Broken Wings, Scattered Dust

Follow, My Savior

We were lucky the drawbridge was closed pending nightfall.  After shoving a physically inept unicorn onto the moat’s banks, I was in no mood to deal with anypony’s inquisitive looks, wondering why two ponies had just appeared in a moat without so much as a splash or sound.

“Should’ve just told her to drop us off at the observatory,” Violet muttered, whipping the water out of her tail.

I shook my head.  “No.  I don’t think she can, er...cross realms without enough water to submerge herself in.”

“Rain?”

“It’d have to pool somewhere, or you’d probably come out looking like shredded paper.”

“Halt!”

A head popped over one of the turrets, blue helmet shining gold with twilight’s many colors.

“Who goes there?”

“Jetstream and Violet,” I called back.

“And what is your business in Canterlot?”

A second head appeared next to him, whispered something in his ear, then vanished in a swirl of shadows.

“Ah, forgive me,” the guard called.  “Your escort will be down in a moment.”

I eyed the spot where the second guard had vanished.  The first had just popped up.  The second had appeared.  And an escort?  Just who was expecting...oh.

“Oi,” I said, peeling Violet off my leg and speaking a calm I did not feel.  “Calm down.  It’s him.”

And right on cue, a shadowy swathe erupted from the turret’s shadow in front of us, resolving itself into a pony that I wasn’t entirely thrilled to see.  He didn’t seem to recognize me, but as hard as I tried and as perfect as it seemed, there had to be a trail I left behind.  All it took was someone patient enough to see it through.

“Hello, Violet,” Blackout said, lowering the black cloth covering his mouth.  Truth be told, he was wearing nothing but black cloth.  That and set of very lumpy boots.

“B-B-Blackout?  How do—?”

Blackout smiled toothily.  “I know your name?  I knew your parents, Violet.  Pretty well, actually.”

He spoke with an accent I couldn’t place, and more importantly, was almost ignoring me.  Almost.  Good sign.

“Who’s your friend?”

“Jetstream,” Violet said promptly.  “Just a weathermare.”

Blackout eyed my goggles.  “I see.  Now, I believe you were sent here by the Calamus, no?”

I locked my neck so I couldn’t nod.  Violet had to do the leading here; I was the third wheel.  Acting like I was anything else would only draw suspicion.  Which was unfortunate, because Violet looked almost paralyzed, but when she glanced sideways, I shot a quick look at Blackout.  She got the hint and nodded.

“I have something to show you, but it will have to wait.  There’s something else I must attend to first.  Lower it,” he commanded the gate guards.  They complied, night completing its fall as Blackout led us into a starlit Canterlot.  The streets were mercifully empty save for the occasional wanderers, most of whom were clutching a wine bottle or cooking pot.  It gave me a clear enough view of—and a clear shot to—all the nooks and crannies, alleyways and dead ends.

But there was more than that.  I blinked hard and shook my head when he wasn’t looking; there was two phantom earth ponies that were repeatedly stopping to ‘knock’ at seemingly arbitrary doors.  Go home, you two.  Go home.  You don’t belong here.

“Come on,” Blackout said.  “I can get you two a room in the palace.”

I fought to keep my face impassive.  Palace lodging?  I figured the post-service benefits were nice, but not that nice.  And he’d emerged from a shadow...or at least appeared to.  Blackout was more than he was letting on.  Or he was, perhaps, still in government employ.

“I’d love that,” Violet murmured.  “Thank you.”

I nodded in agreement, though...maybe I could sneak a cloud in there.  That’d be nice.  But there was that thing Blackout had to take care of...I drummed up what focus I had left and forced the creeping onset of irresistable sleep back.  There would be no sleep tonight, at least.  Not for me.

My stomach rumbled, too loudly to pass it off as anything else.  Blackout didn’t even turn around.

“I’ll have the cooks bring up some food, too,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said sheepishly, eliciting a stifled giggle from Violet as we entered the vacant market square.  There were plenty of empty wooden carts, but what drew my eyes was the fountain in the center.  It depicted a stone alicorn—a familiar stone alicorn.  Crystal clear water poured out of the spirals in a stone Lucifa’s horn, forming a perfect glass umbrella before cascading into the fountain’s base.  Moonlight cast half the statue in shadow and granted the rest a soft silver glow, and the layers of falling waters bent the light into dangerously hypnotizing patterns.

I couldn’t remember if that fountain was there before—but then, I’d only spent a few years in Canterlot.  A far cry from a lifetime—and I wasn’t exactly fond of those memories.  In either case, Violet’s eyes were glazed over with a lavender sheen, and she was swiveling them somewhat fearfully in every direction.  She’d mention a threat if she saw one.  Still no reason to get complacent.

So I turned my eyes on the empty carts as we rounded the fountain and continued towards the palace.  They were as good a place to hide—most were indistinguishable from one another, and they were too spread out to watch all of them simultaneously.  The picturesque carved distraction only made them more advantageous.  But I heard nothing besides our hoofsteps, and the brisk night wind, and the only things visible were a few skittering rats and those two earth pon—darn it, you two.  Go home.

A crescent moon hovered far above us, shining, serene.  An indigo veil dotted with stars flanked it, unmarred by clouds.  There was no hiding in that kind of sky.

The appearance of innocuity persisted until we crossed the Palace’s courtyard and arrived at its grandiose, imposing double doors.  Three Lunar Guards stood watch, one of each race, steel-tipped spears glowing softly in the mountain’s shadow.  A large symbol was emblazoned on the doors—a sort of half-sun, half-moon thing.

Blackout nodded curtly to each guard in turn.  “They’ll just be staying the rest of the night.”

The unicorn guard nodded, and with practiced fluidity, each guard moved to one of three stone circles embedded in the ground.  The circles were surrounding another, much larger stone disc, which was carefully engraved with the same symbol as the door.

Blackout harrumphed.  “I hate doing this.”

He stepped onto the central disc and drew a deep breath.

“Wanderer of perilous seas, atoned

Guardian of ancient peaks, deponed

Raven and dove circle above.”

Both symbols—on the door and on the central stone—instantly lit up with magic on the last word, one half gold, the other, silver.  Sun and moon.  The doors swung soundlessly open, revealing a ostentiously decorated foyer.  Despite the starlit sky outside, there was a surprising amount of activity inside.

Harried ponies, papers held carefully in clenched teeth, appeared in open doors and hallway entrances only to vanish down another.  More Lunar Guards were peppered throughout the ebb and flow, indigo armor and the occasional pair of batlike wings glowing softly with shafts of moonlight, allowed in through lofty windows.

I turned and was half-finished taking off when I realized—chickening out would only make me more suspicious, something I should—augh—really know by now.  I gulped and dredged up what little determination I had left.  I needed sleep, and soon.  A hot meal would be n—damn it.  Now was not the time for happy dreams and wishful thinking.  Okay, maybe it never was.  Not for me, anyways.

Focus, damn it.

Blackout, blissfully oblivious to my plight, shuddered as he stepped off the stone.  The earth pony respectfully thanked the guards, who saluted and returned to their posts with some indistinct muttering.  Violet was not so inattentive.

“Have to do that every time,” Blackout grumbled, “unless the Princess is having an open court.  Which is pretty rare.”  He pretended to claw at his tongue, as though he could scrub the poem off.  “I hate reciting that.”

“I thought it was pretty,” Violet murmured.  Blackout snorted, helping the inner guards pull the doors shut.

“You wouldn’t if you knew what it meant,” he said quietly.  “Trust—what’s up with your eyes?”

She stopped short, unconsciously reeling her magic back in.  “I, uh...I...”

Blackout let her stammer for a moment, emerald-green eyes inferring, calculating.

“Mm,” he said thoughtfully, like he understood.  Both of us froze stiff, and even the guards had grown still, listening with bated breath.  But Blackout said no more on the subject, and I finally managed to tear my eyes away from him, only to notice something odd.  The Lunar Guards in the palace roamed freely through the eastern half—the half decorated mostly with white and gold.

“This way,” Blackout said, shooting a swift glare at the entry guards, transfixed by Violet’s still-glowing eyes.  The guards hurriedly resumed their stoicism, and Blackout led us into the fray.

I drew a deep breath and thought of Whimsy, nigh-immune to her surroundings.  It was one thing to see a small swarm of guards.  It was another entirely to be in the dead center of one.  Time to see if I was unseen as I thought I was...

We followed Blackout into the western half of the castle.  The earth pony carved swathes in the hallway’s flow as cleanly as a stone in a river, turning more heads than I thought possible.  Guards saluted him with as much respect as admiration.  I hadn’t noticed before—I had been expecting it—or perhaps he didn’t do it all the time, but Blackout moved with deliberation, with purpose, his steps as fluid as an open wind.  Perfectly controlled from the moment his hoof left the ground to the moment it returned to it.  No guard I’d met had that level of discipline, that utter mastery of their movement.

Violet’s gaze followed the motion of his steps, too, but we passed by a rarity—an open door—and that drew my eyes instead.  Or more accurately, one of the six ponies within it.  A Lunar Guard.  A unicorn surrounded by swirling, inklike tendrils.  Fifth door from the foyer.

Blackout followed the hallway until it opened up into a circular dome, ringed all around by smaller, less ostentatious doors.  The mural above us was not nearly as understated; neither was the ambient chatter.  There was one name muttered so often, I could only conclude its owner was either present in the palace, or about to be.  It had happened before, and with the same name.

Twilight Sparkle.

It was a name I knew from my times in Canterlot.  The two words lit up the city as brightly as any star, both in liveliness and in rumors, and this time only had one difference.  There was another word, repeated nearly as often as the name.  Apotheosis.

Yet more hallways branched off into a network I’d only heard of.  Blackout took a look around, then led us to one of the small doors on the dome’s long wall.  It was marked with a pair of criss-crossed, faintly-red lightning bolts.  Interesting.

He pulled a small key from nowhere and opened the door.  Inside was not, as I was expecting, like a hotel room, but like living quarters.  There was only one bed, but there was, oddly, a pair of clouds floating by the window.  A barren bookshelf sat next to the doorway, an empty desk next to that, and a modest lavatory next to that.  Blackout ushered us inside.  “Make yourselves comfortable.”  He waved down a passing pony, a dirty-blue-grey earth pony with a three-toned cerulean mane and a silver pocketwatch on her flank.  “Make sure they’re fed, when you have a moment.”

The servant nodded and scurried off.  Blackout turned to leave.  “I’ll be back as soon as I’m finished.  See you two later.”

He gave Violet the key and left without giving either of us a chance to respond, which was fine by me.  I couldn’t say the same for Violet.

“Ehm.”  She frowned.  “How does he know what my magic does?”

“He didn’t say that,” I noted.  She just looked at me.

“He...doesn’t have to.”

“Oh.  Right.”

“I wish I could turn it off,” she grumbled.  “There’s so much I’d rather not know...”

I left her to her mental wanderings and made use of the lavatory.  It was rather odd; this wasn’t a hotel room, this was someone’s living quarters.  But it was so...barren.  There was nothing extra at all in the bathroom, no shampoos or soaps, although judging from the clouds by the window, they might just prefer conducting their business outside and using rain to shower.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if it were all covered in dust.  There was literally no sign that anyone had lived here for months, maybe years—the servants must keep it clean just for its own sake.  It was just the right temperature for the cloud to be stable, too.  And there was the pair of lightning bolts by the door...red lightning bolts, of all things.  The inhabitant’s cutie mark.

Violet was sprawled out on the carpet when I emerged, staring at the blank ceiling.

“I never thought I’d be in here,” she said quietly.

“What, in this room?”

“No.  In the palace.”  She paused.  “This room’s pretty weird too, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“I dunno.  Everything.”  She got up and waved at the walls, pacing back and forth.  “Nopony’s lived in here for a while, no idea how long, yet it’s spotless.  And as far as I can tell, nopony besides the servants have been in here since then...”

“Except us.”

“That’s just it!  Why us, and why now?”  She stopped beneath the clouds.  “And—hey, wait a minute...”

“What is it?” I said sharply.

“These two clouds—these clouds should be shooting lightning between them.  I’ve seen lightning storms before...”

Wha—wait.

No way.

Violet backed up as I approached the clouds and laid a hoof on each.  She was right.  These two clouds were fit to burst with electricity.  There was only one reason they wouldn’t have discharged...but that reason...

“Violet.”

She jumped.

“Look at the water vapor.  Tell me if there’s a spell.”

Violet’s eyes glazed over with her magic.  She didn’t say anything until her nose was in the cloud.

“Th—there is,” she breathed.  “But it’s small, and...it’s been cast on each droplet seperately.  How...?”

The rest of her musings fell on deaf ears.  A rushing icy numbness stole any control I had over my physical being.  The room and everything in it drifted wildly in and out of focus, swimming into blurred splotches of vivid color and returning to razor-sharp clarity and back again.  One of my hooves brushed against the cloud, a bolt of red-white lightning blazing between them in response.  My legs turned and carried me out the door, bringing my eyes to the faint-red, double lightning bolts for the second time.

No.

Freakin’.

Way.

But there was something else, more important...we’d been set up.

This was no coincidence.  Someone knew.  Someone had to.  It wasn’t Violet.  It couldn’t be.  She would know more if she did.  And it couldn’t be Blackout, or he would’ve shown some sign of knowing me, however small.  No...

But...no...I...wait.

That only left...

“Hello,” said a voice behind me.

My tail whacked Violet in the head as I whipped around, finding myself face-to-face with three ponies.  I knew all three of them, but had only seen two in the flesh before.  Eve looked markedly less disgruntled than the last time I’d seen her.  Blackout was as impassive as ever, if a bit stiffer than usual.  But the presence of either was dwarfed by the monstrously imposing presence provided by the flowing, ethereal, navy-blue, star-speckled mane that belonged to Princess Luna.

I reeled into Violet a second time, stumbling around her at the open door.  There was no time to escape, no place to run, and no way I could fight my way out.  I knew that already even if my legs didn’t; a pure-white lightning bolt blasted the door shut before I could make it through.

Well, if it was time...then it was time.  Deluge wouldn’t leave Whimsy out in the cold, I was certain, so even if I couldn’t fulfill Descant’s request, my real job was done.  Slowly, carefully, I turned, resigning myself to the night I always knew would come.

Not one of them had moved an inch.

“Come,” Luna said, without a trace of emotion.  “We must speak in private.”

Blackout had cut swathes through the palace’s traffic.  Luna negated it entirely.  Nopony dared stray within twenty yards of her—nopony except for the small troupe following her.

It was with limited comfort that I noticed that Blackout and Eve stayed at Luna’s side, in front of me.  If they were arresting me, she’d station the other two behind me.  But then, this was the goddess of the moon.  There was nothing I could do that she couldn’t counter...

Oh for the love of Celestia.  I never would’ve entered the castle.  I’d’ve bolted as soon as they opened that door.  If only I was thinking straight.  If only...if only I had a chance, just one, to...

...sleep...

        ...maybe...

                ...then...

                        …sweet...

...oblivion...

— § —

“I’m fine.  She hardly weighs anything.”

“Don’t touch her wings.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer if—”

“No.”

“...Of course, your highn—Princess Luna.  Where—”

“There.  On the cloud.”

I felt myself being set down, gently, into the velvet dunes of a cloud, but there was no wind and no smell of any other weather.  A cursory wiggle revealed that I was not bonded.  Not physically.

Okay.  I reexerted control over my breathing, keeping it long, even.  A door closed somewhere nearby.  The sound of hooves on carpet shuffled past, followed by the tink of a ceramic something being set down.  The scritch-scratching of a quill and a wooden click-clacking whiled away my lingering drowsiness.  If they wanted to torture me, they would have tied me down.  If they’d arrested me, I’d be in a cell.  Who puts carpeting in a cell?

No, I told myself, keeping my breathing steady and turning drearily onto my side.  There’s only two explanations.  Either they’re going to execute me, or they need me alive.  For...something.  Like an execution.

Let’s just get it over with.

I wiggled free of the cloud, landing silently on the carpeted floor, noting the presence of both my—still charged—bands and my goggles.  My saddlebags were, unsurprisingly, gone.

I was in someone’s study.  The room itself was laid out like two overlapping circles, one much larger than the other.  Bookshelves lined every inch of wall and vanished in darkness high above me.  Modest crystal lamps sat every few yards along the wall.  Very understated.  Tables full of odds and ends, most of which I’d never seen before, cluttered the center of the main room.  Among them was a few canvases, some paints, and a small harp.

In the center of the auxiliary room was only a desk.  Luna was behind it, a stream of papers flying silently above her, glowing silver as she poked at a small, wooden frame holding a series of colored beads.  Behind the flying papers was a window through which the moon was visible.  Luna frowned briefly at a sheet of paper and adjusted her glasses before she finally noticed I was awake.

She set the papers down—taking extra care to do so neatly, I noticed—and trotted over to me.  She might have been smaller than her sister, but she cut an imposing figure nonetheless.  Perhaps a more threatening one than her sister, too, given the whole Nightmare Moon incident.

“How long was I out?” I said brusquely.

Luna just stared at me.  Not so much as a twitch of an ear.  If she was caught off guard by my candor, she didn’t show it.  Her eyes—the only part of her that wasn’t blue, black, or white—were this stunning turquoise that were hard to look away from.  There was an air of mystery behind them, and her.  No one, maybe not even Celestia, knew what those thousand years of solitude had done to her.

“Just the night,” she said evenly.  ”Shock, hunger, and sleep deprivation can do that to you.”

There were plenty of rumors of Luna speaking in more force than sound.  She was restraining herself, that much was clear, but even so, I felt the air ripple in light shockwaves at the sound of her voice.  If she ever yelled, the sonic explosion would decimate everything within fifty yards at least.

“What am I doing here?  Why am I here and not in a cell?  Or dead?”

Luna sighed.  “Because the Calamus has instructed you to come here.  Because Ms. Violet asked us not to.  Because my sister has painstakingly manipulated our meeting into happening.  But most of all, Zephyr, because your mother was one of my best captains, and best friends.”

My jaw dropped.  Holly, friends with Luna?  Princess Luna, the moon goddess and twin ruler of Equestria?  It couldn’t be true.

“Prove it.”

She eyed me for a moment.  Her horn lit up with silent white lightning, and she levitated a thin chain from her desk over to us, a small circle dangling from it.

“I believe this is yours now,” she said, offering it to me.

I took it, turning the golden coin over in my hooves.  There was no denying it.

It was Dad’s.

I’d hardly ever seen him without it.  The only time I saw it not around his neck was when he was asleep, and that was only because Holly insisted, so he wouldn’t choke.  Yes...this was his.  It was a legitimate coin like any other bit in Equestria, except for one thing.  Right there, smack dab in the middle, was a perfectly circular hole.  Singed around the edges and all.  The only evidence that Holly wasn’t another of Dad’s fabrications.

I couldn’t deny it.  Luna had Dad’s necklace, knew it was, by inheritance, mine.  The two clouds in the bedroom had been enchanted by Dad—he was the only one who knew how to alter clouds like that.  He was the one to discover how.  So that meant the two lightning bolts by the door...

“Auburn Bolt, known to most—by her own preference—as Holly,” Luna said quietly.

“She wasn’t my mother.”

For the first time, I saw an emotion twist Luna’s features.  Sadness.  “I am sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“No.”  Her gaze dipped momentarily.  “Her absence was my doing.  She was never around because there was always work for her to do.  Work I couldn’t entrust to anypony else.  ”

I harrumphed.

“Holly was my best captain,” she said softly.  “When the time for her to leave my service, I was more than sorry to see her go.”  She drew a breath.  “Do you know how my the Lunar military operates?”

I shook my head.  I hadn’t encountered enough Lunar Guards on my excursions to know.  Though, come to think of it, I’d hardly ever seen any significant number of Lunar Guards in the same place...

“My sister’s operates on principle, and on schedule.  If you cannot take orders, you cannot be a Solar Guard.”  She paused, a slight bitterness entering her voice.  “My sister is very good at chess, but she has no use for pawns that do not live by her guidance.  I do.”

She walked over to one of the myriad tables.  The door was just over there, but...no.  I had to...Holly.  I’d seen her only once in my fillyhood.  Just where were you?

Luna lifted a canvas depicting a wolf howling at the moon.  “You know the story of the lone wolf.  We have rules, and orders, yes, but my best soldiers are the ponies who can think for themselves.  Ponies who do not accept orders without question, and if it is necessary, who can perform without them.  Ponies who know rules are rules, not laws of physics.”  She smiled warmly.  “Holly fulfilled all of those requirements.  I lost count of the number of times she disobeyed direct orders to save lives.”

She trotted over to me and tried to lay a hoof on my shoulder.  I flinched reflexively, but she completed the gesture anyways.

“But she was more than a soldier,” she said quietly.  “She was an artist, in her own way.  Did your father ever tell you how he met her?”

I shook my head again.

“There was a freight train, transporting unstable crystal explosives for safe disposal.  She heard about it last-minute and volunteered to escort it.  Minimize collateral damage if the worst came to be.  But...” She smiled lightly again.  “Your father had stowed away.  He wanted the crystals for his own experiments, wanted to discover why only some crystals can store magic and remain stable.

“Blueprint himself, though—bless him—was not stable.  Not on a moving train.  They were passing through a forest when the train took a sharp turn, and he stumbled into a barrel.  It would have killed him, but he pushed it out the door before the crystals’ chain reaction fully detonated.”

I found myself seething.  This did not explain why Holly had never been around.  She couldn’t have served in the military forever.  And where was Violet?  Blackout, Eve?  And that servant who was supposed to feed us?

“The car he was in was made of an aluminum alloy, strong enough to withstand the shrapnel that hit it.  Holly had a harder decision to make.  She had a split-second to decide which shrapnel to strike down; the shrapnel headed for her, or the shrapnel headed into the forest.”

I froze.

“She only needed a tenth of time.  She kicked enough lightning out of the cloud she was on to vaporize—excuse me, sublimate—even the shrapnel she missed, but a lot of it hit her right hind leg.

“Blueprint saw her fall, knew it was his fault.  He threw himself out of the car and caught her with magic.  She was out cold and losing blood, and they were hours away from any civilization.  Without proper teleportation training, he had only minutes to come up with a plan before Holly bled out.

“He did.  He took what magic he could from the remaining shards, and used it to gather all the water he could find.  He used the water to flash-freeze Holly into a solid block of ice.”

She smiled, fully this time.  “Your father, the pioneer.  Only took him a minute to recall the connection between body temperature and body’s natural functions, and hypothesize something that saved Holly’s life.  If the body’s functions slow when its temperature is lowered, then theoretically if you dropped the temperature low enough, you could halt the body’s functions—including the heartbeat.”

I nodded.  That was Dad, all right.  Almost too smart for his own good.  Almost.

“He had to drag the ice block along for days before he found a hospital, and he stayed in the hospital for another week before she regained consciousness, but it worked.  Holly survived.”

“Did she thank him?” I asked curiously.  If she had, then perhaps she wasn’t as bad as I thought.  Silence can destroy so much...

Luna actually laughed this time; the lanterns’ light flickered at the sound of it.  “After she finished punching him in the face, yes.  She never quite fixed that habit.”

I grinned.  That was the Holly I had hoped she was.

Luna gently plucked the necklace out of my grasp.  “That’s when she gave him this.  Tossed a coin fifty meters up and shot a hole clean through it with lightning.  ‘No amount of magic or science can replace that kind of accuracy,’ I believe is what she told him.”

She returned the necklace.  A small glimmer of hope flickered inside me.  Maybe, just maybe, I could forgive Holly.  Maybe, just maybe, through whatever magic the Calamus wielded, I could talk to the mother I never had.

Luna—Princess Luna—let go of me and entered the labyrinth of tables again.  “There’s something besides those bands Holly left for you, but it is neither my place to tell nor my gift to give.”

She said the last sentence forcefully, with finality.  I caught it.  Don’t ask.  I pushed what Holly could’ve left for us out of my mind.  There was something else I needed to do.

“L—Princess Luna?  Where’s Violet?”

“Just Luna, please.”  HAH.  Take that, Whimsy.

Luna opened the door with a bolt of magic.  “She’s been waiting for you.”

“Finally,” said a voice from the open door.  “Goddess be praised.”

“Oh, for Celestia’s sake,” said another voice.  “Can’t you shut up?”

Violet edged into the room, quivering, but when she saw me standing she practically flew into me, soaking my fur with tears.  Sweet Celestia, get me a raincloud, stat.

“Yeesh,” I said, peeling her off of me.  “That worried?”

She nodded, nose still in my side.  Blackout and Eve entered the room, arguing.  The former had his hood down, revealing him to gold-and-amber eyes, an tousled, barely-white mane, and a coat the color of almost-black smoke.  Eve wasn’t wearing her armor, either, and with a clearer look this time, I saw her cutie mark.  An odd, black circle with wisps of white curling around it.  Interesting. Presumably, apparently, and thankfully, Luna didn’t place much value on ceremony.

“So she was worried, big deal,” Eve said.  “Give her a break.”

“Why?” Blackout grumbled.  “I’ve got things to do, places to be, but noooo, Violet refuses to let me do my job until she knows little Ms.—”

“Tchhh,” hissed Eve.  She threw another twilight shroud over us, muting our conversation to anyone outside.  “What did we talk about?”

“—little Ms. Assassin over there is fine,” Blackout completed quietly.

I bolted upright, knocking Violet to the floor, but it was inconsequential.  Eve and Luna already knew.  Blackout had to as well.

“Calm down,” he said.  “We’re not going to arrest you or anything.”

“Why not?”  I demanded.  I already knew Luna’s reasons.  What were his?

Blackout glanced at Luna, who waited for Eve to close the door before she spoke.

“Descant asked you pass through the Calamus in order to discover why dragons are going extinct.  He believes it to be the departure of Lucifa.  Am I right?”

“How—?”

A thin smile spread across her face.  “If you must know how, then allow me to say this.  If he had asked the same of you before my return, the shrine would have been inactive, and your journey would have ended before it began.”

“So you...you...”

“The Calamus is fueled by more than magic,” she said quietly.  “At its core there is something that a pony like my sister will never understand.  It cannot be manipulated, tamed, analyzed, harnessed, generated nor terminated.  In this manner, I am connected to it, and it to me.  Perhaps Descant mentioned that the shrine is, in a way, a remnant of Lucifa?”

I nodded.  “I think so.”

“When she still walked this land, the power the Calamus contained was beyond mortal understanding.  When she left, it was diminished.  Accordingly, his race slowly succumbed to base desires and instincts, reducing them to little more than grandiose, gem-encrusted beasts.  Her connection to the Calamus is what sustained them—a connection that I, but not my sister, possess.  While I was...away, the Calamus was nothing more than a shapely rock.”

I rubbed my head.  “So...what does this have to do with me not getting arrested?”

“Let her get there,” Blackout said calmly.

“The Calamus is far from the only thing held in stasis during my absence.  My sister is a capable leader, but she lacks the spirit of an artist.  Creativity.  Inspiration.  Imagination.  Artistry.  These are foreign languages to her.  Without those elements, it was all she could do to hold Equestria in stasis for a thousand years.

“All of those powers accompanied me upon my return.  A thousand years’ worth of mental wanderings, of ideas, dreams.  Nightmares.  A millenium of progress crammed into an instant.  It has since become our focus to absorb and redistribute these advances such that the world does not consume itself through progress.

“But change is inevitable...even for me.  All we can do is slow it.”  She took a breath.  “Your parents were, among many other things, part of the first generation in centuries to be children of the night.  Those who came before them, for a thousand years, knew naught but the day; for most, the return of my night shook their world apart, and if it were not for my sister’s...actions, they might have chosen an early departure.  Your parents were among the few who embraced my return.

“There is no knowing if the draconic race will survive the onset of progress.  However...there is, as I’ve no doubt you’ve deduced, a chance.  Blueprint was also the first since my exile began to rediscover the latent abilities of earth ponies.  Some believe that those powers hold the key to saving the dragons.  And there are some who would expose or exploit those abilities.  Needless to say, such actions are unacceptable.

“This is why you remain free, Zephyr.”

Uh.  “Not following.”

“Seven of your targets were said kind of pony,” Blackout said quietly.  “ Until now there was no reason to reveal ourselves to you; you can imagine how ponies would react if they knew their own government was...irreversably silencing a few of them.”

I nodded wordlessly.  This explained a lot.  Namely the reliable work and sizeable payouts.  But both were always different, random.  These were ponies that kept to the shadows, and rightfull yso.  The secret of earth ponies could, after all, do worse than level cities in the right hooves.  “So why now?”

“Deception is no longer an option.  We cannot, excuse me, hire you if it we don’t require an assassination.  There is something that Blackout and Miss Horizon believe you can help them—us—with, and I have to agree.”

“It’s about Dust, isn’t it?”

Luna raised an eyebrow.

“Tan earth pony, lime green eyes, brown cloak twenty-four-seven?”

“How’d you know?” Blackout said, half-astounded, half-aggressively.

“I saw her.  Twice.  Both times she brought to bear magic that both doesn’t resemble anything I’ve seen, and doesn’t seem to adhere to the same laws that any pony magic follows.  Not even earth pony.”

“Ah yes,” Luna said.  “I noticed the amnis paries had vanished.  Perhaps you also saw her signature construct?”

“A giant, glowing, back-mounted bow?”

Luna nodded.

“Aye.”

“What do I have to do, if it isn’t kill her?”  Please tell me it’s simple.  I already have the Calamus’ backlog of quests to deal with.  Not to mention that without knowing her abilities and limits, her habits and tendencies, trying to subdue her would be about as suicidal as diving to the lightless bottom of the ocean and expecting to survive.  Unless you’re the luckiest bastard on Earth, there isn’t much of a chance you’ll bring the right things.

“I don’t know.”  Luna raised her gaze to the ceiling.  “She’s been at the site of every known dragon death in the past three years.  She’s leveled a gryphon village, excavated a crater in the side of a mountain, smashed historical monuments, ponynapped several ponies—all of whom were unable to speak coherently even months after release—and sown needless death among the outer wilds, creatures and plants alike.  If you want hard evidence, Blackout would be more than happy to oblige.”

“So why am I not killing her again?”

“You know the magic earth ponies possess.  The amount in her possession is astronomically greater than that of any other earth pony.  Not only that, she wields it.”

“Hm.”

“Perhaps you’ve heard of Discord?”

“In passing.”

“The spirit of chaos.  The kind of being that cannot be allowed free in Equestria.  When he was last disabled, he was encased in stone, not killed.  My sister even dared release him with confidence he would reform.  As far as I know, he has.  You of all ponies know, no creature is without virtue or merit.  No matter how senseless they seem.  No matter how much pain they produce.”

She carefully met my eyes.

“No matter how much death they deliver.”

“I do,” I said quietly.

“Then speak to her.  Discover what drives her.  With the right push, she could very well reverse draconic extinction.”

It made sense.  That didn’t exactly coincide with Descant’s requisition though.  “Hm.”

“One last thing.  The secret of earth ponies.  You have thus far kept this secret.”

A touch of venom tainted her voice.

“I trust you will continue to do so.”

“I won’t.”  Not that I have anyone to tell.

But no matter how hard I stared, no matter what tells I looked for, I couldn’t tell for the life of me if she was satisfied or not.  “Pray my sister does not have to intervene.”

I doubled over as a jolt of pain twisted my insides, my gut practically roaring.  It was impossible to miss, but not entirely unexpected.  Hunger was something I was more than used to, but it wasn’t something I could ignore forever.  It had been stabbing at me since I woke up, but like any pony, the maladies of flesh can be slighted if the mind is sufficiently stimulated.  Holly.  Dad.  Dragons, now Dust.  Things that were just beyond my comprehension, tantalizingly close yet so far.

Luna eyed my stomach.  “Before you go—Zephyr, you are in no way, shape, or form, bound to fulfill my request.  I merely trust you will.”  She met my eyes carefully.  “You are very much like your mother, and she stopped at nothing to do what she thought was right.”

She bowed courteously and ushered us out the door, speaking only when the last of us had crossed the threshold.

“Arbiter.  Horizon.”

Blackout and Eve turned around, both utterly devoid of emotion.

“Take her with you.”

Blackout nodded curtly and motioned for Violet and I to follow.  Eve did too, lagging behind to close the door and dispel her twilight shroud.  Dawn’s sunlight rippled softly through Luna’s half of the castle, lending the blue and purple decor a brighter feel.  The light felt more visitor than invader, but it still blinded me whenever a Solar Guard trotted past.

“What did she mean?” I asked, but Eve silenced me with a sharp glare.

“Not here,” she muttered.

Which left us in mostly silence—the palace was still mid-transition, so there was little ambient noise.  I was used to Eve not speaking much, and there wasn’t much of a reason for me to talk.  Violet seemed no more inclined to break the silence than jump out a window, though I noticed her eyes were still glazed over with magic.  But Blackout had been moderately talkative last night, which was somewhat worrisome.  Where were they taking us now?  And who was Blackout supposed to take with him to...whatever?  Violet or me?  Or somepony else?

“This way.”  Blackout led us down a noticeably longer hall, decor shifting from night to day.  Halfway across, he stopped at an empty stretch of marble wall and pressed his ear against it.  After a few moments, a quick jab coaxed a short blade from his boots, and with it he tapped out an uneven rhythm.  Whatever was behind the wall made a series of metallic clicking before a part of the wall retracted itself into the ground, leaving a small archway barely tall enough to fit through.

“Quickly,” Blackout said impatiently, pulling a stunned Violet inside before anyone spotted us.  The wall quickly resealed itself, and ahead of us was a short passageway that led into another room.

“Sorry,” I said as my stomach had another small fit.  “I—”

“Haven’t eaten?  Yeah, we noticed,” Eve muttered.

We entered what appeared to be a small, sparsely furnished dining hall.  At the far end was a window, looking out over Equestria.  The view was obscured by layers of glass and a massive set of bronze gears, the largest of which rimmed the vaulted ceiling only to disappear beneath the floor.

“Seat yourself.”  Blackout rolled his eyes; Violet and I had already plopped ourselves down onto the carpet.  “It should only be a min—”

The sound of gears crunching interrupted him, and within seconds two ponies appeared, pushing a tiered cart full of food and drink.  Given one of the ponies behind it, I figured it was probably excellently prepared with only the most meticulous of care, but sweet Celestia.  An actual meal in my immediate future.

“Thanks, Ju’,” Eve said.  “Now I don’t have to listen to intestinal earthquakes anymore.”

“No problem.”  Julienne—also devoid of her armor—curtsied and took a seat herself, plonking a salad down in front of her and digging in.  But...why?  Why were they both here?  Unless...she was here, too.  Circles within circles...

I frowned, remembering something.  “Eve, uh...did they...did you...?”

She sighed.  “Yes and no.  I confided in Princess Luna.  She told the unit the same once she was convinced we had accepted that some measures, like the ones you take, are necessary.  You have nothing to fear from us.”

“But don’t expect us to protect you,” Blackout said sharply.  “They can’t know—”

“I’m basically in government employ?  Yeah, I figured.”

“So,” Julienne said cheerfully.  “Z—S—wait, what are we calling you now?”

“Whatever you like,” Eve said slyly.  “Nopony can hear us in here.”

“Awesome.  Oh no you don’t!”

With surprising speed, Julienne reached over and plucked a snowy-white ferret off the food cart.

“Dangit, Caesar, you just can’t wait, can you?  Here.”  She pulled another plate from the cart and set both of them down next to her.  “Your favorite.”

Violet twitched in revulsion as the ferret buried its head in the mound of meat, and even I couldn’t suppress a small shiver.  I couldn’t really fault anyone or anything for killing to survive, but still...

“Wait,” Blackout said suddenly, and the second pony—who had been quietly slinking towards the door—stopped in her tracks.  “Take a seat, have a bite or two.  You haven’t taken a break in days.”

The pony—the same blue-grey earth pony from last night—hesitated, eyeing all of us warily, but she eventually cantered over and lowered herself onto the ground next to Blackout.  “Thank you,” she murmured, pulling a plate of honeyed carrots towards herself.

I shot Julienne a sharp glare.  She had been trying to introduce me to the new earth pony, but...what was she going to call me?

Blackout—unnoticed by the new pony—mouthed something at Julienne.  She can’t know.

Eve winked at him.  She can forget.

“Anyways!”  Julienne took up a pitcher and doled out glasses of water, sliding them across the table with practiced ease and immaculate precision.  “Syd, this is Violet, and—”

“Jetstream,” Violet prompted.

“Nice to meet you.”  I held out a hoof, which Syd stared at momentarily before shaking it.

“Clepsydra.”

She returned to her food  There wasn’t much I could talk about, really, besides her odd name, which she probably got enough crap about.  Except for maybe her voice, which was so wispy it’d vanish in the wind for sure.

I wandered over and found an apple rose with a half-peanut-butter, half-caramel blob in the center, hiding behind a fruit salad mound.  As delicious as the dish was, I couldn’t place what kind of apple they were.  They were crisp, clean, like Fujis, but they were less sweet and more tangy.

“Lady Alice,” Julienne said.

“What?”

“They’re Lady Alice apples.  Bit hard to come by, but there’s nothing quite like ‘em.”

“No,” I said around a mouthful.  “There really isn’t.”

I stuffed myself with as much as I could without overeating—who knew when I’d get another chance to eat, never mind a proper meal?  They hadn’t seen fit to return our saddlebags—wait.  No, not now.  Not while Eps is here.  It has to wait.

And then there was that other thing.  Eve had been with a group before, and they’d been following somepony.  If it were just Eve, it’d be an odd coincidence that she was here now.  But with another member here, that could only mean...

Eps stood up and returned her emptied plate to the cart.  “Thank you, Julienne, but I really should get going.”

“Already?” said Julienne.  “But—oh, all right.  Take care!”

“You, too.”

I frowned as soon as the door sealed itself behind her.  “She didn’t stay long...”

Julienne sighed, setting her—unfinished—plate aside.  Her ferret—who could only be Caesar, I had to assume—had already emptied his plate, and promptly skittered onto her head.  “She never does.  I have yet make something good enough to keep her around for more than two minutes.”

“Consider yourself lucky she stayed this long,” Blackout said curtly.  “She’s got more important things to worry about.”

The chef folded her legs crossly.  “Like what?  Running errands for everypony under the sun?  When’s the last time she took a day off?”

Something occurred to me, something I’d forgotten to ask Luna.  Lucky Eve and Blackout would likely have the answer too.  “Why me?”

Eve shrugged.  “Zephyr, no pegasus I’ve ever seen could pierce a hailstorm as fast as you did, let alone with nothing but a few bruises.  And you’re an assassin, but you saved Mer’s life.  It’s like Luna said.  Everypony is something worthwhile if you know where to look, and from what I’ve seen, you don’t hesitate when it comes to doing—doing what you think is right.”

“No,” I muttered, banishing the sudden visual of a falcon vanishing in the distant sky.  “I don’t.”  Not anymore.

“That’s rare,” Blackout said quietly.  “Too many hesitate.  Far too many.”

Indeed.  “Too many have the freedom and the luxury to be indecisive.”

He nodded.  “That’s exactly why I asked Luna if we could bring you in.  Your line of work—you do all your thinking preemptively.  Game starts, you move.  Thinking takes too long.  All you have is instinct.”

“And no red tape, thank Celestia,” Eve grumbled.

He was right.  Braving lightning storms to escape guards, diving for the depths with a swarm of arrows whistling along behind you, evading steel death by the skin of your teeth—a nanosecond of hesitation, of indecision, of uncertainty.  That was all it took.  A nanosecond for and of the end.  But instincts can be honed, altered, learned.  And in all fairness, I owed a lot of my learned instincts to Whimsy and her wild imagination.  “You sound like you’ve been there,” I noted.

He shifted almost imperceptibly.  “No comment.”

There was silence for a long while.  Sunlight trickled across the carpet, stomachs grew fat and happy, and for once, Eve seemed at ease.  Blackout was quite the opposite.  He kept glancing out the window as though he expected a zeppelin to come crashing into it.  He hadn’t said anything about taking Violet to the observatory since Deluge dropped us off, but he...he...

“Wait just a tick.  That pony.  May, Dust, whatever.  She’s coming here, isn’t she?”

Julienne grinned.  “That’s the other reason.”

“What?”

“The other reason Luna agreed to bring you in.  You put two and two together and five minutes later you’ve got trigonometry.”

“...What?”

“She’s saying you can make insanely accurate deductions with only a few random facts,” Eve said.

I shrugged.  “Comes with the job.  Gotta make do with what you have.  Like...last time I saw you guys, an earth pony asked you to keep up the good work.  You in particular, Eve, didn’t seem to pleased to hear that.  Then the pony shows up again, and you guys—you guys know her habits, you know she can speak in dragon tongue, and you aren’t surprised when she materializes and fires herself out of a spectral bow.  You were tailing her—only now you’re here. And Blackout has some task that takes precedence over the Calamus’ directive, only he can’t’ve finished it or he’d be taking me and Violet to the observatory, and he obviously isn’t working on it, so it has to be something he has to wait for.”

Blackout and Eve looked at each other.  Their expressions were nearly identical, swimming from amazement, to worry, then concern, with a heaping helping of uncertainty to finish.  Eve’s was probably because the one day I’d spent in their company had, despite all her efforts, told me so much.  Blackout’s...not paranoid.  He was just exceedingly cautious in who he gave his trust to, which was smart.  I could go from asset to serious threat in the shake of a tail.  Killing to survive meant killing for food as much as it did killing in self-defense.

“Yep,” Julienne quipped, uncharacteristically grave.  “That’s why.”

I knew what they were thinking.  “Look, guys...”

“No.”  Eve stepped in.  “Talk all you want, but we can’t pretend you aren’t potentially a lethal risk.  We just can’t.”

“Same way you can’t fully trust any one of us,” Blackout added quietly.

I pulled Dad’s necklace off, dangling it so they could see.  “Luna gave this to me.  You know what it is?”

A creeping snake of emptiness wound itself around my insides.

“It’s a gift to my father from the mother I never knew.”  I paused.  “And Luna gave—returned it to me.  I know she could be manipulating or deceiving me, but everything she said fit with what I know, and more importantly, manipulation is not her game.  It’s not her style.”

“True enough,” Julienne admitted.  “Princess Celestia did instruct us to listen to Princess Luna.  If she thinks Princess Luna knows what she’s doing, then she definitely does.”

Eve nodded in silent agreement, but when Blackout looked up from his plate, his green eyes were streaked with black.

“I still cannot fully trust you,” he said, “and I expect no different from you.  To trust completely is to have blind faith.  You make yourself vulnerable.”  The corners of his mouth twitched.  “It’s why I’m not a Solar Guard.  I couldn’t stop questioning Princess Celestia’s orders.”

“‘She has no use for pawns that do not live by her guidance,’” I muttered.

“Precisely.”  The way he said it...no, there was something else behind his induction into the Lunar Guard.  Something besides his disregard of authority.  Something else barred him from it.

“You’re not really a Lunar Guard, though, are you?” I asked.  “Luna referred to you as arbiter.”

His etched frown grudgingly lifted itself into a thin line.  “Technically, no, I am not a Lunar Guard.  I am one of Princess Luna’s personal agents.  Currently, the only one.  She trusts me to make decisions that you would expect her to make.  Ergo, the Arbiter.”

“She blessed you, too.”  No question this time.  He had melted out of the shadows when we’d arrived, soaked and spluttering, at Canterlot.  A personal agent to Luna, the goddess of the moon, a spirit of the unknown, of darkness.  An agent that outclasses any of her other soldiers.  Two and two.

Blackout slid underneath the low table and disappeared without so much as tilting it, only to reappear in a swirl of smoke from the long shadows cast by the main gear.

“So she did.”

Naturally he wouldn’t’ve shown off if he didn’t think I had spotted his last shadow traversal, outside Canterlot.  No need for me to know about his abilities until the time we personally had to work together.  But he knew I saw it, so he could show off.  I didn’t reply.  To literally move through the shadows was the kind of thing Whimsy would love...

I winced as the sound of warping metal pierced and rumbled the air, an odd mixture of earth-shaking groans and shrill screeching; I reflexively stopped Violet’s glass before it overturned, then joined the rest in staring at the bronze gear.  It was still motionless.  The sound was coming from deep within whatever mechanism it drove, and it only kept getting louder.

“Should I be worried?” Julienne grunted, stifling Caesar’s desperate attempts at freedom, no doubt sent into panic by that unnatural clamor, the anguished wailing of bronze and iron and steel.  “I’ve never been in here before, I have no idea what that thing does.”

Eve frowned at the gear.  “Me neither.”

Blackout wordlessly approached the gear.  There was nothing, no twitch, no quivering.  No hint to its true...its true...

“Violet?” I murmured.

Fueled by full-fledged fear, I figured she would be seeing, but there was no hiding her piercing sight this time.  Right before my eyes, unrelenting light, purple and blazing, poured from hers, focused magic she could barely control, the pure force of it rendering her speechless.  A seed of fear twitched inside me.  She’d said it herself; she never knew how much she would see.

Violet’s shining supernova garnered the attention of the entire room.  It promptly lost it again as the gear’s mechanism continued wailing, then gained it again.  For a few moments we gave our necks a real workout, craning this way and that to see which phenomenon would yield first, and for what seemed like hours robbed of breath, neither did.

When the metal’s whining left our audible range and its groans had almost shaken the room to pieces, the gear crashed into motion with ponderous clangor and peal.  It only went as far as one tooth’s worth of rotation before stopping again and falling silent, but that was enough.  Through the gap of its teeth, what I thought was a window was now visible.

What lay beyond was blue and white, true enough, but it was no sky, and though it resembled the shimmering webs at the bottom of a pool, it was not water.  It couldn’t be.  The way it felt, the way it felt distant, unfathomable, and eternal, yet so near, so...personal.  The closest thing I could think of was the Calamus, but that felt like time was frozen, as though it was waiting for me.  This felt...this felt...uncaring.

The spectacle was almost enough to render inaudible the sound of the door opening again.  Eps cantered in, a clipboard clamped between her teeth.  She slipped past a still-entranced, light-spewing Violet unnoticed, mumbled a muffled excuse me when she passed me, and silently nodded to Blackout when she reached his side, staring into the blue.

“How’s it look?” he said without looking at her.

Eps set hoof on the gear and inched as close as she dared to the edge.  Blackout didn’t seem all that concerned she would fall, even when she poked her head over to look at something far below.

“About the same,” she said.  “Nothing.”  She scribbled something on her clipboard.

“Still?  But why?”

“Tar’ if I know,” she said.  “But Tia needs to know.  See you later.”

She left without further comment, pale-turquoise eyes fixed firmly on the door from the moment she turned.  No sooner had the door resealed itself that the gear ground into motion again.  Slowly, smoothly, it clicked back into place, the sky-like realm visible only as a thin line around the gear’s edges.  In hindsight I was kind of surprised I thought it was the sky.  It looked more like a thin-crystal lighting fixture.  Unnoticed by the others, Violet’s roving magic faded, as well.

“What was that about?”  Julienne looked more curious than alarmed.  Caesar had calmed down as well, nestled in her mane and brushing against her ears.

Eve didn’t reply.  She was still staring, transfixed, either at the gear concealing the sky-realm, or Blackout, who hadn’t moved.  Still unnoticed by the others, Violet turned to me, eyes normal again, and from her expression I knew she’d discerned at least something about the sky-realm’s nature.  Which left just her and Blackout who had any idea what had happened.

The Arbiter returned to his seat with a tiny frown on his face, still unwilling to talk until a rift opened next to him and a scroll shot through it, smacking him on the ear.  He caught it on the rebound, unrolled it, then dropped it just as promptly.  The parchment caught fire and was gone before it hit the table.

“She’s here.”