Princess Pariah

Waking from the dream was a blessing, waking to chants of Ave Luna was not. My head was still spinning and vision blurred, but I could feel cold, hard stone beneath my huddled body. Somepony had moved me from the forest and onto some archaic plinth.

Clearing slowly, I looked around at the decrepit catacomb. Inside the hollowed shelves of cave wall lay bones of long past ponies, cobwebbed and given to age. At my forelegs was a long, winding crack in the stone, through which a river of crimson ran. My cuts had not been attended to, and by the look of the glossy area around them my mysterious captor had applied an anticoagulant.

I could hear the nearing clops of hoof on granite while the chanting reverberated in the halls. From the candlelit entry stepped three mares in violet cloaks, hoods raised to cover the majority of their visage. One stepped away from the others and picked up a silver chalice from the receiving basin of the crack. She sipped from it, filled to the brim with my lifeblood. It ran down her muzzle in beads and stained the tip of her nose a menacing scarlet.

“Cease your prayer sisters,” the glutton began, “for mother awakes.” At her word the chanting died away.

“You have no right,” I said, trying to lift myself from the slab, but finding I had lost too much blood, fell down again. “We have no such children.”

“It no longer matters mother, for soon we too will rule. The blood of a goddess, long thought to be the key to godhood itself, is now ours.”

Myths and legend conjured by those who would seek to influence this crucial moment, lies crafted by desperate minds. These fools no more knew what my blood would do than what caused the rainbow or summoned storms. Even as the others took their turn with the cup I noticed no change in the first. She did not sprout wings or demonstrate magick; there was no transformation or increase in power.

In fact, as she drew back her hood I noticed she was a simple earth pony, devoid of all magick. No horn would sprout or feathers grow, she would live and die an earth pony and no amount of royal blood may change it. But to capture a god is to toy with fate. I could feel my power welling up inside of me, calling out to prove itself.

Release us, use us. Attest to us we belong. My head began to pound like tribal drums. Rest, wait, and awaken to truth. Feed your will, your passion; champion penance and judgment.

I tried to save them, arrogance prominent in the smug sneer on their faces, even then I tried. My patience was running thin and their envy fermenting, I knew a storm was on the rise. Linen and bones began to swirl around the room as my glow overcame them. The chalice was torn from their hands and spilled upon the floor. What magick they conceived in their heads lays sullied before their incapable hooves.

Mischievous grins deformed to sunken faces. Immortality may be lost, they realized, but they might have escaped with their lives. How dismayed they seemed to find their exit sealed by stone and the walls around them cracking with pressure. I held on to consciousness and a sliver of control with great feat of will. Soon their lives would be forfeit.

Pebbles fell like rain from the crumbling ceiling. Water oozed from the seams of the walls revealing a formerly undisclosed spring. What few torches remained alight were rolling on the ground among splintered bone fragments. I saw the leader pull a blade from her cloak; its reflection disoriented me for a moment. While I struggled to hold onto life I also waged a war for control of my psyche to save an unapologetic cult. My strength all but gone, I held off the collapse an instant longer, just enough to see the last source of light extinguished.

As the room filled with darkness, so too did my mind.

Blackouts went from being unheard of to uncomfortably common in far too short a time. The voice in my head had garnered quite the foothold after the suspected loss of my throne. My end was nearing and I could feel it in my bones.

Before me was a stone sarcophagus, its lid cracked but still sealed shut. It would seem my new setting was the inside of a mausoleum whose door was torn from its base and shattered on the ground outside. The only light came from my moon outside, leaking in from fractures in the wall and the hole where the entrance once stood. On the far side, overlooking the crypt as if to guard it, was a crescent carved into the stone.

Without knowing it I had been made a goddess. Night mother, guardian of dreamscapes, escort of the damned, I was all these things to ponies. Myth carried with it more force than fact, muddying the waters of truth for the poor corrupted souls. It had festered under my watch and grown out of my control, but I saw then. They need me.

Foolish as it may seem, I saw more clearly now. They feared certain features which had become me. Unable to deal with themselves they turned to me for answers. The hope of immortality was enough to sustain these ponies, though it would seem to have sealed their fate.

I looked to my once gaping wound to find it cauterized. We have already begun the great work. Now the voice was clear, not grinding on my thoughts to break through. We have heard what they require, we must only seize it. Capable hands for darker hearts, my love, an embodiment of trepidation.

There was a knocking at my heart. A long awaited guest beckoning at my door, stowed away with good reason long ago. It played a lullaby, notes breaching the walls I had built. My eyes grew heavy and I smiled at the thought of rest. This was no longer a struggle for control, but a humble offering. I recalled seeing the same resignation in the eyes of my vindicated Captain. He saw in me the same hindrances which were only now clear. My anxiety, my fear, my hopes, and my love were intruding upon my reign, but no longer would such superfluous ties bind my fate. What could not be accomplished by my own hoof would be given to more the more capable ego within me.

I was now resolved to idle, the only lucid decision I had made in months. Welcome us. But there was one last matter at hand, one matter which need not be resolved by me. Relinquish. One last meeting with my sister, a final test of resolve. Remind her of mortality.

Given into desire and weary, I closed my eyes. The sight of overgrown trees and archaic tombstones outside burns itself into my skull and the faint outlines remained in the darkness of my soul. Concession was bliss; I hoped to never wake again.

Sleep now, my love; the nightmare will soon be over.