, I reached up and gingerly felt my face. I feared to find some gruesome injury, but there was merely a gauzy patch taped over my right eye, and more pads stuffed into my nostrils to stop the bleeding. She... she had brought me back and patched me up? I owed her my life? Agog and light-headed from my ordeal, I staggered toward Nightmare Moon, who glowered at me with slightly more suspicion than usual.

"Hey, I'm talking to you! Ah, what are you—no! Stay back!"

Bleating joyfully, I threw myself forward and embraced her neck and one of her front legs, gripping with all six limbs and my tail. I was alive, alive! She'd saved me!

The object of my gratitude made a strangled sort of yelp and began violently shaking the leg to which I had attached myself.

"Get—stop—let go!" she cried, twisting her neck one way and then another.

When I didn't comply, Nightmare Moon used her magic to forcibly pry my claws from her hide and shoved me to the other end of the cell. She coughed and rubbed her neck with a hoof. "Impertinent little beast! You'd be dead without me! I drag you back here, I patch your broken face and you pay me back by spying on my dreams and then—then you try and tear my throat out! I should never have listened to that whining pile of sand."

I remembered her earlier advice in midair, and was just able to swing my tail to land on my side rather than skull. Through the fog in my wounded head it occurred to me that quadrupeds might not show affection in the same way my climbing species did. Still giddy with delight from my near brush with death, I rose and swore I hadn't intended to harm her. I had no clue how I got to...wherever it was, and I wasn't trying to hurt her, that was an embrace; a show of utmost appreciation! She had indeed rescued me from mortal peril, and I was glad! When those of my species wished to express goodwill—

Her anger became tinged with embarrassment. "I know what a hug is, Pangolin! Oh, just because nopony ever liked her, the princess must not know the touch of another being," she said sarcastically. "Surely it has nothing to do with you clamping those hooks around my windpipe."

There was a pause while she adjusted her breastplate. When she looked back at me again, most of the anger had drained from her.

"But... you mean it? You're glad you aren't dead, even if it means being stuck here as my vassal?" she continued in a quieter voice.

I nodded. How could she think otherwise? I reminded her I hadn't exactly laughed in the face of my own mortality during the numerous perils I'd been through since meeting her.

"Well, nopony wants to suffer, but afterwards, there's no more problems, right? When you're dead you can't get hurt any worse."

I allowed there was a wide variety of opinions on that subject. While annihilationists held this to be true, it was by no means the most common position. The controversial Vision of the Highest World attributed to the thirty-fifth Elder of Origin Island, in contrast, suggested—

"Fine, fine, you're happy and you don't know how to show it to a princess," she sighed. "I believe you. Here," Nightmare Moon raised one of her front legs to dangle in the air. "When you want to show respect to a member of royalty, you wait until she does this, and then you approach slowly, bow your head, and ~~kiss~~ her bell boot."

The last verb passed through untranslated. Apparently there wasn't a near equivalent in my own language. The translator beeped and made a tentative footnote with a pair of best fits: 'affectionate biting' and 'romantic tasting'.

The translator! I pulled it off of my suit and examined it. A light on the side indicated it was still set to record. I hastily commanded it to stop. Had it caught the other creature's words? How long had I been out? Was this the sort that overwrote the earliest recording when it ran out of space? I tried to figure out how to play back the recording from the beginning.

I hadn't quite got it when Nightmare Moon loudly cleared her throat. I looked up from the gadget to see her glowering at me impatiently, one foot still suspended and waiting for whatever it was she expected me to do.

I had something of utmost importance for her to hear, I said.

She looked offended. "You saying something worthwhile would be a pleasant change." She pointed to her raised boot with her other front foot. "Show me some respect, and then maybe I'll listen to you."

This wasn't my words, though! This translator, this machine that changed my language to hers and vice versa, could also record and play back things it had heard before.

" 'Re-cord?' A machine that plays? Either it's broken or you aren't making a bit of sense."

I tried to avoid technical jargon. The translator could remember sounds, I explained, and repeat them on command. While she was destroying those statues on the way back here, the one that dragged me away had spoken to me.

Nightmare Moon narrowed her eyes. She was annoyed with me, as usual, but she also looked worried. "You're lying," she said. "Those ones can't talk. I didn't make them to."

She could listen and judge for herself, I said with a shrug.

The pony glanced back and forth, avoiding eye contact. "No. I won't."

Now she was just being stubborn! I was trying to help her! What harm could it do to just listen to a recording?

"I don't want to. You always lie to me and try to trick me and you still haven't thanked me properly. Why should I listen to you?"

I heaved a sigh. If I went through this gratitude ritual, would she hear me (and the translator) out?

"Maybe."

Fine. Whatever. Close enough. She'd have to explain how it worked, though. I had no idea what this word 'chys' meant.

Nightmare Moon looked incredulously at me then started to chuckle scornfully. "Oh Pangolin, Pangolin! You are far too ugly not to know what ~~kissing~~ is!"

I still didn't understand, other than that I'd just been insulted. Was this 'chysing' something that only certain beings could do? Perhaps she could demonstrate it.

"A demonstration, is it? On you, I suppose? Well, aren't you bold all of a sudden!" she said, giving me a knowing look. "The handsome, naive stranger from parts unknown knows nothing of the world and innocently asks our heroine to teach him the ways of romance! 'What is this thing you call... kissing?' Please. It's the hoariest old cliche in the stories. Really, you ought to be more original."

It was romance, then! She was commanding me to participate. The last bit of the happiness I'd felt at being alive was extinguished not five minutes after it had kindled. After all the insults and abuse and attempted murder, Nightmare Moon was coming on to me?! When did this happen? I had heard of medical caregivers falling for their patients before, but here? Now? It was insane!

I took an involuntary step backward, apologizing for the miscommunication. While I had utmost respect for her highness and felt only goodwill toward her, I wished that—no, I assumed our relationship was of a decidedly non-amorous nature.

Somehow the blood rising to her face was visible beneath her coat. "What? No, no, it's not like that! I mean, it can be, but not.... I wasn't trying—" As if at the flicking of a switch, the embarrassed look fell from her face and her stare hardened. "...Wait, so you're saying I'm not good enough for you, Is that it? Is that it?!" she said, curling back her lip into a snarl. Her front leg still dangled in the air.

I should have quailed and apologized. I should have tried to smooth over this strange faux pas. Maybe I even should have sacrificed the rest of my dignity and played along with her little egotistical drama.

Really, anything would have been wiser than bursting out laughing uncontrollably at the sheer nonsensicality of it all.

I blame my recent brush with asphyxiation. Who knows how many brain cells I lost from oxygen starvation? It's a miracle I was still functioning.

My reaction caught Nightmare Moon by surprise, as she’d never seen me laugh before. That novelty may have been the only thing keeping her from punting me through the wall. "Stop that!" she commanded, stamping the hoof back down. "Quit laughing, you hyena! You—you braying jackass! Be silent! Nopony laughs at me!"

I wanted to, but I couldn't; it was just so absurd! I lost my balance and rolled about on the floor, helpless and half-curled in my suit. Nightmare Moon despised me. She called me an ugly monster. She was certain I'd twice attempted to murder her. She belittled me every time she opened her mouth, and now I was supposed to believe she gave a chipped scale whether I found her desirable as a mate?! Any female of my own species would be relieved to find herself outside my interest, but now she felt the lack?

It was the crowning ridiculousness of a season fraught with them. The dike of my fear could only dam the rising tide of absurdity for so long before it spilled over the top and washed me away. Of course, she wouldn't understand. This would drive her into another rage. Just as well to die laughing, I supposed.

And yet, as I howled helplessly, a strange thing happened. Instead of giving in to wrath, Nightmare Moon's mask of wounded dignity hardened and hardened on her face, becoming more outraged, more tragic, more unjustly put-upon. Between my guffaws I could practically read her inner monologue: there had never been a pony more ill-treated than her; betrayed, exiled, abandoned, and now, to top it all off, the hideous, stupid, scaly alien who twice tried to assassinate her, who endlessly tormented her with lies, had refused to obey her latest command...

...The disgusting, hateful, treacherous thing would not give her a chys!

The change that came over that pony was awful to behold. I could have sworn I heard something cracking and breaking inside of her as Nightmare Moon's face twisted one way and then another, trying to stay regal and tragic and righteously indignant. It was no use. Her eyes squinted, her cheeks puffed, her lower lip stuck out, her ears folded back, and then riotous laughter burst from her as well, all the more explosive for her attempt to hold it back. She had seen the humor in the situation.

There is not much to tell for a while. We just laughed at ourselves together, the hermit and the exile, all the tension and fear and the cold, unfriendly world outside momentarily forgotten. I had heard her laugh often before, but it sounded different this time. It was not the mad cackle she'd loosed when dreaming of killing her world, nor the cruel mirth she'd used to show delight in my pain. This time it sounded musical and wholesome, and rather silly in its own right.

Some time later, when we'd regained our composure, she nodded to me and wiped a mirthful tear from her eye. "Very well, very well. I'll allow you not to fall in hopeless, totally unrequited love with me just yet." she said, pointing a hoof in mock-seriousness. "But see to it you don't take too long, or I might really be insulted."

I raised my belly in imitation of a salute and told her I'd do my best.

"Oh, and if I inspire you to poetry or song, see to it that it at least scans. I've had enough swains caterwauling doggerel at my balcony to last several lifetimes."

I blinked at this and inwardly wondered what happened to 'nopony ever liked her.' I refrained from asking. Might I be allowed to play her the recording now?

She covered her ears with her hooves like a petulant child. "No you may not! You still haven't done anything to thank me for saving your life. Since you won't kiss my boot, I won't hear this sound-playing machine until you do something else for me; something even grander!"

If I set the translator's volume to the maximum and went ahead and played it, she might be forced to hear the words of her foe whether she wanted to or no. Its statements were so vague, though. Would this wake her up to her situation? More likely she'd just use her magic to smash the thing if I defied her, doing the power's work for it.

What could I do that would satisfy her honor, then? Going through with this farce of courtly love was out of the question. Crooning romantic ditties through the branches over a lady's clutch was not my forte, and would most likely be misunderstood. On top of that, Nightmare Moon didn't seem to have a clutch or a nest to hide them in. (Did ponies even lay eggs?)

But, poetry... song... that gave me an idea! The translator would not be able to do justice to music or poetry, I said, but I did have a vast storehouse of the writings of the galaxy’s greatest sages and mystics. Perhaps, instead of an easily-misconstrued gesture, I could thank her for saving me by sharing the gift of knowledge, my only wealth?

The princess looked at me uncertainly, but with a slight interest as well. She'd probably read nothing new since her exile nigh on a thousand years ago, and couldn't use my library unless I and the machine translated for her. "What did you have in mind?" she asked tentatively.

I un-docked my tablet and flipped through the index. There was so much. Where should I begin? The Sixteen Excellent Precepts of Inward Justice? The Grand Hierarch's Meditation on the Desirability of Peace? Perhaps something lighter, like the Sayings and Aphorisms of the Eighth-Century Sages? Any of these would surely make the case for abandoning her quest for vengance far more eloquently than I could, and they would come from sources who hadn't tried to kill her.

As I read off the titles, she shook her head at each one, looking more and more disappointed. "These all sound like dry, boring philosophy, Pangolin. Is this what your kind read for pleasure? I don't want to think and puzzle and introspect." She arranged the tent and pillow into a pile and lay down on them with a sigh. "Don't you have any stories in there? Some pretty fictions about ponies not being abominable to each other? Find one where the innocent, upright youngest sister makes good. Let me leave this universe, if only in my thoughts, if you want to repay me for your life."

I suppose it only makes sense that a prisoner would have an appreciation for escapism. I cursed myself for throwing out the 'non-practical' bulk of my library in a fit of passion against frivolous literature. At the time, playing entertainer for a lonely princess had been the farthest thing in the cosmos from how I expected to spend my seclusion.

Instructing the tablet to display only texts marked as fiction yielded a single, lonely result: Inklings of the Increate, a collection of theologically-dubious folk tales and other public-domain works from a variety of species, each tenuously wedded to some moral precept. I had read the first couple, found them pedestrian and moved on to more fruitful areas of study.

My eye slid down the table of contents. The stories were organized by planet, most of which I'd never heard of.

I was about to pick one at random when one of the later parts caught my eye. A Tale of Terra, it read. Just one, in fact, and it was surprising there was that many. It was a novelization of some sort of drama which was itself an adaptation of another work of literature. The rights had somehow slipped between the cracks of the Terrans' draconian intellectual property laws in some forgotten age.

I thought back to the connections I'd discovered between that obscure world and the one we orbited. Curiosity tugged at my mind.

Well, why not? Perhaps we would both get something out of this.

"Have you found a decent tale among all that blather yet?" she asked impatiently.

I replied in the affirmative. She would like this one better.

She pulled the tent around her and settled into a more comfortable position. "I'll be the judge of that. Get on with it already!"

I nodded, cleared my throat, and began to read. The story opened on a small town, at night, in the midst of the snowy winter. Its inhabitants were praying fervently in their homes, and all for the sake of one person. The odd Terran name rolled awkwardly from my tongue.

It felt like a lifetime ago, when I had stared from the ship at the image painted in dark sand across the face of the moon. I had reminded myself how the Increate leaves signs and messages scattered across the cosmos, meaningless and innocuous to all but their intended recipient.

I had no idea what I was about to unleash.

Revelation

I could hardly believe it.

This time, she didn't interrupt, as she had during my own life's story. She didn't say the plot was cloying and sentimental, she didn't complain that the events were contrived, or that the villain was a caricature or anything of the sort. Other than a remark early on about the dancing traditions of buffalo, Nightmare Moon had just sat there, listening raptly as I stumbled through the odd Terran names as best I could.

After a while, my voice grew raw, so I paused to get a drink and rest my throat. As she was still sitting in pensive silence when I returned with the bowl, I asked the princess whether she was enjoying the story.

The abyss-black creature started and blinked when I spoke to her, so lost had she been in the tale. Even after she had fully returned to herself, she seemed to struggle to find the words to answer me. "It is... misleadingly titled." she said at last. "What is so 'wonderful' about this Bay Leaf fool constantly sacrificing his dreams only to be passed over and ignored? He will never get what he wants unless he rears up and seizes it!"

I took another sip of water and pointed out that we were still in the middle of the story. Much could change before the conclusion.

"Hmph. That spineless jellyfish is the sort who just gets abused and taken advantage of forever. Anyway, we still haven't caught up with the archons in the prologue. They've already set up a forced happy ending where one of those cosmic spirits floats down to fix everything and make everypony happy again. That sort of thing always happens in stories and never in real life."

Did she not wish to hear more? There were other stories in this collection, or we could finally get around to that vitally-important recording...

"Oh no, you're not weaseling your way out of this, Pangolin. Keep reading," she said, betraying her eagerness, or maybe just her wish to avoid confronting the real problem.

So I set the bowl aside and resumed the tale.

Not much further in, I glanced up from the page to discover that Nightmare Moon had quietly drifted back into that intensely focused, almost trancelike state. After all the commentary and critiques she'd been spouting (in the rare moments she wasn't talking about herself) until now, I found her silence and interest unnerving.

Nightmare Moon's prediction of the ending was only partially correct. The supernatural forces played a role, yes, but "Bay Leaf's" happy ending ultimately came from mundane sources. The tale closed with the hero's brother toasting him, and the reception of a final message from the blessed revenant driving home the story's theme. Also he presumably gained wings somehow; it sounded painful.

I set down the tablet and exhaled without speaking for the first time since my break. The story had been physically and emotionally exhausting. I myself had been so engrossed, I had even forgotten I had an audience. I looked up to check on her.

Nightmare Moon was still lying on the tent and pillow. Her back was turned to me, but her ears were folded back and every few seconds her wings and body would jolt and quiver.

Uncertain what this meant, I tried to engage the princess in conversation. Had she liked the story? I thought it quite good for what it was. No wonder Terrans were so jealous of their literature.

Her ears twitched at my voice, but she said nothing. Had she fallen asleep?

Trying again, I noted that the protagonist's problems were far from over; his fortunes were still in jeopardy, the villain was still at large and all Bay Leaf had really gained was a bit of assurance. Wasn't that an odd place for the story to end?

She stood abruptly, keeping her head turned away from me and hidden behind her restless mane.

Was something the matter?

My guest sniffed noisily before replying. "It was a... good story." she said. Her voice sounded raw.

Had she been... ? No, it wasn't possible.

Did she have any questions? I admitted much of the Terran culture was opaque to me, but I'd be happy to try and explain whatever I could.

She sniffed loudly again. "How could I misunderstand? They all cared for him, all along, but he just... he thought he was alone and ruined and he nearly—" she gulped. "—And earning wings like the other one did; it means—" A half-choked sob escaped from her before she could close her mouth.

When she found her voice again, the usual anger had returned.

"Pat yourself on the back, Pangolin. That was your best trick yet."

I didn't understand. What did she think I had done? I hadn't even read that story before. What about it bothered her so much?

She moved briskly toward the door. "I'm through talking to you. You just try to manipulate me!"

Perhaps, I thought, but I must be doing a rather poor job if the one time I wasn't trying to sway her had an effect like this! I awkwardly repeated that I didn't know the contents of the story before I read it. Why did it move her? Was it because part of it was about the protagonist's relationship with a sibling?

The inner airlock door flung open at her magic and she stepped inside. "As if you didn't know," she said over her shoulder. "Don't try to follow me."

The door shut behind her with a clang. A minute later, the airlock finished cycling and Nightmare Moon was gone.

I slumped against a wall and stared at the tablet in my hand and the final lines of the story. It was just an old song about friends asking whether they'd remember each other when they were separated. A grim song for celebrating a new year, but one fitted to the mortal condition.

Finding solitude again after being joined at the tail to Nightmare Moon for so long should have been a relief. Instead, I felt only apprehension. What was she doing out there? Would her tormentor strike at her again? Or at me?

I admit the idea of my having somehow offended Nightmare Moon so much that she simply refused to have anything further to do with me was a pleasant one. Still, it wouldn't last. If nothing else she would return when the ship arrived to make good her escape. That was the condition of my continued survival, after all. Hadn't the thing controlling the image of her sister said something about the princess 'returning to her proper state of mind' if I had taken its deal to keep us separate? Unless I was decieved, what the fiend considered 'proper' seemed to be something along the lines of a remorseless genocidal psychotic. Letting her go meant that it had a free claw to continue twisting that unhappy pony to its will! Could I afford it this time to act?

I lurched to my feet, feeling weak and unsteady, and hunted around the cell until I found where she'd discarded my helmet. There was still a white star-shaped pattern of fractures from the minute hole in the faceplate. The rest of the protective garment, which I was still wearing, doubtless needed a thorough inspection after the ordeals it had been through today. Both it and my other suit had been receiving far more abuse than I'd planned for; I was already down to my last spare faceplate, and my supply of insulating vacuum- and radiation-rated patching material was far from limitless.

Still, the other suit was maintained and ready to go. I had only to change into it, install a fresh air supply and I could be off doing my duty. Yes, I could leap fearlessly into the breach once more, and stride outside...

The memory of lying on the sand in the depressurizing suit flashed back into my mind. The tug of the hungry void against my face, the stabbing pain in my soft tissues, the waning hiss of the last bits of air escaping....

I stared at the window by the outer airlock door and swallowed with a dry throat. Then again, maybe I ought to stay here and recuperate from my injuries instead. Didn't I deserve some respite after my latest and closest near-death experience? Anyway, who could tell how far Nightmare Moon had gone? With her magic, she could be on the far side of this world before I could go a thousand ells! Yes, surely she'd done that. Most likely she was sulking in 'her' night on the dark side. It would be a useless, dangerous waste of time to try and follow her. Nobody would blame me for remaining right where I was and doing nothing!

So resolved to the path of least resistance, I placed the helmet on a crate, sat back down and dismissed the story from the tablet's screen, returning to the library's main page. Listed near the top were my latest unfinished readings. Below the scriptures and the survey report was Encyclopedia of the Wonders of All Worlds, still waiting at the 'Unicorn' entry.

My eyes narrowed. This was one of the things the tormentor was so sure would change my mind about stopping Nightmare Moon, what it had demanded I read before nearly killing me.

Then there was something productive I could do after all. If this silly little agglomeration of myths and superstitions would somehow turn me into a co-conspirator, I would just get rid of it! I opened the options menu for the document, scrolled down until I found "delete permanently" at the bottom and pressed the button. A window appeared asking me to confirm my decision.

I raised a claw to do so, but a thought made me pause. There was something wrong about this. It was too easy. Hadn't that thing claimed to have been manipulating Nightmare Moon into doing its bidding? What if it was doing the same to me? What if there was something in here that would help me frustrate its plans that it wished me to discard without reading?

I withdrew my claw and weighed my options. Did our mutual foe actually want me to read further, or was it reverse psychology? It might even be double reverse psychology to ensure I'd get curious and take a second, closer look at the book! How well could a powerful supernatural entity predict my own thought processes?

But this was all nonsense! How could Wonders possibly contain pertinent information? Why should I take it seriously? It had said the thing alternately beating me up and talking my ear off was a Terran myth born from misunderstanding. The bit about cleansing poison with the horn could just be coincidence. There was no mention of the horn doing anything else, and if Nightmare Moon's actions were any indication, surely someone would have noted....

Well, maybe they had. I didn't know. I hadn't read the rest of the entry.

I clacked my jaws and glanced about the room, trying to decide what to do. Situations like this are the bane of my life. Whatever choice I make, it always seems to be the wrong one, but there's seldom any way to truly know what might have been if I had done differently.

Could I simply not make a choice, set the tablet aside and do something else? I ought to be able to. A hermit should have willpower and self-mastery and be able to resist any temptation no matter how—

Before I realized what I was doing, I had dismissed the confirmation window and opened the document to where I'd left off.

Well, no matter, I just wouldn't read it. I'd close the document and finally begin making up the dozens of hours of meditation I'd missed instead. That's what I'd do. Now, where was that exit button? My eyes slid over the screen...

...power to nullify poisons.

The majority of representations in legend and heraldry depict the unicorn as a benevolent creature and a symbol of purity. Most notably, a unicorn would instantly become docile in the presence of a Terran female of unsullied virtue. A comparison between this behavior and certain religious beliefs, encapsulated by a complex wordplay, has cemented the image of the unicorn as a sacred and innately morally upright being to the present day.

I blinked. That wasn't so bad at all! My resolve to protect the unicorns and whatever else down there on the planet was undimmed. Now it was time to set the tablet aside for real and do something else.

But there was more:

This image represents an almost complete reversal of the earliest depictions of the unicorn. As originally imagined by those who knew the aggressive and ill-tempered beast from which they were drawn, unicorns were rapacious, violent, nigh-unstoppable forces of destruction who pursued their own desires with single-minded fervor and gored or trampled anyone or anything in their way. Their powerlessness in the presence of pure maidens, far from being a sign that they reflected this nature, was no more significant than the way other innately evil creatures from Terran folklore are vulnerable to sacred objects or virtuous individuals. (see: Terra: Undead: Vampire)

Oh. Oh yes. That sounded a bit more like what I'd witnessed so far. It was right in line with what that thing had said about unicorns conquering the galaxy once they discovered space travel.

Cursing my weak will, I wanted to chuck the obstreperous brick of hardware across the room, but my deeply-ingrained respect for the written word checked me. Instead, I ended up browsing the rest of the ‘Fantastic Creatures’ section, trying to forget what I'd just read. To my dismay, I stumbled across entries for the 'Griffin', the 'Cynocephalus' and the 'Western Dragon'. Each was clearly the match for one of the monstrous statues we'd encountered on the way back from her arena.

Each awful discovery made me feel weaker and more uncertain. My wounded head ached and strength fled from my body. I let the tablet fall from my claws as my mind reeled. This was entirely beyond coincidence. Someway, somehow, beings too much like those described in this arch little encyclopedia were alive and breathing on the planet below, half a galaxy away from those who'd dreamed them up.

What did it mean? Was the Increate's universe so vast and varied that every tall tale was true somewhere? Did the Ever-Faithful Lovers of my homeworld's legendarium truly wait even now in eternal devotion at worlds on opposite sides of the galactic plane? Could one travel by starship to the hidden island of bliss to which the first Armorer-King had departed in the days of misty pre-history?

It was actually a rather beautiful concept. Most made-up stories had happy endings, didn't they?

...Which was why it couldn't be true. No, far more likely that I had, at last, gone completely insane. I had read large portions of this encyclopedia in the past, and had a most wild and vivid imagination before I'd been stripped of my youthful innocence. Back home, they used this to dismiss my warnings about the powers arrayed against our world; they said I was paranoid and seeing things where there were none. Perhaps they were finally correct.

Yes, yes, that had to be it. It had to be my own head. There was no danger to the world below from an unstoppable magical avenger. The Terran navigator's comment had set it all off. It had awoken some hidden part of my mind, and this lonely solitude caused me to hallucinate all these evil creatures I'd read about so long ago. Nightmare Moon was merely a phantom from a sick psyche; that explained how she could have continuity between my dreams and my waking.

But then again, if none of it was real, only illusion, how was I getting so banged up? Was I hurting myself? I tried to reach for my helmet to check the damage more closely, but I couldn't even stand anymore, I felt so dizzy and weak. I doubted I'd have the strength or the tools to fracture the shatter-resistant material so cleanly even when I was at the peak of health, and then who would drag me back indoors?

No more thinking. I needed to rest. Ever since Nightmare Moon's departure I'd been feeling drained. Apparently my injuries were more severe than had first appeared, or perhaps there was something wrong with the atmosphere in here. Had I tampered with the mixer in my madness? Ha. Wouldn't Nightmare Moon be surprised when she got back to find me expired from asphyxiation. Wait, no, she didn't exist so she wouldn't find anything. She'd go poof whenever I did. I tried to climb up to my perch, lost my balance, and tumbled onto the pile Nightmare Moon had made of the tent and her pillow.

My last vaguely coherent thought before I lost consciousness was how that would show her who was in charge around here.

I opened my eyes, both of them, some indefinite period of time later, feeling entirely different. Not only was my body whole and undamaged, I was no longer wearing my excursion suit or the sterile gauze.

I rolled to my feet as easily as could be, wondering at this change. Had I been out long enough to fully heal? But that would take ages; I should be weak, hungry, thirsty and filthy were that the case. Had Nightmare Moon returned and sped my recovery with her ineffable magic powers? But where was she?

No, I'd decided she was a figment of a diseased imagination. Had my injuries been too? Had a good night's sleep brought me back to lucidity? A sensation of unreality nagged at me, or perhaps it was just my natural pessimism, telling me that was too good to be true.

A cold draft from behind caught my attention, and I whirled around to see something I never thought I'd witness.

Both doors of the airlock were standing wide open.

This was impossible. All I felt was a cold breeze coming from without. If anything, the air should have been moving rather violently the opposite direction. The tell-tale blue glow of Nightmare Moon's force fields was nowhere in evidence. Not only that, but the landscape I glimpsed outside the airlock was dim and hazy. At no time of day or night should the moon look like that. The days are harsh and blazing, the nights are pitch dark, there is no gradation between them, and at all times the airless sky is perfectly clear.

I cautiously stepped closer to the doors until I had an angle to look upwards. No stars were visible, instead, something irregular and faintly luminous covered the sky from end to end like a thin blanket, or the roof of an enormous cave.

Or overcast clouds?

It was then that I became aware of tiny objects moving just outside the airlock. Where the light from indoors fell on this strange new moonscape, something was falling steadily from above and sparkling as it fell.

I grasped about for an explanation. Maybe a volcano had erupted nearby, and I was witnessing the gas and ash spewed forth? But the core of this satellite should be cold and dead, and even the most furious geothermal outburst stood no chance of even temporarily creating the atmosphere I was experiencing. Furthermore, the sorts of gas resulting from such an event would be toxic, or at least unbreathable.

Could Nightmare Moon (if she existed) be doing this with her magic? Perhaps using the mixer we'd left in the arena to fill the world with air and dust?

I reached out the airlock with one of my upper claws and caught one of the falling motes. It felt cold, and vanished a moment after I touched it, but I still distinctly saw the six-fold crystal symmetry.

It was a snowflake. It was snowing on the moon. The way it had melted proved it was not one of her creations of dust.

I took a few more steps outside. With a shock of cold, I realized what I had thought was the same arid dust before was instead a blanket of snow. Nightmare Moon's hoofprints left the cell's doorstep and hurried off into the snow-obscured distance.

As I followed them with my eyes, I noticed something large and rectangular standing on the slope just outside the reach of the light. The prints paused next to it, then hurried off with renewed haste. I fetched a lantern from indoors and walked out into the frozen night to see what it was.

The electric light illuminated a large wooden sign covered with characters of an unfamiliar language. Or, I should say, a new language. Despite having never seen these letters before, I was still capable of understanding their meaning.

The sign, half-obscured by snow, read "Welcome to Celestria" next to an arrow and crude pictures of smiling pony heads.

'Celestria'? It sounded like a portmanteau of the name of Nightmare Moon's former kingdom and the name of her hated sister, like how, in the story I just read, the protagonist was shown "Pottersville," a vision how his hometown might have been, named after the piece's villain.

I shook my head. What a crazy time I'd been having! First I collapsed from my wounds, then I awoke in perfect health in the midst of a snowstorm on the moon, and now this sign in an unknown language I could read inspired by the story I'd just read appeared out of nowhere! Where did she even get the wood? Either my sanity was much, much further gone than I'd first surmised or...

"...We're not really here. You're dreaming, idiot...."

"...There was only our starry dreamlands, all their little friends, and myself...."

"...My dreams should be inviolate! Tell me how you snuck in there...."

...Or it was just that I was somehow psychically joined to this sad, violent alien who could enter and shape dreams at a whim. Madness began to seem appealing by comparison.

I heaved a sigh. Well, either way, I didn't suppose I was in any actual danger here. Dream or delusion, none of it was really happening. Gripping the lantern tighter, I trudged deeper into the snowstorm, following the fading tracks left by Nightmare Moon.

Invasion

A stroll through a winter landscape, regardless of whether it was real or not, should have been a treat; a change of scenery, a reminder of home. Not that I liked to visit to the colder regions of my native world more often than I could help it, but still, it was pleasant to be able to walk in the open air without the need for protective gear.

Even so, I probably should have donned something to insulate me before setting off. Four minutes down the path of hoof prints and I was shivering and rubbing my free arms against the inadequate hair of my belly to keep warm. I frequently had to pause to brush away the snow accumulating on my head, shoulders and back. I couldn’t recall feeling cold in a dream before. Why couldn't delusions (and surely, surely this was one, I kept telling myself) ever be unreal in my favor?

Grumbling to myself in this manner, I followed the trail of hoof prints down a hill, through a copse of outlandish-looking trees and up to a rocky clifftop overlooking a broad, dimly-lit town of single- and two-story dwellings surrounded by a crude wall of wooden stakes in the valley below. Was this ‘Celestria’? I was expecting something far grander and more menacing.

The hoof prints came to an abrupt stop at the edge of the overlook. Had Nightmare Moon taken wing? There was no trace of her to be seen in the cloud-blanketed sky. I shivered, leaned over the cliff’s edge and pondered the wisdom of descending into the town in search of shelter from the storm.

But why bother? This was all delusion of one sort or another anyway, wasn’t it? Nightmare Moon, if there really was a Nightmare Moon, could elude me just as easily here as she could back on the real surface of the planetoid. I should just retrace my steps before the falling snow erased them again, get a warm beverage, and wait in the comfort of my cell for this dream or hallucination to end. After all, she had been angered by my accidental intrusion into her dream earlier. No telling what she would do if I offended her again!

…If she was real at all, that is. Doubting my own sanity like this was beyond irritating! I decided to simply not think about the matter further. I would just go home and cherish whatever little time I had without that awful pony around.

So resolved, I nodded to myself, turned away from the escarpment, and struck my face against something cold and utterly unyielding.

I fell back onto my tail with a squeal, nearly tumbling off the cliff entirely. When I looked up to see what I had struck, my own face stared back, or rather, its reflection mirrored in the strange pale-blue metal of Nightmare Moon’s gorget and breastplate.

Looming above, she grinned down, delighted by how much of a fright she’d given me.

“Pangolin! How nice of you to join me in our little dreamland! I’m glad you finally made it here.”

By the Increate, I wished that pony would quit smiling at me like that! Still, at least I seemed to be more welcome this time. Just to be safe, I stuttered an apology for my presence. It had become rather hard to entertain the idea she wasn’t real with my nose still smarting from our collision.

Nightmare Moon dismissed my words with a smirk and a toss of her head. “No, no, this time I was expecting you to barge in,” she said, looking over my head to take in the vista beyond. “Isn’t my world beautiful?” she sighed. “Even better than yours, right?”

I hastily agreed.

“Only from a distance, though,” she added. “See, I’ve been thinking about that story you read me.”

I had gathered as much. Was that what the ‘Celestria’ sign was about, I asked. Was this like the vision shown Bay Leaf of the world in which he had never been? Had she, like him, discovered that in spite of—

She stamped to silence me, whinnying in annoyance and making a cascade of loose snow spill over the edge of the cliff. “No. Wrong. Quit talking. What would be the point of that? I already know all about that scenario. The waking world is the one where I’ve been erased and forgotten, dunderhead! If all those poor, sweet, innocent ponies you want to save from me actually cared about me, they’d… they’d have done something by now, wouldn’t they? Written a letter? Sent a care package? Anything! How can you doubt they hate me? How could it be anything else?” As she spoke, she gazed down at the town, her expression melting from a superior grin to a hungry, longing stare like a beggar peeking through a window at a banquet. When she noticed I was looking at her, she quickly masked her visage behind the usual sneer.

“No, I’m doing something a little different here. Since you so graciously butted in again, you’re going to see what they’re like, and you’re going to finally give up trying to turn me away from my destiny.”

The pronouncement roused an obstinate streak in me. So she thought presenting her complaints in a different format would get me to condone mass murder, did she? If this was a ‘dreamland,’ how, I asked, were its inhabitants anything more than her own prejudices given form, just as the statues were?

‘If you’ve never seen a mortal pony before, why do you always assume I’m lying?” she snapped back. “They’re all one hundred percent bona-fide perfect memories, just like that copy of my sister was!”

A chilling thought occurred to me. Could Nightmare Moon’s tormentor manifest here as well? Did the means by which it usurped control of her magic also give it a doorway into her inner world? I dearly hoped not!

Then again, if I kept appearing here by accident, how hard could it be?

The princess mistook my look of trepidation for self-doubt. “Oh goody, I’m finally getting through to you!” she said, casting a spell on me from her horn. “I was beginning to despair of getting anything into that armored skull. Take this enchantment and run along now. Go meet those wonderful little ponies you’re going to protect. Oh, and give my counterpart a hoof down there, would you?”

Her counterpart? Did she mean Celestia? That was uncharacteristically charitable! I reminded her that I wished to help both her and the other ponies reach a compromise, not one’s dominion over the other. …But what did this spell do?

“An ‘equitable outcome beneficial to all parties’? Listen to yourself!” she mocked. “Quit flapping your jaws and look for once!”

On later reflection, I am still uncertain whether the edge of the cliff crumbled away at that moment from my weight alone or if she had a more direct role in it. I would not put it past her to play such a cruel prank, and it may well have been her laughter that I could barely hear over the sound of the small avalanche that descended the slope with me.

Dropping my light, I instinctively balled up and rolled as I tumbled. This kept me well-protected from the trees and jutting stones I caromed off in my career down the cliff, but also resulted in my gaining a rather fearsome momentum. Worse, I couldn’t see a thing in this state. I didn’t dare uncurl at such speeds.

Just as the ground seemed to level a bit, I bounced off something, sailed into the air, and crashed straight through something else. The next thing I knew, I was rolling across uneven cobblestones, striking several other hard objects, before I came to a violent stop against a wood surface. I was only dizzy, rather than smashed. Having never been launched like a carom ball before, I wasn’t sure if it would have hurt this little in real life.

“W-what was that racket? What happened?” said an unfamiliar voice nearby, faint above the ringing in my ears.

“Celestia preserve us, it shot right through the wall!” wailed another. “We’re under attack!”

“Guard! Where’s the guard? Help!”

Other voices were raised around me, so many that I couldn’t make out the rest over the general commotion. In the midst of the furor, I felt something tap lightly against my scales.

I uncurled just enough to see around me and found myself staring into the large eyes of a tiny pony leaning from a bright window about an ell above me. I knew they couldn’t really all be the color of moon dust, but I wasn’t expecting the eye-searing combination of cinnabar and teal in its body and mane.

The pony gasped and flinched away as I opened my scales. After a moment, it leaned forward again, stretching its neck to peer at me.

“You’re not a rock,” it whispered.

Unsure how to respond to this, I simply nodded.

“Are you a monster?” it asked, eyes widening still further.

I shook my head.

The young pony turned to look in the direction from whence I’d come. “Then why’d you do all that? You almost knocked down my house.”

I uncurled and stood to get a better view of my path, and a scene of linear destruction met my eye. In the meager light of watchtowers and windows I saw a trail of damaged trees and disturbed snow reaching down the cliff to a sizable hole in the town’s outer wall, and a few dents and cracks in the houses and street leading up to my current position.

This didn’t make sense. How could I have been going that fast? How could I have caused all that damage? I should have been stopped cold by the outer wall at best. The trip down the cliffside had hurt less than smashing my nose against her armor.

“Are you with that big evil pony? Is she coming to get us again?”

I began to ask who ‘she’ was (as if I couldn’t guess) and to reassure the small pony of my benign intentions when a voice from within the building interrupted me. “Snap Pea, you get away from that window right now!” called an adult pony. “They could have shot in a bomb or a trap or somesuch.”

“It’s alright mama,” Snap Pea yelled back, “They just threw a funny-lookin’ animal at us.”

The mother pony started. “An… an animal? Oh!” Her eyes met mine, then she screamed and charged toward the window, in a rage the likes of which I’d never seen from Nightmare Moon. I briefly considered explaining myself, but instead opted to roll tightly back into a ball.

It was the right choice. “You filthy monster!” she shrieked. “Get away from my baby!” She snatched up her child, then pointed her stubby yellow horn at me, which emitted a ray of pale green light. The spell struck with a force that sent me rolling to the other side of the street. As with the trip down the cliff, I barely felt it.

I couldn’t quite place the reason for my unusual resilience. Perhaps it was some sort of safeguard to prevent me from awakening before Nightmare Moon wished? Inside my armor, I pinched the skin on the unprotected side of an arm but felt nothing. I did notice the faintest blue glow playing across my arms, however. Maybe the spell she cast on me was protective in nature? The cold still seemed real enough.

“Guards! Guards! That thing is an invader!” the mother screamed as she slammed the window shut. “It tried to eat my baby!”

I unrolled, shook the dizziness from my head and got back onto my feet. Like my first contact with Nightmare Moon, this one was swiftly turning into a disaster of hostility and misunderstanding. As I shook the chunks of bark and earth from between my scales, I resolved to do a better job of representing myself to the inhabitants of this strange dream world. Its creator might well be aware of everything I did here, after all. Perhaps I could give her hope that the real ponies would receive a dangerous-seeming stranger hospitably. The child had seemed amiable enough.

My thoughts were interrupted by a host of winged ponies, the ones called pegasi, descending from the direction of the wall to hover over me. The steel of their armor and weapons, though dull, glittered in the light of the watch-fires and windows.

“Now whadda we got here?” one calmly drawled.

“This must be the thing that shot through the wall, cap’n,” another volunteered.

Ah, the constabulary, excellent! While the civilian citizenry could be panicky and fearful, especially considering the circumstances, these good ponies ought to be more professional and diplomatic. Certainly, they’d see they had nothing to fear from the likes of me!

I held my belly up with empty claws open and announced that I came in peace and that the damage to their town was entirely accidental. They only looked at me strangely, then the one who had spoken first made a slight gesture to a pony behind me.

The butt of a spear slammed into the back of my head and sent me sprawling face-first onto the snowy street. Again, there was no pain.

“You made a big mistake coming here all alone without your buddies and your mistress, monster,” the ostensible leader said.

I spat some dirty slush from my mouth and informed the pony I had no idea who he was talking about.

“I never seen one like this before, cap’n. Never heard of one just being alone and talking, either,” one of the other armed ponies said. “How come none of the other monsters ever acted like this?”

“Bet it’s a diversion and the rest are making trouble somewhere else,” said a pony directly behind me, likely the one who had knocked me to the ground. “It’s wearing one of her spells, so of course it’s her minion. Don’t trust anything it says.”

The captain frowned and made an experimental thrust at my belly with his spear. I flinched and yelped, but the point bounced off with a flash of blue light.

“Must be this magic shield that let it smash through the wall like it did,” he said. “Nuts. That means we’ll have to get her highness to break the spell before we can slay it.”

A collective groan went up from the warriors.

I made an attempt to insist that slaying was entirely unnecessary and I would be willing to go along with whatever they wished. The ponies ignored my words and remained hovering with their weapons pointed at me.

Then again, what was the worst that could happen? I’d just wake up, wouldn’t I?

The captain gave one of the others a prod to the ribs. “Well? G’wan, call ye olde high-and-mightyness! The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can get back our bunks.”

The guard nodded and withdrew a tube from beneath his armor. He pointed one end at the sky, folded back his ears, and tugged a string dangling from the other end with his teeth. A firework leapt into the air and exploded above the town with a noisy pop and a shower of blue sparks.

“D’ya think she’ll try and get all chummy with us again?”

“Probably. S’not like we can tell a princess to take a hike; night guard, and all.”

It began to dawn on me that every one of these guards had identical voices and mannerisms. The oversight seemed strange. Was this some pony form of esprit de corps, or were they all drawn from Nightmare Moon’s memory of one particular individual?

As I wondered, a dark figure flitted across the sky, barely glimpsed in the fading blue glow of the firework.

“Hoo-boy,” the captain grumbled, “here she comes. Backs straight, faces on, and we’ll try and get this done quick.” His soldiers unhappily complied.

The pony that landed before us was strikingly familiar-looking. It was larger than my captors, but smaller than Nightmare Moon. It possessed the combination of horn and wings, and also the great floating mane and tail, but its hair was more sparkling and solidly blue than the princess I’d come to know. Most notably, its hindquarters had a black splotch of the same shape as Nightmare Moon’s purple one, with the same crescent marks in the midst of it. It wasn’t just Nightmare Moon it resembled, though I couldn’t quite recall who else. It wasn’t as if I’d actually seen any other real ponies, after all.

The guards not watching me bowed low to her, but their expressions were mostly poorly-disguised impatience and annoyance.

For her own part, this new pony seemed oblivious to the chilliness of her reception, though she did appear generally tired and defeated-looking. She tried to smile grandly, then opened her mouth to speak.

Several of the guards bowing around me raised their front hooves to cover their ears.

“GREETINGS, GOOD PONIES OF OUR NIGHT GUARD,” the princess said in a voice impossibly loud even for her relatively large frame, “WE WERE HUNTING OUR NEMESIS WHEN WE ESPIED THY BEACON AND CAME WITH ALL HASTE. WHAT—”

Lights were springing up in windows all over town now, even more now than when I’d crashed through the wall. Accompanying this was an audible rising groan of hundreds of irate sleepy voices. The princess glanced about and grimaced, embarrassed.

“Er, —WHAT TROUBLES OUR BELOVED SUBJECTS THIS NIGHT?” she continued in a voice only slightly quieter than before.

“I got a noise complaint!” a pony heckled from a distant window. The princess reddened but refused to otherwise acknowledge the remark.

“Nothin’ much, your worshipfulness,” said the captain, wincing at the volume of the princess’s voice. “This thing got shot through the wall somehow, and we can’t hurt it with this fancy shield spell on it. Real sorry to keep you from your important duties. Just take that spell away and you can get right back to chasing your villain, okay?”

The princess looked disappointed. “YES, OF COURSE. WE ARE ALWAYS EAGER TO AID OUR PONIES—”

“Except letting them sleep,” a bleary-eyed pony in a night cap grumbled from a nearby doorway.

“—BECAUSE WE LOVE THEM,” the princess added, sparing an apologetic and pleading look for the critic. The tired pony harrumphed, withdrew inside and slammed the door behind him.

A couple of the guards prodded me forward at spear-point until I was standing directly before her highness. She looked me up and down.

“CURIOUS, I HAVE NEVER SET EYES ON THE LIKES OF THIS MONSTER,” she boomed. “HOW DID SO SMALL A BEAST CAUSE SUCH RUIN?”

The captain shrugged. “Came rollin’ down into the valley like an avalanche and busted through the gate like a catapult stone. When we got here it was tryin’ to eat a colt, but we saved ‘im, your grace.” The other guards nodded and made noises of assent.

Those lying, corrupt blackguards! I tried to get a word in edgewise but the princess’s booming voice drowned me out.

“WELL DONE, DOUGHTY WARRIORS OF CELESTRIA!” she said, clapping the captain on the shoulder with enough force to stagger him. “SUCH DEEDS BRING HONOR TO THY NAMES.” The large pony paused for a second and looked askance, as if trying to decide on a risky course of action, then forged ahead. “AS THOU AND WE ARE FELLOW DEFENDERS OF PONIES, LET US NOT STAND UPON PROTOCOL. THOU… thou may refer to us as… just ‘Luna’.”

My ringing ears pricked up at the name. Could it be? …But she looked (and sounded) so different.

The rest of the guards fidgeted uncomfortably.

Luna lowered her head and gave the captain a shaky, ingratiating grin. “It… it would greatly please us to know thy names as well.”

The captain looked as if he wanted to be anywhere but where he was. “Oh, ah, yeah. That’s real nice of you, your serene majesty. Treatin’ us grunts like regular folks. Real… nice. But Glorious Celestia, May She Reign Forever, wouldn’t like it if she heard we talked to her sister like she was just a dirty commoner, so we can’t. Real sorry, your highness; you understand how it is.” He yanked me between himself and Luna. “So, can you crack the spell on this thing?”

The princess looked shocked at the guards’ rudeness, then deflated and stared at the ground.

Taking advantage of the moment of silence, I protested that the charges of sophontophagy were complete slander, and furthermore—

“BY OUR STARS! THE CREATURE SPEAKETH?” exclaimed the princess, looking back up at me with renewed interest.

The guards gulped in unison. “Uh, don’t put any stock in what it says, your magnificence. We know it’s part of her army, so it’s going to be up to no good, right?” said one.

The other soldier ponies pretended to consider this point, then nodded in agreement.

Luna sighed, accepted the argument, and began preparing a spell on her horn.

How disgraceful! These guards were trying to get their superior to simply render me vulnerable and then leave, so as to kill me quickly before I could contest their self-aggrandizing lies.

I wasn’t too keen on being skewered, even if it was merely in a dream, especially considering how realistic things had been feeling before Nightmare Moon had cast her spell. Based on my hypothesis of what was going on in this dream world, and in whose presence I stood, I decided to take a gamble.

I called out to the princess, addressing her by name. This in itself caused her to extinguish her horn and listen, much to the soldiers’ dismay. I questioned her: was this nemesis she sought a creature similar to herself, but larger, jet black, clad in pale blue armor and going by the name ‘Nightmare Moon’?

“Nightmare… Moon?” she said wonderingly. “The one we seek doth look as thou hast said, but never hath she revealed her name to us. Art thou truly her minion, then?”

Not her ally, no, but her prisoner! I had just escaped from that pony’s clutches and had come here seeking asylum, I told her. All that I knew I would gladly share with her.

The princess’s face lit up with happiness. Unless I missed my guess, the cause of her joy was not the promise of an intelligence coup against her enemy so much as merely having someone who was pleased to speak with her.

“Oh, of course! Come, let us bring thee out of the cold that we may converse at leisure.” She put a wing around my back, sweeping aside the spears of the soldiers, and began walking down the street, lightly pushing me along with her.

“But, but, it was trying to eat a pony!” the captain protested. “We need to slay it!”

Luna tossed her mane in a familiar way. “THANK YOU, GOOD GUARDSPONY. WE SHALL TAKE CHARGE OF… er, who art thou?”

Instead of my real name, I identified myself by the name Nightmare Moon had given me. Sadly, given how much that pony talked, I was beginning to respond to it more readily than to my birth name.

“…OF PANGOLIN. YOU MAY RETURN TO YOUR POSTS.”

The guards regretfully gave in and flew away, and I was glad to see them go.

Nightmare Moon had spoken the truth; unlike the vision in the story of Bay Leaf, this dream wasn’t about a world where the protagonist had never been born.

No, rather it was one where she had never left; one where she had endured another thousand years of the sort of neglect and abuse that she’d spent the entire previous month complaining to me about. In spite of the difference in size, color, and behavior, this Luna was meant to be her, bearing the name she had rejected, still trying fruitlessly to win the approval and affection of the other ponies. This was more terrible to Nightmare Moon than never having been.

As I got my legs into gear and began walking instead of being pushed along by her wing, the feel of it, warm against my back, sparked a mental connection. More than she resembled Nightmare Moon, this pony looked much like an older, larger version of the little statue.

So this must be the ‘counterpart’ Nightmare Moon had wanted me to aid, then. Yet this Luna had called Nightmare Moon her nemesis, just as the little statue worked against her wishes. What was the cause of this division against herself?

Dejection

The sky grew darker and the snow began to fall more heavily as the princess and I trudged through the streets of the walled town. The warmth from her wing at my back faded away as we traveled. Soon my jaws were chattering involuntarily and I could no longer feel my tail. “Come, Pangolin,” Luna said, “thou art turning blue with cold. Let us show thee some Celestrian hospitality after thy ordeal.” Luna looked around at the nearby buildings, but most of the houses were now dark and still. By some strange coincidence, those that weren’t tended to become so as we approached.

At the first house we reached with a light still burning, Luna stepped forth and paused at the doorstep, taking a deep breath and mentally preparing herself for whatever she anticipated next. After making ready, she raised a hoof and knocked lightly against the door.

For a few moments, nothing happened, but just as she was about to knock again, someone within opened the door a crack. All I could see was an orange pony’s nose.

“What do you want at this hou—oh my Celestia!” the pony said. Then followed a noise that was apparently the speaker prostrating himself on the floor. “Please don’t hurt us! We’re sorry for whatever we did!”

Luna lowered her head to the pony’s level and tried to smile disarmingly. “FEAR NOT, GOOD CITIZEN,” she bellowed. “WE CALL BECAUSE OUR COMPANION HATH URGENT NEED OF SHELTER THIS NIGHT. MAY WE ENTER THY DWELLING?”

“I—I—um, well…” the pony babbled.

“Barleycorn, who is it?” called a sleepy voice from inside and upstairs. “Tell ‘em to quit yelling and go away until sunup!”

“But sugar pie, it’s… it’s…” Barleycorn cried back up the stairs, opening the door a bit wider so the other inhabitant could see.

A floating candle and a disheveled unicorn’s head and forelegs, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, peeked down from the loft at the top of a steep flight of stairs. At that distance, I couldn’t tell whether it was the sight of Luna, myself or the combination thereof that made her gape. (Also, was ‘sugar pie’ a name or only a term of affection?)

The other pony’s shock did not last long. She began groaning and sniffling theatrically into her hoof. “Oh, oh dear, I’m so sorry your highness,” she rasped through a suddenly-scratchy throat. “We’d love to help but,” the pony coughed for six seconds straight, as if trying to expel her lungs, “…but we wouldn’t want you or that thing to catch ill.”

Barleycorn looked from her to us a few times before catching on, then he too began to show sudden onset of sickness.

Were all of my upper limbs not already hugging my body for warmth, I would have certainly folded them to show my skepticism. As it was, I simply kept shivering and looked to the princess.

Luna’s eyebrows drew together. “O, THOU WRETCHED PONIES!” she cried.

As much as I wished to discourage Nightmare Moon’s contemptuous impression of the other ponies, I had to agree. Not only was this behavior miserable, to expect such a transparent ruse to work was an insult to our intelligence!

“…WE KNEW NOT THERE WAS ILLNESS IN THIS HOME. SHALL WE SUMMON A PHYSICIAN?”

I nodded severely at the ponies, then did a double-take. Was she actually falling for this act?

The homeowners were also caught flat-footed. “I-um-ah, that… that won’t… no, thank you, your highness,” the mare croaked.

Luna looked stricken. “THOU ART BEYOND THE AID OF PHYSIC? YET SURELY THERE IS SOME CURE THAT WILL AVAIL TO HEAL THEE. SHALL WE SEEK THE ENCHANTED FLOWER GUARDED BY THE DREAD TATZLWURM?” she asked.

“N-no, we just—” Barleycorn began.

“THE SILVER APPLES OF RENEWAL?”

“Please, it’s not—”

“A DRAUGHT FROM THE WELL AT THE WORLD’S END? THOUGH THE JOURNEY BE PERILOUS, WE WOULD GLADLY BRAVE IT FOR OUR BELOVED SUBJECTS!”

“No, no your highness!” the mare in the loft finally shouted, forgetting to pretend to have a sore throat. “It’s just really contagious, right Barleycorn?”

“What? Uh… yeah!” he said, then coughed again for good measure.

“We’ll be fine in a day or so, but we can’t have you or your new pet getting sick, can we?”

Luna took a step back. “…WE SUPPOSE NOT. WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR THY CONSIDERATION, GOOD MARE. PLEASE RETURN TO THY REST. I WISH THEE AND THY HOUSEHOLD A HASTY RECOVERY.”

Without another word, the ponies in the house shut the door in our faces and set the bolt.

The princess sighed, turned and trudged on down the street, head hanging low.

I hurried along beside her on numb, aching feet, unable to hold my peace. Had she truly not seen that the ponies within were lying to her, I asked.

“Of course we knew, Pangolin,” she said. “We were not foaled yesterday.”

Why, then, did she not call them out? Didn’t she rule by night? Couldn’t she exercise her authority and force them to take us in? The cold had made me somewhat more petulant than usual.

Luna looked at me sidelong. “And be thought a tyrant atop all the other things they say of us? We could not bear it,” she sighed. “But be of good cheer, Pangolin; we will find hospitality soon. ‘Friendship is the guiding precept of our kingdom.’ ” The final statement was spoken in a monotone, as if Luna were reciting a line she had learned only by rote.

The next house we stopped at claimed sickness as well. The one after that begged us off too, excusing their lack of hospitality with a story about an infestation of vermin. Another announced they were just about to leave on an urgent errand in the middle of the night through a blinding snowstorm. The princess loudly offered her aid, even for menial tasks like rat-catching or house-sitting, then accepted each excuse and moved on, growing more unhappy and embarrassed with each attempt.

Notably, as with the guards before, all the ponies we called upon seemed to be copies of the original couple with minor differences in costume and coloration. It was all very suspicious.

Instead of feeling anger or pity, I only felt detached from all the proceedings, and followed along in shivering silence. None of this was really happening, wasn’t it? And what would I tell her when she at last asked me to make good on my promise to reveal her enemy’s secrets? That this world, the ponies of whom she was so solicitous, and she herself were merely the dreams of a (possibly) real creature who vehemently hated all that Luna loved? I wasn’t sure I could deliver such a crushing revelation, even to an imaginary being.

Upon leaving the doorstep of the fifth house (which was apparently condemned and unfit for royalty, though still occupied) I tripped into a bank of snow along the side of the street and found myself struggling to rise. Luna stared at me in pity, then lay down in the snow beside me and lit her horn with a spell. To my dismay, even the hairy creature’s proximity offered no relief from the cold. The snow around us flew upward into a cloud of minute shimmering crystals, then coalesced into a slanted wall of ice over our heads. The wind was immediately broken by this barrier, a small mercy, but I still felt deathly cold sitting on the bare cobblestones of the street.

“Poor Pangolin,” Luna said, “we know what agues thee, this coldness that robs strength and will. Pray forgive us the chilly reception thou hast received. The fault is our own.”

Between struggling with chattering jaws and a tired, floating feeling, I remarked that she seemed to be doing everything reasonable, and was not to blame for the actions of the other ponies. Still, any source of heat would be most, most welcome!

Luna’s mane, though hidden from the wind, billowed around her head and hid her face from me. “Thou art too kind, Pangolin. It has ever been our responsibility to teach and uplift our subjects with our good example. Thou witnesseth in the cold hearts all around us the proof of our failure.”

I hinted that I was, at this point, rather more concerned with the literal type of cold than the metaphorical.

She nodded, and a spark wafted from her horn, floated over my prone form, and then hung in the air, growing into an orb of blue light that began to radiate a faint heat, but the glow of enchantment crackled across my skin and the sensation of warmth faded with it. Desperate, I reached up and tried to seize the heat source to hold against my body, but it popped like a soap bubble at my touch.

Luna clicked her tongue. “Tis as we feared; thy enchantment shields thee from every form of magic, even a spell as harmless as a cantrip of warmth. The midst of this icy tempest is an ill site for the delicate process of disenchanting so strong a spell. Thou requireth heat of a mundane sort, else thou shalt perish.”

At this point I would not complain overmuch if she simply set fire to the town. (If even that would help. If non-magical heat would work, why could I not feel heat from her body?)

Didn’t she have a home of her own, I asked. A palace, even? Surely we could shelter from the storm in there!

Her back tensed at the suggestion. “NO!” she snapped, then mastered herself, taking a deep, steadying breath. “We do not think… our sister would not—our palace… is too distant for thee to journey,” she said at last. “Thou wouldst freeze solid ere we reached it in this tempest. We must find thee warmth and shelter nearby.” Eager to divert the conversation, Luna pointed to a building further down the main street, larger than the others, with a wooden sign hanging over the door. “Ah! Look there, a public house! All are free to enter, or so we are given to understand. Within we shall surely get thee acquainted with Celestria’s better side.”

I refrained from asking why we hadn’t gone there first.

The building’s windows were lit and spilled light and muffled noise out into the street, just enough to illuminate the green sign. It showed a large gold-colored drinking vessel with a rounded grip on either side. Below the picture, the words ‘The Stirrup Cup’ were painted in red.

Luna caught me up in a wing and hastily cantered over to the building’s entrance. Instead of knocking, the princess simply pushed the door open and entered. Smoky smells, the sounds of many voices and the faintest breath of warmer air rushed over me.

“GOOD NIGHT TO YOU ALL,” Luna boomed over the clamor, shaking snow off her wings and head, much of which landed on me.

The rumble of conversation immediately died as every head in the establishment swung to stare at us. By now, I recognized a good number of the faces.

The princess surveyed the silent crowd and waved awkwardly. “WE VISIT THIS FINE HOUSE AS BUT THY FELLOW GUESTS,” she said, “PLEASE, CONTINUE THY MERRY REVELS. LET US NOT INTRUDE UPON THY CAROUSING.”

In spite of her request, the entirety of the clientele continued to glare in our direction. Luna pretended not to notice and busied herself placing me back on my feet and thoroughly brushing the snow off me with her wing.

As soon as she turned away from the patrons to do this, the muttering began.

“—what she thinks she’s doing, barging in here—”

“—should be out fighting monsters, not bringing them into town—”

“—sister wouldn’t shirk her duties like this—”

Luna finally let me alone and strode further into the room, wearing a smile more strained than ever. “WE BEG THY PARDON FOR ANY TROUBLE,” she said. “ALLOW US TO DEMONSTRATE OUR GOOD WILL. PUBLICAN, A ROUND FOR THE HOUSE!”

Most of the patrons perked up at this, but the frown of the pony behind the bar deepened. “Drinks are cash up front,” he said, using a stained rag to polish the inside of a drinking vessel similar to the one on the sign.

Luna looked incredulously from the pony tending bar to the chalkboard hanging from the wall behind him marked with a number of rather long-running tabs. “BUT THIS—” she began.

“That’s for patrons I know and trust, your highness.”

The princess was confused and offended. “BUT SURELY OUR WORD IS ENOUGH! THOU SHALT BE REIMBURSED FROM THE ROYAL TREASURY AT THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY.”

The other pony’s frown turned into a sneer. “Listen, your highness, maybe you haven’t heard, but Glorious Celestia, May She Reign Forever, declared all ponies equal a few centuries ago. You can try to bribe us with our own tax money, but you don’t get to walk into my house and demand that I give you special treatment just because you’ve got a fancy hat and a pedigree.” The rest of the ponies, realizing they weren’t getting any largesse, grumbled agreement.

Luna drew back, shocked and ashamed. “PLEASE, WE MEANT NO OFFENCE; WE MERELY WISH TO WARM OUR COMPANION BEFORE THY FIRE. GRANT US BUT THIS AND WE WILL TROUBLE THEE NO MORE.”

I had, by this time, already made my way over to the fire unnoticed, as the owner and his patrons were distracted by their predictable compulsion to pour hatred upon the royal whipping-pony. I sat with all six claws outstretched as close to the flames as I could bear. Even then, I could barely feel the heat of the flames, only a lack of further coldness.

The moment the princess mentioned me all eyes in the establishment swung in my direction.

“No pets allowed,” the owner growled.

“PANGOLIN IS NOT A PET,” Luna explained. “HE IS—”

“That’s the monster that broke through the wall earlier!” a pony in the crowd yelled. Several more ponies made exclamations of fear and outrage.

“You’re supposed to protect us from things like that!” one accused.

“HE IS NOT AN ENEMY,” Luna shouted back. “WITHOUT WARMTH, HE WILL PERISH!”

I tried to say something myself, but the chorus of rising voices drowned me out. Several nearby ponies seized me with teeth, hooves, wings and magic. I was pulled in several directions at first, as I had been when the statues first attacked, but then one of them said “you heard her highness, fellas,” and the ponies began trying to shove me into the fire. I was able to grip the edge of the stone fireplace with three of my claws, but the strength of the mob was too great for me to resist for long.

The rest of the ponies began shouting accusations at the princess.

“It attacked our town, and she’s trying to save it?!”

“She’s a traitor! She’s helping the monsters against us!”

“When Glorious Celestia, May She Reign Forever, hears of this—”

Though I was still protected by the spell, the flames, just a few inches from my belly, nonetheless felt painfully hot. Perhaps the magic wouldn’t let me burn to ashes like my poor brother, or perhaps I’d wake up later unharmed, but being held in the fire and baked in the meantime did not seem like a preferable alternative. I struggled and cried out to Luna for help.

“ENOUGH!” Luna roared, holding her head above the hostile crowd like a pinnacle of rock jutting from a stormy, multicolored sea. “LET HIM GO! LET US LEAVE IN PEACE!”

The ponies ignored her plea. My death-grip on the mantle began to weaken. The hairs on my belly had started curling and turning white from exposure to the flames.

Then, something like a cool, pleasant-scented breeze struck my back and made the magic shell around my body blaze in response. The entire howling mob went silent, and the pressure of hooves, wings and heads against my back weakened, then vanished entirely.

Still holding on tightly, I turned my head to look at the room behind me. All the ponies seemed dazed and stunned, blinking heavily and swaying on their feet. Then, in twos and threes, the whole crowd sank slowly to the ground or slumped limply in their seats. In moments, Luna was the only one left standing. Her face was lit strangely by the blue fire surging around her horn.

Before I could ascertain whether the ponies were dead or merely sedated, from somewhere above the roof came uproarious, mocking laughter, loud enough to be heard above the wind, which had in the space of seconds arisen from a dull roar to a whistling howl.

The whole building creaked and groaned as the strengthened storm tore the entire thatched roof away into the night, leaving a black, gaping hole above our heads. Out of this blackness descended a creature equally dark, falling as lightly as a snowflake to alight on the floor between myself and Luna.

Nightmare Moon surveyed the room and flashed a bright, jagged-toothed smile. “Well, if it isn’t my two favorite thorns in my side! I suppose it’s too much to hope, but have either of you learned anything on this little outing?”

Rebellion

The sight of Nightmare Moon descending from the storm nearly sent me back into the fire. What did she mean, ‘either of you’? This was her dream; she and I had to be the only real individuals here! I had been certain ‘Luna,’ this blameless-yet-endlessly-abused version of herself, was just as phantasmal as the smaller ponies who hated her. No real being could be this much of a patsy, could she?

The pony in question gasped and fell into a defensive stance with her glowing horn pointed toward the invader. “Arroint thee, fiend!” she cried. “How darest thou trespass upon this peaceful land?”

Nightmare Moon chuckled and rolled one of the inert ponies over with her hoof. “Oh yes, quite peaceful here, thanks to you. It’s just too bad they’ll wake up eventually.” She placed her hoof on the sleeping pony’s neck. “I could help you with that.”

Luna lunged with her horn, and, to my astonishment, Nightmare Moon yielded, stepping quickly backward and leaving the senseless pony unharmed.

“Thou art a fool to come here,” Luna spat, “We will not fail to rout thee, as we have thrice before.”

(Thrice? How long had this farce been going on in her head before Nightmare Moon dragged me in?)

Luna glanced over at me and nodded grimly. “Your power crumbles, fiend. Behold: even now, thy prisoners fly to us to betray thee.”

The larger pony spared me a knowing look. “Oh, him? He can’t betray me; I sent him here. He didn’t believe your beloved subjects were such massive twits and objected to me killing them all.”

I remarked that I still did not believe such, and refused to sanction their murder.

The larger pony ignored me and continued. “…And your victories over me? Those were my gifts to you. I let you play the heroine, the only one who could save them from me, the only one who could break the power of my spells. They survive my raids only because of you, and how do they treat you in return?”

Luna chewed her lip and said nothing, still holding the larger pony at horn-point.

“Oh, you’ve forgotten? Let me remind you,” Nightmare Moon said with a flick of her own horn.

All around the room, the unconscious ponies raised their heads and turned toward Luna, though their eyes remained shut and their features slack in slumber. The princess’s eyes widened and she shied to one side and then to another in alarm. It was a familiar motion; exactly how Nightmare Moon had reacted when the statues began attacking on the way back from the crater the night we first met.

Nightmare Moon bent down and stroked the cheek of the nearest sleeping pony. “Tell me, fool, what do you think of your princess of the night?” she stage-whispered into his ear.

“She… she’s dangerous,” the pony said in a slurred voice. “Always trouble whenever she’s around. If she cared about us… she’d stay away. But she doesn’t.”

“THAT IS NOT SO!” Luna argued, looking deeply hurt. “WE DEFEND THEE! WE FACE DANGERS, YES, BUT TO SAVE THEE AND THINE!”

“Just nepotism,” another pony said from across the room. “Her sister’s the one who really runs things. The other one just goes around trying to make herself seem important. I bet she’s jealous.”

“WE ARE NOT! WE CARE NOT FOR HONORS OR POWER, ONLY—”

“It’s pathetic,” another sleep-talker murmured, interrupting her. “She wants us to pretend that she’s just one of us when she’s immortal and royal and could crush us like gnats whenever she felt like it. Just throwin’ it in our faces, all the time.”

“THAT… THAT DOTH NOT EVEN MAKE SENSE…” Luna said, starting to deflate in despair once again.

“And the screaming, always with the screaming. Why can’t she talk in a voice that doesn’t make my foals cry?”

“BUT THE ROY—the Royal Canterlot Voice is the proper way to address our subjects since time immemorial,” Luna pleaded, belying her words by lowering her voice to a whisper. “We use it to show our respect for thee and the laws and traditions of our great…” Luna snorted and sulkily pawed the floor, apparently forgetting about her standoff with Nightmare Moon. “Oh, what’s the use? If thou heedest not our words when thou art wakeful, ought thou to be more attentive asleep?”

Up until now, believing this all a fantasy, I had played the part of the passive observer to the extent circumstances would permit, but I just couldn’t stand by and watch this any more. Sure, it must have been unreal, or even doubly unreal if I was just hallucinating it all, but really, it was too much; too obvious! Who was Nightmare Moon trying to fool with this sob story of endless petty persecution?

I trundled away from the fire on still-numbed limbs, picking my way over the fallen ponies and shouting above their insulting and accusing voices. This whole scenario was a farce, a fiction, a puppet-show put on by Nightmare Moon! I was not fooled!

The accused merely chuckled at me with a bemused shake of her head, and Luna looked embarrassed on my behalf.

I continued undaunted. Not only were all these voices lies, all the treatment Luna had received by these fake ponies had been a lie as well, I said. That was the secret knowledge I had defected to impart. This whole snowy town was nothing but a dream conjured up by Nightmare Moon. If the same was Luna’s enemy, she should not bother believing anything she had heard or seen here. Her nemesis and I were the only real things here, and I was quite certain Nightmare Moon was fabricating these events.

Luna gave me a pained look I could have sworn I’d been on the receiving end of sometime before. “Pangolin, hush. We know what is going on.”

“You see how foolish he is?” Nightmare Moon asked, unfazed by my outburst. “He doesn’t know what you are; not like we know. Yes, I may have condensed a bit to make a point, but you’ve heard all of their words before, haven’t you; in whispers, in memory, in the brutal honesty of their dreams…? Do you understand yet? That story he read was the big lie. Your love and kindness are not going to be requited by anypony. They just attract those who’d abuse and take advantage of you. That’s how things work in the real world. That’s why you need to stop listening to him and let me do for you what I promised.”

Luna took a step backward, not able to look at either of us. “We…” she began, “we do not know what to believe.”

Nightmare Moon wrinkled her nose. “What? Don’t tell me you actually trust this idiot. He has never been to Equestria! He hasn’t even seen a pony besides us. He’s just saying what he thinks you want to hear! All this happened before, and it’ll all happen again unless you quit listening to Pangolin and his ilk and let me handle things.”

The younger-looking princess stuck out her lower lip. “We have harkened to thee for so long, yet a stranger appears and denies everything thou hast told us. Why did we trust thee before, save that we had nopony else to which to turn? Thou ask me for nothing save power and control. If all are as base as thou sayest, is this too not suspect?”

I thought then that I understood why Nightmare Moon was bothering with this drama. This dreamscape was not created for my sake, nor was ‘Luna’ merely another imaginary character of the dream.

Earlier, outside her strange arena, she had told me how magical power left her and took forms that reflected her feelings or memories. Was Luna the original for which the little statue was a copy? The height was certainly off, but much of her mannerisms and attitude seemed to fit. I shouted this query to her rather bluntly, with a follow-up question about why she let Nightmare Moon dominate her like this.

“We do not grasp thy meaning, Pangolin,” she said, evading my eyes. “We are clearly not a statue. And matters are not so simple as thou doth imagine. Nightmare Moon is a wicked monster, none can gainsay, but she stands in the gap between us and every other evildoer. Thy story showed a world we dearly hope to be real, but it runs contrary to our every experience! What if it is false, as she attesteth? What wouldst thou have us do?”

Did she think I was a monster, as the puppet-ponies did, I asked. I told her I was grateful for her aid and kindness throughout our adventure and was trying to help her in return. How could I, a random stranger, be the only one?

Luna still couldn’t look at me, but she stamped and shook her wings in a way that spoke of a raging conflict within.

“Come now,” the larger pony said, “You’re going off-script, Luna. Must you fall for the same trick again? They play on your kindness and goodwill only to betray you and hurt you anew. This alien is claiming that the other ponies can’t be as bad as we know they are. He doesn’t know. He only speaks out of a displaced need to believe the same of his own kind, now that the finality of his parting from them has gone from a symbolic tantrum to a cold, hard reality.”

I winced at this interpretation, yet found myself without a ready refutation.

She smiled apologetically. “I protect, Luna. It’s all I know. I even protect monsters like him when I need to. You do enjoy his company, don’t you? You’d never have even met him tonight if I didn’t cast that enchanted shield over him. Your subjects would have got to him first and made an end of him. Do you know why I did that?”

The other princess said nothing, still deep in thought.

“I was sure you would be able to see through him. I hoped you were getting stronger.” Nightmare Moon waved a hoof at the room full of sleeping ponies. “This shameful episode only shows how badly you still need me. You wouldn’t last a day back in Equestria on your own.”

“No,” the smaller pony finally replied. “We see now the nature of the protection thou offerest. This shield stopped their spears, verily, but also cut this miserable soul off from every help. Even our spells to warm him were rebuffed. But for our aid, thy gift would have been naught but a slower, more agonizing execution.”

Nightmare Moon’s eyes narrowed.

Luna’s own rose to meet them, shining with defiance. “And now, when he offers me hope, you do everything in your power to extinguish it. We wonder if this frigid fate might not be a fitting symbol for all thy so-called ‘help.’ ”

The sleeping ponies flopped back to the floor like marionettes with their strings cut. Nightmare Moon gasped and drew herself up even taller, looking shocked and offended. “You ungrateful, weak-minded pushover!” she hissed. “You’re really going to put us through all this again? You’re going to turn on me now, after all I’ve done for you; after all I’ve sacrificed?!”

Instead of speaking further, the smaller pony snorted and pawed the floor, leveling her horn.

Her counterpart gave me the briefest glare. “After I deal with this mutiny, we’re going to have a chat about your mischief, Pangolin.”

But she didn’t sound as confident as usual.

Confusion

The inner door thudded into its recess and stopped.

Within the airlock, the creature crouched as if about to pounce on me. Its guardian statues had both been blown to piles of dust by the repressurization.

I raised my claws to protect myself.

But it was not coiling to spring. The creature shuddered, heaved and made a dry, rasping noise, its eyes wide and staring at nothing. A small cloud of white dust escaped from its mouth. It pointed its face at the ground and retched again. This time a cascade of fine powder spilled from its maw and began to form another small pile on the floor. It continued heaving and choking, each convulsion more violent than the last, coughing out more and more of the moon dust.

It was painful just to watch the wretched thing empty itself onto my floor. Not only were both its stomach and lungs apparently filled with sand, what came out was perfectly dry.

I pitied the beast even as I feared it. Perhaps it was going to kill me the moment it caught its breath, yet I couldn't stand to watch it suffer so. I fetched my bowl from the corner I'd tossed it into and filled it once again with clear water. Edging carefully toward my uninvited guest, I placed the bowl as close to it as I dared, then scuttled back to a safer distance.

It was another minute before it had caught enough of its breath to notice the bowl. Still ignoring me, it stared at the water, or perhaps its reflection, with an agonized expression.

The blue light wrapped the bowl and carried it to the creature's lips, then slowly tilted it back and drank.

After the bowl was drained, my guest gave me a disdainful sidelong glance as if noticing a bothersome pest. The bowl flew across the room to land heavily in my claws.

The creature cleared its throat and rasped a single syllable at me.

The device around my neck and clicked for a couple seconds and then gave its interpretation:

"More!"

A display on its side indicated only a 57% certainty in its translation. Still, I could tell by context that it'd guessed correctly, and from a single word, no less! My gratitude to the captain for this supposedly useless gift could not be expressed in words.

I hastened back to the cistern to refill the bowl, but the creature had other ideas. When I opened the spigot, instead of falling too-slowly into the vessel beneath, the water was suffused with the blue glow and flowed sideways to snake through the air toward the creature. I tried to shut the valve again, but the same force held it open until over six pints of my precious water hung in an amorphous mass before its face.

The light from its spike brightened, and the water flowed across its body, washing off the grey dust that had caked onto the fine coat. The hair beneath was the same non-reflective black as the darkness between the stars, except for an unhealthy-looking purple region across its croup centered around a crescent-shaped tattoo. After cleaning every inch, the hovering veil of water had changed into grey mud. The creature floated the mud ball behind her, and let it fall and splatter across the floor of the airlock. It stepped into the habitat proper and sized up its surroundings with a wary and disdainful eye, the statues seemingly forgotten.

"How is it there is air and water here?"

The translator, whose designers were certainly geniuses beyond my ken, had gone up to a 96% confidence in its translation. By other calculations I couldn't fathom, it had also chosen to give the voice a cold and aristocratic feminine tone.

I told it that I brought them with me, and I would quickly perish without them.

It fixed its... no, her eyes on me again, their gaze filled with contempt.

"And she thought you worthy of such privileges when I was imprisoned here with no more than the hide on my back?!"

Not knowing who 'she' was, I tried to explain that I was here of my own volition.

She laughed humorlessly. "A likely story. Are you too proud to admit your defeat? Nopony would visit this rock willingly, especially when they can't live here." She looked at me more closely. "But you are no pony, aren't you? Some sort of oversized talking pangolin? A monster made by a mad wizard and sent away to the moon to be forgotten with the rest of the trash?"

I introduced myself, and also gave her the name of my species, though I doubted this would mean anything to her.

She screwed up her face as the proper names passed through untranslated. "What a bunch of mush. To repeat that squawking is beneath me. From now on, you are Pangolin the monster."

My people are proud of our names, though I can't quite explain why, and I stopped fearing for my life long enough to take umbrage at her curt declaration. I said she could call me what she liked, but I was not anyone's to re-name.

She smiled at my defiance, and took several menacing steps forward. "Everything that touches my prison is mine by right. My prison is this entire world. Do you understand?" she hissed, her face and its spike mere inches from my nose. Her hair, or whatever the stuff was that billowed from the back of her head expanded until it seemed the roof of the habitat had vanished, leaving only the starry sky above us.

I meekly nodded.

"I don't care if you were that nag Celestia's favorite back-scratcher back there," she said, indicating the unseen planet above us. "This is my world. I am Nightmare Moon; the Mare in the Moon. I rule all I survey."

The translator produced a footnote on the creature's first name, indicating it could be defined as "frightening dream" or "female of night". It was 81% certain this ambiguity was intentional.

Then, not knowing any better, I did the thing that may have saved my life and simultaneously doomed every creature on the planet.

I told her I was not from the planet her moon orbited.

Nightmare Moon's anger gave way to mystification. "Are you saying you are native to my moon?" she said. "I have been over every inch of this rock a thousand times and I've never met any beast, to say nothing of one as ugly as you. Do they live deep underground?"

If I had played along with this assumption, I may have yet averted planetary disaster.

I did not. I told her I had traveled here from a distant star.

Her eyes lit up with guarded excitement at my words.

"Which star would that be?"

Its name in my people's tongue, like other words in our language, irked her.

She shook her head and sighed. "Just point it out." The 'hair' surged outward again until I was left standing on a small piece of floor surrounded on all sides by the starry void. I looked about helplessly at the thousands of points of light.

Her head floated before me, boring into me again with its shining eyes. "Well?" she asked impatiently.

I admitted I couldn't recognize the stars I'd visited.

"Why not?" she said, in a tone lower and icier than before. "Are you implying that my knowledge of the sky is flawed?"

Hastily, I blurted that it was only my own ignorance that kept me from telling her what she wanted. I had seen these stars from many different angles during my travels, it was only that I had yet to recognize their places in the constellations of this world.

"Why would they look different from another angle?" she asked, drawing herself up as if personally offended. "Are you not aware that the sky is a great hollow globe studded with stars? This should be no harder to read than a map."

Expecting death for my contradiction at any second, I clenched my eyes shut and insisted that the stars burned untethered in the void at various distances, so that some which appeared clustered together from one perspective were shown to be remote from another.

Her rage boiled over in her voice. "You would correct me? ME? Do you think you know better than the rightful ruler of the night, you mewling vermin?!"

I cringed but did not deny her words.

After a silence that seemed to me to last for hours she began to chuckle softly.

I opened one eye. The starlit sky had retreated back around Nightmare Moon's head and she was smiling at me. Something about the smile was worse than her fury.

"You're right, of course. I'll believe you... for now."

No sooner had I breathed a sigh of relief than she spun on her heel and walked back to the narrow window. Looking out on the statue-studded landscape, she began talking quietly to herself. She must have thought herself unheard, but the translator caught most of it. Perhaps her time in the airless silence had made her forget she could be overheard.

"What does it mean? That prophecy, just a last twist of the knife... kindling hope, the cruelest torture... yet... 'the stars will aid in her escape.' "

She glanced back at me over her shoulder, found me still unsatisfactory, and resumed her watch out the window. "not a star, clearly, but these things are never straightforward." She brushed back her shimmering cloud of hair. "Has it really been a thousand years?"

While she mumbled, I busied myself washing the bowl and checking it for cracks, so as not to make it too obvious I was eavesdropping.

"What have I to lose, after all?" Nightmare Moon mused. "I'll get my revenge, or else a lifetime's amusement out of this craven." She took a deep breath, steeling herself.

"I am ready," she said in a louder voice. "Return me from this exile and I give my royal word that you will be spared."

I expressed my confusion. Exile from where? Spared what?

She raised a foreleg to the window to point at the planet sitting low on the horizon. "Everything on that world has insulted and spurned me. Its current ruler is an usurper who betrayed me and stole my throne. A prophecy promised me my revenge, that after a thousand years, rescue would come from the stars. And, at last, here you are." Her voice grew raw with wrath, and she pressed both her forelimbs against the window. "I will punish everything on that miserable sphere. Their children will pay for how their ancestors treated me. They hated my nights, did they? Let's see how they like freezing, starving, blundering blind in the dark, just as I've been! They will beg me for death."

She turned away from the window, her eyes wide and filled with a terrible light. "And then," she continued in a softer voice, "and then I'll grant their wish. A ruler must always be attentive to the needs of her subjects, don't you agree?" She threw her head back and laughed, a sound composed of equal parts hatred, despair and utter insanity.

Could one creature truly murder an entire world? It seemed impossible, yet the power I'd seen her display earlier, and her survival for who-knows-how-long without air, water, food and protection... I was out of my depth. Who could say what this mad beast was capable of? If it spoke the truth, it had been imprisoned here at the will of an entire world.

It took her a moment to compose herself before she spoke again. "Now, take me to your star-chariot or whatever it is you used to travel here and ferry me to Equestria at once."

I stared at her. Let none say the Increate lacks a sense of humor. I had fled to the solitary life to escape the evils of society, and now their avatar stood before me. Self-absorbed, casually cruel, obsessed with grudges and vengeance, raving about slaughtering a world over some ancient slight. Here was the strong's oppression of the weak represented in bodily form! Knowing what I then knew, I could have watched her choke for ages without a twinge of compassion.

She scowled at my hesitation. "My time has suddenly become very valuable," she snapped. "Where is your vehicle? Tell me at once or you'll end up just like those nasty ponies!"

I was about to tell her I had no way to travel, and would not for many months, when a wicked idea occurred to me. Perhaps my arrival had been prophesied. Perhaps I was the right being at the right place; one who understood what needed to be done.

I had left my conveyance in the great crater, I said. I described it to her: a silvery L-shaped device with a lens at one end, small enough to fit snugly into my claw.

"Such a tiny thing lets you bridge the stars?"

Oh yes, I assured her. Once I had it again, I could quickly return her to her rightful place.

Truly, I would have to apologize to the captain for doubting her foresight.

Reevaluation

When I continued playing dead beneath my red cart, the stone pony simply tossed it aside with her magic, sending the mixer and the tanks of gas rolling and bouncing across the floor.

"Do you have any idea what you're tampering with?" She asked in a voice that seemed devoid of anger, though after hearing her sister rant and grumble for a month, my impressions may have been skewed. "What have you got to say for yourself?"

I in fact hadn't any idea what I'd done, as usual, and I doubted my ignorance would appease her. Did she blame me for the demise of her sister? For my forced cooperation with Nightmare Moon's plan of escape? For merely trespassing on what was supposed to be her sibling's solitary exile? I didn't know, so I simply stammered my condolences at the hearts-rending decision she'd been forced to take, striking down her own flesh-and-blood (so to speak) like that. Mentioning that she was merely an artifice woven of stones and ancient memories seemed a poor course of action at the moment.

"Dead? No. It will take more than a few rocks to kill that one," she said, sparing a glance back at the mountain of rubble.

I don't know why I even bothered assuming anything could end that pony. And yet, I doubted Nightmare Moon would willingly sit around with tons of rock on her head if she could help it. Remembering I was in the presence of royalty (of a sort) I rose to my feet to avoid giving offense. The little statue had, once again, vanished when I wasn't looking.

I asked the stone statue whether Nightmare Moon was injured. Did she need help?

"Not the kind of help you offer. I don't like what I saw here today."

And she thought I had anything to do with it? I'd been doing nothing but trying to dissuade Nightmare Moon from her terrible plan of vengeance every way I knew how! Granted, I hadn't had the slightest iota of success, but could she really hold that against me?

"That is the problem. She should have been a force of nature, an avenging cataclysm. This," she indicated herself, "should have been torn into ribbons before it had a chance to speak, much less fight back. Instead, she was prancing around and chatting with it like a villain out of a badly-written melodrama. And to be overcome by sororal affection? Unacceptable. Why do I find an ineffectual comic-relief hench-being dogging her steps? You have much to answer for."

I... I... what?

If she wanted to be destroyed so badly, why didn't she just let herself get spitted on Nightmare Moon's horn?

"Because this thing is nothing more than a training dummy. It exists to prepare her to face the real Celestia. Her nerve should never have failed against it."

Then the statue wasn't actually... well, of course it wasn't; I mean, it didn't think it was Nightmare Moon's sister?

"No, that caricature's still in here, and quite outraged too. I am something far nobler than a mere ghost of dust and spells."

My head hurt. Was she... was it going to tell me what it was and what was going on, or did it prefer to make me guess?

"Need I waste our time? You have seen enough; you know who I am," it said mysteriously.

I studied the statue sidelong. Perhaps I had and did. The field of dust ponies changing from joyful to violent when Nightmare Moon's hopes of escape were dashed, her guarded, doubtful reaction when I explained the dealings that my own people called magic, the unnerving disobedience of the statue before the door, and just now, how it had seemed so sincere as her sister, but then immediately changed and struck when she was most vulnerable...

I didn't know the who, but I was fairly certain of the what. I stepped back to the inner wall and folded my upper claws into a sacred sign, a wordless prayer for protection from supernatural evil.

To my dismay, instead of bursting into flame, or even being repulsed, the statue just smiled at me. Perhaps I had my digits arranged incorrectly.

"Poor little hermit, you've got it all wrong. We serve the same master, you and I."

Still holding my upper claws in the sign, I crossed my middle limbs and voiced my doubts that the Increate had sent a divine servant just to torment an insane, despondent prisoner.

Despite my contradiction, the thing continued to stare at me with its calm, neutral expression, so unlike Nightmare Moon or the other statues. It was all the more chilling for its unruffled peace. "You have resigned yourself that Nightmare Moon is destined to return as set forth in prophecy," it stated. "You know who it is who reveals prophecy, don't you? Who weaves the destiny of the universe?"

I did, and thus the vessel that brought me here would return in time for her descent back to the planet. But why was this being pricking and goading Nightmare Moon whenever her rage ebbed? Why make the dust-puppets seem to hate her? How was that necessary?

"She hasn't told you how the prophecy of the Mare in the Moon ends, little one. 'On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape... and she will bring about nighttime eternal.' " It gave me a knowing look. "A knowledgeable alien like yourself should understand the thrust of that poetic metaphor."

My stomach twisted into a knot. 'Nighttime eternal.' Yes, I knew what that meant. A terrible crime that even the galactic empires were hesitant to commit. From what I'd seen of Nightmare Moon's control over matter, It might well be within her means.

But to claim this was the will of the Increate? It couldn't be! This just had to be a wicked, lying power with which Nightmare Moon had made an ill-advised bargain, as I had dimly suspected. But if that was the case, what hope did I have? Nightmare Moon was at least a being like myself, different in degree rather than kind. She could be appealed to or resisted by other mortals. How could one hope to triumph over supernatural evil?

And worse, what if it was telling the truth, and I was uselessly trying to thwart the fashioner of fate? I felt the crawling itch of doubt slithering between my scales.

The thing wearing Celestia's shape still refused to crack its mask of placidity and drew its brows together in pity. "It must be hard for a little being like you to understand. It is not for hate but for love of all living things that she must do this. When you first met, you tried to destroy her, reasoning that it was better for her to die and you to be a murderer than to allow her to carry out her threat of slaying everything on the planet. You would commit a great evil to prevent a worse one. Though you lacked the power to accomplish it, your reasoning was sound." It closed its eyes and bowed its head piously, "That is the way of this lower realm. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good and great sacrifices, even of whole worlds, to prevent the greatest evils."

What was it saying? The universe would be a better place with an entire planet of non-spacefaring innocents wiped from the face of the cosmos? I had heard Nightmare Moon go on and on about the alleged 'crimes' of her subjects. They were as nothing! Why, I could find more shameful doings in the history of my own species, in my own lifetime, and we could actually travel the stars and bother our neighbors. I looked up through the arena's new gold-tinted skylight to where the small blue world hung in the void. What made the ponies on that planet so especially wicked, I wondered aloud.

She moved to obstruct my vision of the planet. "They have what you lack; power: weather control, teleportation, matter generation, mental compulsion... all the things you've seen her do and more. Less raw force and precision, naturally, but still the sort of feats the you and the rest of the mortals could only begin to attempt with the most powerful and intricate machinery. When these ponies begin traveling away from their homeworld, they'll tread down the entire galaxy beneath their hooves. They are simply too strong to merely co-exist with their neighbors."

This sounded reasonable to my cynical mind, but it didn't fit the facts. Didn't the ponies share their own planet with several other native sophonts? How would they throw the stars from their courses if they couldn't even take over a single world?

As I debated with the thing, motion from behind it caught my eye. A miasmic blue cloud edged with purple had begun rising out of the mountain of rubble that had crushed Nightmare Moon. I had no idea what the substance was, save that it vaguely resembled her floating hair, only still more ethereal and apparently detached from her fore and aft ends.

"As she told you, her sister uses her powers to keep them on a short leash," The possessed statue explained, unaware of or ignoring the goings-on behind it, "But if they wish to depart, she will not hinder them. The urge to dominate is strong with ponies, particularly the unicorns. Outside her control, they will show their true nature. The tyrants making life miserable on your own world will be petty thugs by comparison."

How was it so certain, I asked, watching the cloud grow and grow in the background. If the Increate levied judgment based on what we might someday do, who could stand? Did not even that nasty emperor from the chronicle of deeds have a chance to actually do his evil before he got called to account?

It towered over me, and I was covered by its shadow. "And he, knowing who had judged him, still tried to resist. It was not wise of him. I am here to ensure the fulfillment of prophecy. Who are you to hinder me, little one? Yours is not to argue with destiny but to obey what little light you've been given."

It leaned down toward me until its horn was nearly touching my helmet. "I understand your worries. You did not ask for this. Allow me to relieve you of your hopeless burden." the stone horn glowed anew.

I flinched back, expecting to finally meet my end. After all, this thing was under no onus to spare me! Instead of casting a spell to destroy me, it looked at me expectantly. "Well? Am I permitted?"

Permitted to what?

"Simply say the word, and I will take you back to your cell, relieve you of your memories of this entire unpleasant interlude, and find another way to get her to her fated destination on time. I will lead her away, and she will soon forget you as she returns to her proper state of mind. Their blood won't be on your claws. It will be as if none of this had ever happened. You can go back to the solitary life, untroubled by the fears and doubts that have plagued you ever since that night. All will be well."

I am not sure how the offer seems to disinterested observers hearing about all this as a tale or a history, but it was like the sight of a pool in the midst of the desert to me. I'd felt tired, scared, and angry ever since that mad pony stalked into my life. It was as if my mind was a string being stretched tighter and tighter every hour. Surely I couldn't take any more. Surely I'd go mad or die or get killed if I didn't escape this miserable situation.

And my pretenses of saving the ponies and the rest from Nightmare Moon? Ridiculous. Any being could see I was the worst choice for the task of placating a raging alien. How could I get someone like that to agree with me, when no one even listened to me back home among my own? And now, learning that I was fighting not only that stubborn, bloodthirsty princess, but also either an evil supernatural power bent on destruction or an implacable servant of the Increate! There are lofty hopes, and then there is hubris.

A hermit should have humility. A wise being should acknowledge when he's been outmatched, cut his losses and resign. This thing speaking through the statue, whatever it was, was right. What did I know of the powers that turned the galaxies? Only what I'd been told by those more learned and enlightened than I.

It must have been honest in the offer, at least. If it wished my harm, why did it bother asking my permission? Best of all, if it spoke truly, I would feel no guilt; I wouldn't even know what had happened. I couldn't recriminate myself with regrets and might-have-beens as I surely would otherwise.

As I prepared myself to end all this, the words of my hierarch returned to me. It seemed like a lifetime ago when had been pleading with him for the dozenth time for his permission to enter into holy seclusion, citing the villainy and squalor all around us as proof of my case. Would I not serve the Increate better away from all that, offering up my prayers and penances without the distraction of the world's failings? I had always thought his answer weak and unconvincing.

I finally relaxed my upper limbs and let my claws sink to my sides. It was right, I admitted. I knew nothing of how fates and destinies were brought to fruition. It was not my place to decide the course of the universe. I could only stumble along with what little light I had.

It smiled warmly at me. "You've made the right choice. You will not regret this." Its horn glowed more brightly and it leaned toward me to touch the blazing spike to my helmet.

I declined its offer.

The stone thing stood still, the horn only inches from my face. "What?" A dangerous edge had finally appeared in its voice.

I took a moment to swallow my fear, then explained. The good hierarch who taught me what little wisdom I possessed, when I begged him to allow me leave my life and world behind, told me that while contemplation and sanctity are worthy pursuits, what the universe needs now are not fortresses to hide from the evils of the world, but bold raiders to descend into it and rescue our fellow-sufferers. To be able to enter the hermit life would be good, he told me, but to serve in the clinics, to visit the prisons, that would be far better.

At the time, I was certain he was mistaken. As an elder, he had grown overly sentimental and unaware of the depths of evil in the cosmos. To think, easing the lives of those who'd worked to ruin everyone else's! But now I had seen the most villainous, hateful being I'd ever met, most likely deserving of every woe she'd suffered up to this very moment, show a glimmer of decency and regret only to get brutally punished for it. And... It wasn't right. No matter how awful she was, Nightmare Moon was not some blind, uncaring disaster, not an inanimate bomb to be tinkered with to make her destroy the largest amount of victims along with herself.

My hierarch had known better all along. Tend the wounded. Visit the prisoner. I had refused and ran away, but one cannot run from destiny. Under those rocks was a sick, forlorn inmate. I would rather she was not also a violent, arrogant, petty, grudge-nursing social maladept and most likely crazier than a reclamation scavenger, but that was not mine to decide. I must go to her and do what I can. That was the feeble light I'd been given.

"You will fail. She cannot be turned aside. Her fate has been written."

No doubt it was correct. I heaved a sigh. My duties remained nonetheless. I pushed the tip of its horn aside with a claw and the magical glow evaporated from the stone. When the statue didn't make a move, I began walking around it toward where Nightmare Moon had been buried. By this time, the blue and purple cloud hung over the rubble like a thunderhead, with occasional flashes of light escaping from within.

A great wing with a few stone bones poking through the dusty plumage snapped open across my path. "Not so fast, little one. If you will not accept my best offer, we still have to come to an accord. Give me the translator and swear that you will not try to communicate with her any more and I shall keep her away from your dreams."

The translator? If it wished to hinder my duties, let it kill me and be done! Why hadn't it already? If it was necessary for the good of the galaxy, surely the Increate wouldn't balk at one more untimely death atop the billions on that world.

The thought occurred to me that perhaps Nightmare Moon's oath still bound her magic even if she wasn't the one wielding it. A heartening theory, but not one I was eager to test.

"We are no longer bargaining. Do as I say or I will hurt you until you do. She will not save you. She will watch and laugh. Give it to me."

I reached down and checked the module plugs on the back of my suit. With a shrug, I apologized. Not even the Increate could take the translator from me.

"Blasphemy, little one? You are better than that."

I was. It was only logic; I could not lose what I did not possess.

Before it could reply, a small rock bounced off the back of its head. The statue and I both turned toward the source of the missile. There, atop the rubble of the collapsed half of the arena, stood the little statue. It waved my translator in the air, kicked another rock which bounced harmlessly off the stone pony's side, then began gesturing with its hindquarters and tail in what was clearly some sort of taunt.

"Clever." The thing that looked like Celestia faced it, crouched and opened both its wings to leap, then stopped, still coiled, and addressed me again. "I see we will have to finish this later. In the meantime, ask her what became of the Crystal Empire. Finish reading in your book about what a unicorn truly is. You will serve me when you understand."

With that, it propelled itself through the frigid air, arcing like an arrow toward the tiny dust pony. The little statue grasped the translator beneath one wing and tried to dive between two slabs of the wreckage to hide. It probably would have fit if not for its cargo, but instead it got stuck halfway inside, with the bulky gadget wedged between the stones.

I loped toward it, already knowing I would be too late. The stone pony was stooping down on it like a bird of prey, its front hooves extended to smash the electronic device to bits when it landed.

It didn't land. The blue cloud shivered and surged forth like a living thing, engulfing the flying statue. I couldn't see what happened, but ear-splitting grinding sounds emerged from the mists and a steady rain of gravel began to fall across the ruined arena for a solid minute. The shell of magic patching the roof gradually changed its tint from gold to blue.

After this ceased, the cloud began to turn and spin about itself. The rest of the air in the arena remained still and undisturbed as the cloud twisted into a whirlwind. The tip of the cyclone stretched to the floor and the entire cloud spiraled down into it, shrinking until it parted to reveal Nightmare Moon and became her mane and tail once again. She looked crazed and elated.

The princess proudly crowed something or other, skipping in a small circle and kicking through the remains of her opponent. She found a shard of the statue that was larger than the others and stamped it into powder, laughing. Then she called sharply and beckoned for me to approach. Of course, I understood none of the words without the translator.

I hurried up to her anyway. Never before had I been glad to see that inky, stilt-legged, scale-less creature! Forgetting that I was as unintelligible to her as she was to me, I began trying to tell her what I'd discovered, what danger she was in and who her true enemy was. I doubt I'd have made much sense even if I'd spoken her tongue, so hurriedly I babbled.

Nightmare Moon stopped this farce of mutual misunderstanding by snorting in annoyance and silencing me with a cuff to the side of my helmet that sent me sprawling. She laughed once more as I scrambled to check my headgear and neck joint for damage.

They were still sound, but it seemed the blow knocked something loose in my brain; it was suddenly rather difficult to recall why I'd rejected the false Celestia's offer and chosen to expend my life and sanity for this egotistical, bloodthirsty, barbaric—

Duty, I reminded myself. I had my duty.

Author's Note

I should've broken this one into two chapters, but I couldn't decide on where the break would be.