Chapters Luna, Luna , it whispered in my ear. Come my beloved, my precious one. Sleep.
But I awoke again to this dreary and windswept night. Every evening my will ebbed as I walked alone among the barren streets, hoof prints haunting my isolation. What few beasts dare trod in my domain only hunt and hide among the darkness. Fear lives in this place, and in me.
Though Celestia tried and calm my panic I know what she intends. Harmony is all she knows and all she can see. Any alteration I might bring against that would be met with much resistance. So I bore this weight alone, watching as the walls close in and overcome me.
As I sat in my sorrow a guard came to attend to me. He carried a lantern in his mouth and only bore me a stern look. He hung the lamp on a hook outside the door and shut it with the magick of his horn as we left, entombing the darkness inside my desolate room.
Between lit torches stood two Pegasi at attention. Their eyes are narrow and expectant, they await my will. But all I could see is the darkness across my kingdom, the stars shimmering in the vast distances, and the horizon which promises no return. They have come expecting a leader, and only found a withered shell.
“Princess?” inquired the Unicorn; his eyes questioning my authority with their condemning stare. “You have duties to attend to.” His reminder was a thorn in my side.
I had not the will to punish him, nor do I believe, the power. I heard it in the whispers of the night and in my dreams of the day. There is talk of treason rising in the ranks; a loyal Captain is not immune to promise of power and fame. Even then his silver gaze held mine and I could condemn him.
“Go,” I said to the first Pegasus, “and gather the others for our chariot. Await us on the balcony.” I spoke with as much nobility as my breaking voice could muster. Nevertheless, I saw it in their eyes, they know I falter. But it was not the time for a coup, for I had not yet broken and the Captain remained my own.
The second did not even try and hide his shame from me, stamping in impatience. My Captain lifted his hoof to protect my honor, striking at the ground with force, demanding notice. “Bow to your Princess,” he commanded.
There is a moment of hesitation within the Pegasus which my Captain detects. Without prompt or question my advocate's horn began to glow, lighting the rebel in turn. The Pegasus's legs stiffened, but the pressure upon him grew worse. It was not long before his front knees gave way and his snout is slammed to the ground. His muzzle was bloodied and the pool it created widened toward my hooves. I step back in disgust, though it would seem my Captain paid me no mind. His magick faded as he crept closer to inspect his work. The limp form of a pony collapsed before him, unconscious.
My beloved Captain called into the shadows, bringing forth another Pegasus. “The Princess has ordered this stallion questioned,” he muttered.
The guard pulled a collar from his satchel and bound the usurper to his hoof with lengths of chain. He backed into obscurity once more, dragging the hulking mass with him. In its wake was a tooth and a trail of crimson. The stone landing only caused the blood to roll in pearls to the uneven cracks, cementing its memory in the imperfections of my castle.
“So this is what it has come to,” I said in a whisper to ears I thought were kind.
“Show no weakness, my liege.” His face was inexpressive and cold, it was losing its confidence with years of repetition and strain. “Your subjects are naive, and less forgiving than I.”
We were both weary with age, but I had the shallow comfort of blackened trees and the echoed snores of ponies to accompany me by night. Here there was only darkness. A castle in the blackest corners of the moon, forever blocked from the warmth of the sun. I had founded it in my youth, in my hubris, but I regretted it all my waking hours. We left no blemish on the face of our patron body, and hid in the crevice of its back. Eternal damnation by mine own hand.
My cherished Captain snaps me from my pity, affirming loyalty with his hoof on mine. His look now seems to be of sadness, but not the same as I see in my struggling subjects as they saunter from their forsaken homes, no, his eyes well for me as we silently fear together.
“We haven’t time, Princess,” he whispered under a guised breath.
I only lit my horn and began a descent down the unkempt staircase. Tattered banners shuffled in the soft breeze of our movement reminding me of the days when they had shown in the light of a thousand horns. The main hall fared no better. What little remained of the once flowing Tyrian carpet was disheveled or riddled with holes. I spied dried flowers in engraved vases, their pedals as inert as their keeper.
More guards waited at the doors and pulled them open before me, feigning a reign. There was no illusion here as the doors opened upon an empty square. “Light the pyre,” I hissed to one of the attending stallions. My voice was not strong enough for demand, but my words could hold their venom.
In the center of my plaza sat a bowl, cracked at great length on one side but would not split for the forces which bore upon it. Dry, rotted wood had been stacked in the basin, gathered from the world below because none may dare flourish here. What evidence of life, above or below, now faced the fires held in the hooves of a guard. He dropped the torch without remorse, accustomed to the desecration of foreign treasures. Up went the flames, pining for the stars they could never seem to grasp. All of this by my decree, to gather what little, shivering followers I may have had, to warm their bodies and hearts. But they hid from my boon. Light and warmth, the things they and I longed for, I had given unto them, but they hid.
I believe the other ponies expected I drag the citizens from their homes, kicking and screaming. If I had learned anything by watching my sister govern the day I knew, in the least, this was not the way. Yet they looked down or turned their sight from me. My erroneous Captain looked to me for guidance and I knew he meant for me to treat them the way he had the unruly Pegasus. He could not see it gnawing at him as it did me, it did all of us. The darkness was as much the scenery as it was their souls.
“Put a lamp in every home,” I began, speaking to my attentive Captain, “and wake the masses before we return.”
He bowed and backed away into the growing number of huddled guards. It was this that finally broke my daze and forced me to see what was all around. For a moment it was nothing, a brief brush of paranoia, but then the horns began to glow. From the darkness came illuminated hatred, disgruntled faces and their shadow-caste silhouettes. I was beside myself, overwhelmed by the show of outright rebellion. Words were beyond me now.
I stumbled backward into the hall as the crowd outside festered. When I entered, the doors slammed shut, separating the darkness from the void and I was alone again. And for the moment I counted myself fortunate. Either by a little loyalty or by the pleading of my somber Captain, the brutes had spared me this night.
Each step up the winding staircase left an echoed clop in the empty halls. I had lived alone before in this fortress of stone, but as a bright and optimistic pony. And when my longing for light would grow, I would venture to the face of the moon, looking out on places unseen by mortal ponies in the world they themselves lived. Far corners of the globe untainted by the progress of time, beasts unchained, slumbering under my watchful eye.
Behind me my faithful flock would follow, abandoning the shackles of darkness for the glow of a full moon. Fillies would frolic in my presence, kicking up clouds of dust unique to us, silver and shimmering in the light only we knew. There was pride in our people and strength in their hearts.
But fate would play a cruel trick on my kindness and the weeks of dimness would outweigh the day of radiance in the spirits of lesser ponies. So a small faction would grow, disinterested in our kingdom or its ways. They would brood in the silence of the day, speaking in whisper when the loyalists were close. Soon they outnumbered my own and I dared not tread too close to the common districts.
It was then I thought all was lost and I heard the whispers for the first time. My sister would speak to me often of her subjects, joyous and faithful to no end. She would preach to me of methods and matriarchs, filling my mind with fanciful ideals. She who had not known sorrow, who had not watched the faces of her beloved loath, would speak to me of such things.
All was lost save my journeys to the face of our moon, ventures then made alone. But I once came upon another rolling in the dust as I had seen so long ago. He was young then, unabated by responsibility and full of vigor. A mere colt, whose wandering had led him to the tenderness of the sun, reflected on our empty rock. His face lit when he saw me, he shouted my name and ran to my side. I searched for his parents, in the town and in the darkness, but neither I nor my guards could find them.
I had myself been as barren as our moon and in the long wandering of life never labored a foal. My nobility in question and my kingdom engulfed, I took in the light as my own, the sun to my inky soul. So well had I raised him, grown apart from the ether of acrimony which plagued my kingdom, that he outshone the others in contest and in prose. Alone, he fought and clawed his way through my guard, yearning for my graces, though they were always his. Until before me he stood, knelt in the presence of my most resolute guard, knighted and honored as my precious Captain.
Happiness is more crushing than I had supposed as I found myself sauntering down the narrower halls of the upper floor. Servants quarters filled with cobwebs and dust remind me of their tenants. Some abandoned my castle early in the years of my downfall, others still waited with bated breath for my return to power, only to have their things now lay silent and unmoving in perpetual effigy. I had not the heart to move their possessions, what little remained reminding me of their company.
Through a stone arch I stepped out onto the balcony. The view of my kingdom obscured by the waiting Pegasi. From their perch they must have seen the frightful overthrow, if not been involved themselves. Taking advantage of a similar position I looked out again at the pyre below. However many the force had been, then dwindled only to a few now, watching the door for a sign of me or tending to the blaze.
A neigh calls my attention to the matters at hand and I take a seat in my polished chariot. It remains the one thing serene in this world, being buffed and well tended to on the earth below. I turn myself about-faced to watch the shrinking castle as we descend, but behind us stood my dear Captain, illuminated on the balcony alone.
Below him a fire was lit on the doors of my citadel and swallowed them up. Figures appeared in the light of the inferno, casting pitch on the remainder of my home. As the fire spread and grew he did not move, my naive Captain. And while the moon faded away I knew what had become of him, waiting for me in that nightmare.
I met my sister on her balcony as the sun began to fade in the west, beckoning as a last glimmer of hope. She smiled, genuine in her happiness at my arrival. But my face grew long in her light and downcast at the thought of her counsel.
It was not a moment after I stepped off from my chariot that it dashed away into the violet sky. My sister followed the escaping militia with her eyes and her countenance dropped. “Is everything alright?” she asked, always the matron.
“We are well,” I said, but the shake in my voice exposed me as a fraud.
“Luna,” she began, delicately pushing on my shoulder with her hoof and touching her horn to mine. I looked up to meet her stare, dignified in its fuchsine hue, staring into my own lackluster heart. “You mustn’t hide from me.”
At the end of my rope, my reign, if there was ever a time to come forward to my sister, candid, it was now. “You are beautiful my sister, stalwart to the last, but we are tired. Forgive us if we lack the enthusiasm of our post and another night unaccompanied.”
The look of maternal concern took on its matriarchal countenance, expression growing strict with irritation. “Do not doubt yourself, sister, you are strong. Your position is as important as my own. I may bring light and warmth in the day, but you control the tides and give passage to seasons; it is your moon which tells the farmer when to reap his field. You are the beacon in the darkness, Luna; do not be consumed by it.”
“And what gives us the right to such power?” I callously broke away from her and turned out to overlook my falling hours of night. “From your view the farmer wakes, he tends to his field unabated, and returns home to his family for respite. Meanwhile another pony plots and waits and gathers material for a plan soon to be in motion. He departs only in the cover of darkness, for his actions would not stand in the light. And in the night the farmer is robbed by this stallion, or maimed, or murdered. Under our watch the atrocities are committed, though they may be discovered in yours.”
She took a cautious step in my direction. “Come to me in the day and I will show you, we are the same.” Her hooves wavered, unsure of their course. It was her intention to console me, but the effect seemed inversed.
“Again? We have seen it all before, a thousand times.” My moon was the only light remaining in the sky for only the residual shimmer of the sun lingered after its passing, blotting out the stars. By now the inhabitants of preternatural abysses were rising up to greet me. “There may be monsters in your realm, but our realm is that of monsters.”
“We ought not argue now.” She was growing weary, drained from the strain of maintaining the suns course through the day. “Meet me here, at early dawn, when there is time to discuss such things. Keep your head up Luna, I have faith in you.”
It was a curious offer, one more night of terror with the expectation of something after, something different. There were no promises made at the time, only my anticipation driving my imagination to thoughts of a different world. Perhaps the entirety of my being was naive as it would seem my very will struggled against itself with optimism.
Without another word I accepted her proposition, suppressing my questions for want of ignorance. “Agreed,” I said, turning to her with a disingenuous grin.
She retreated slowly into the halls of her fully lit keep in an all too fresh and familiar manner. “Good night,” she called behind her.
I contemplated the meaning of that phrase for what seemed an hour, not having taken the care or time to respond. It was in a certain sense good, being in some places placid. Perhaps it had been that in all these years I had wandered too long in the dissolute venues. So I set off, determined to find a dwelling during my shadowy rule.
Canterlot was asleep and I could hear the whistles and neighs of the hidden denizens through the open doors and windows. Most here assumed, with nothing yet to sully this belief, that they were safe. If not the diligent guard of my sister to protect them, then I could be called. But little did they know how exposed they slept as I crept out from the city that night, furtively unseen by the patrols and guard posts. Not because it required secrecy, but because I craved discretion in my quest for meaning. This once, I wanted to be alone.
Outside the wall, in the glacial air of the mountainside, nothing stirred save the lone, distant howl of a timber wolf. While the ancient pines took on a sinister stare in the harsh light of my moon, it was nothing I had not seen or others dreamt before. Bats scurried through the dense treetops, crackling at the leaves as they flew. They disgusted me with their piggish faces and thirst for blood. Of course, how much more sinister and interesting was it to believe they feasted on flesh than to know they hunted insects by screeching in my caliginous domain. It was the first sin of the night, the dwelling of the peculiar and unknown, the strangeness which drove lesser minds to draft legends.
In the shade of overgrown brush, at the base of the mountain, I notice a rustling in the leaves. On close inspection a burrowing form appears, though it burrows not into the ground but into a thick shell. The black shape of the creature contrasting the russet tortoise it fought to invade revealed it to be a ratel. With tenacity it wrenched the shell from the writhing creature's spine. In an instant, it was over.
I only stood idly by, silent in my observation and careful in my position. Behind the ratel I could see the glowing of eyes, pale green with daemonic intent. From the shadows stepped a pair of wooden monstrosities, jaws drooping with sentient hunger.
Without thought I slammed the nearest wolf against a tree with extreme prejudice. These vermin perhaps repulsed me the most, of all the eldritch beings roaming the countryside. Crawling from depths unknown, stalking in the forests for prey, their very existence a mystery, a wooden golem without master. Its arboreal bones glowed as they slowly moved together, reconstructing the host splinter by splinter. I held down every piece with the radiance of my horn, pressuring the carcass to give up its magick. The timber hissed like wet kindling, the essence of the creature rising like smoke from the smoldering ashes. When I had finished nothing remained but ash and charcoal, lifeless as well they should have been.
Before me now fought the wolf and the ratel, though the wolf seemed worse for the ware. His front left leg was all but missing and his jowl in heaps on the ground. In his favor though, was the ever present glow which drew together the tattered brute.
The whole ordeal was more of a curiosity and a testament of my lament than a vain attempt to save the beast. Summed up in the microcosmic war was one of the principles of the night which I loathed the most. The ratel, being naturally a diurnal creature, has undergone a change in my time. As the shackles of society lengthened their chains, as pony kind pushed its boundaries into the forests and hillsides, they uprooted the environment in place. To compensate for competition many species left or began to sleep in the waking hours of their tormentors. Then the ratel was thrust upon me with fear and caution, being known at the time for its cruelty, to dwell like myself in darkness and dishonor.
Shattered beyond recognition and still being gnawed on by the ratel, the wolf remained resilient against the odds. But being a daft creature, the ratel thought him dead, despite the crawling of wood and faint spark in the eyes. Attention, then, was turned back to me. Snarling defensively, unsure of my intention or biased, the ratel clawed feverishly in my direction. His fear may have been misdirected, and my pleading perhaps unbecoming of my authority, but I sincerely wished he would run from me. Beside the threat he posed to me, the wolf, which still assembled itself, posed a greater threat to us both.
I felt a pierce on my leg. Blood began to seep from a fresh wound; the sight of it caused my hesitation. There was another sharp pain just below, or even through, the first gash, but my vision was fading and the pain decreased. Another cut and further drifting away, all the while hearing the ill-fated hiss from ungrateful swine.
Suddenly I heard a whimper and the numbed waling on my leg ceased. A cracking noise followed, then laughter, not my own but from my mouth. My eyes opened slightly and my vision began to focus once more on the scene of a ratel, cast to the side of the clearing, neck bent at a harsh angle. It did not breathe or move, nor did the cinders of wolf which now replaced the once glowing arborous fragments. Then, all went silent and grew fainter in the void.
If you search, my sweet, my mother, you will find none but me. That mysterious force which haunted my heart in dreams had come to me again. You are strong, you are pure, they will see. Stone walls surround me, echoes from forgotten days when the palace was alight. They do not know, but they will remember.
I sit on my throne overlooking a knelt peasant at the foot of the small staircase. His lips were moving but his words were garbled with static. Two guards stood at the far end of the room, flanking either side of the great door.
My head turned to the right without my command and would not succumb to resistance. Whatever this may have been it seemed more a memory than a dream. Then I noticed to what I looked, an adolescent colt seated on a large, velvet pillow. He looked back into me with his attentive silver eyes, and though I strained myself I could not hear the sounds his lips would make, hearing an incessant screech instead.
At those words the peasant smiled amply, bowed to us, his judges, and backed slowly away. I raised my hoof to submit my royal agreement and dismiss the meeting as our humble servant withdrew out the door. Guards followed after him, I suspect to carry out my verdict, and closed the gates behind them. I turned again to my young advisor and placed my hoof upon his head in approval causing his smile to glow more radiant.
Flash out and in like the transition of a spark in the darkness. Light gives way to a new scene of memory. The young colt, older now but still young enough, comes to me in great earnest. I reminisce about times long past; the panorama plays in my mind, both in memory and reality, of our meeting. Here we now stand in the light of the moon again, but this time he bears news for me. Headstrong and honest his message weighs on my heart. My colt has become my soldier, signing himself away to the harsher districts of the night.
It was early then, the rising of the rebellion, but not unheard of. Word had come to me of patrols not returned and I had dismissed a few guards in disgrace. Now my restless soldier would brave the darkest corridors in search of these insurgents, to protect me, he says. I need not truly hear his muffled remark for this news was carved into my essence on this night. Instead I remembered, as my lips unconsciously move, what we had said.
“Are you sure?” I would ask.
“Yes, mother,” he would reply. But what a double edged sword that word had become, my dearly loved leaving me to face forces unknown in my name. How hard this was to swallow.
He did not dance in the light as I would have liked, or show me one last feat of innocence before trudging off to find his purpose. Without another word he bowed to me, something I had never asked nor expected of him. He backed away as all the others had, humbly and honorably before his princess, and disappeared in the shadows of my moon.
From the depths of the darkness peered a pair of orbs so cold they caused my very being to shiver, their blue was paler than the moon surface and pupils only slits. We know what darkness does to virtue. We know how fear shapes a soul.
The light of the eyes grew and enveloped me, dropping me down on a cold lunar surface. A great fire blazed before me, illuminating the scene so fresh in my mind. My misguided Captain backing away from me into the shade, offering me up as tribute to the guards gathered all around. Even now I could only stare on in longing as my last strand of sanity departs.
No one love us, my dear mother, none but us. In the crowd of eyes I made out those same shimmering slits. Make them see what we have become. Make them believe in us again.
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.
