Broken Wings, Scattered Dust

Paper Silver Moon

I woke up to the distant sound of birds chirping, the warmth of the soft morning sun, and light, vaguely metallic scraping; nothing but peace and tranquility, for once.  At least until I opened my eyes and was thoroughly blinded by the sun; I’d left my goggles on overnight.

I hastily scooted them back up, then looked around.  The scraping sound was Descant shifting around on the rock, examining his left foreleg.  For one brief moment of morning insanity, I entertained the thought of asking him what had handicapped him.

“Morning,” yawned Whimsy, almost indistinguishable from the snow.  I wouldn’t’ve believed her if it weren’t for the golden rays filtering through Descant’s spines; her waking up at a reasonable hour was about as likely as me waltzing into Canterlot without getting arrested on the spot.

“Morning,” I said tersely, springing up.  We were wasting time, something Descant was apparently acutely aware of; he had already flattened himself and was waiting for us to climb on.  I obliged, then helped a groggy Whimsy up, giving her an apple in the process.

“How’re we doing?” she said, nodding at my saddlebags.

“About a dozen left.”

Her head fell the tiniest fraction.

“I know.  I’ll stock up before we go, but...”  The rest of the sentence died off as Descant took to the skies.  She knew what I meant; we could count on nothing, and it was more than likely we’d end up stuck with nothing but grass to eat more than once.  It bothered her more than me.

“Phoo,” she pouted.  “Grass sucks.”

“Not as much as starving to death.”

She fell silent after that.  I glanced backwards at the mountain we’d slept on, and the forest nearby, already cloaked in a fog that was rolling in.  I smelled the onset of rain as Descant, took us above the clouds in silence, the landscape below falling out of sight.  A couple of stinging slaps reminded me to tuck the ends of Whimsy’s blindfold in.

My sense of time melted away in the unfiltered sunlight.  I rarely flew above the clouds, and now that I wasn’t completely exhausted, the breathtaking sight of an inverted ocean with a carpet of cotton stole what little wind I had.  It was the kind of thing you’d expect to see on a postcard.

I guess Descant settled into his own rhythm, too, because he started humming again, just loud enough to be heard over the rush of air.  It was a slow, ponderous thing, a rhythm that yielded to nothing, not even his own wingbeats.  Whimsy’s voice drifted back to me, mingling freely with the dragon’s lucent threads.

“On wings of green we glide

All around, the sunset skies

Two sisters, one

What’s left undone

Fest’ring storms may yet arise.”

I knew better than to stifle one of Whimsy’s songs.  I’d tried before, and I had the scar to prove it.  Luna knows where she gets it from.  Probably all the stories she makes up.

Then, much to my surprise, Descant opened his maw and took over the vocals; after a brief moment, Whimsy picked up his melody.  Her voice admittedly sounded much weaker than his, but he pressed on, undeterred.

“One night, one day, a secret lost

Was all it took to rend us ‘sunder.

Starlight shadows, morning frost

Filled chasms t’brim with fiery thunder.”

I found myself shivering.  A quiet note of intrigue tinted Whimsy’s humming, which piqued my interest almost as much as the music; this could hardly be her first encounter with dragonsong.

”Blood of earth, breath of sky

Rifts and ruin, we cannot mend.

Flow of ocean, mountains cry

On horizon lies our end.”

The lonely wind whistled past, and the sun crept ever higher, but I could hardly process its position with my ears full of this strange blend of a humming pony and a lyrical dragon.  Whimsy spontaneously started coloring her voice with hints of Cavantina; the result was a spellbinding dance of timid thunder and quirky charisma.

“One being, one soul, from earth arose

Given a curse, a blessing, was she.

With ruthless heart of gold, she goes

To rejoin that which cannot be.”

Unmistakable sorrow tinged his quiet, rumbling voice now, and it clamped my heart and mind in a vice that refused to let go, encasing me in exactly the kind of empathetic, piercing grief that crippled most.  Whimsy’s horn was lightly glowing, and faint waves of magic twisted and curled in front of and around her hooves, pulsing gently in time with the song.

“The light, the truth, it dawns

Sears a scar that ne’er fades.

Mother, father, faith foregone

To th’night she turns, betrayed.”

My hooves were clenched so tightly to Descant’s scales that I was surprised to find they weren’t bleeding.  Little wisps of magic escaped from Whimsy, tickling me as they wandered past.

“Palest moon, silent skies

‘Tis not long ‘fore the end, it looms.

Anger, sorrow, cast aside

In her path is naught but ruins.

“Ancient ring, fractured mind

Ling’ring ‘choes and dust, has she.

Firstborn kin, shattered kind

In the darkest dusk, she sees.”

The last word lingered for so long, I half expected Descant to turn around with his tongue darting out.  Whimsy kept on for a little bit, but quietly faded away into the wind once she realized is was over.  The shell of sorrow had morphed to one of revelatory determination; it felt like I was harboring a heart of darkness from the blinding light of noon.

“It’s...not finished,” Descant said sheepishly.

“It’s pretty.”  Whimsy rubbed what little of his neck she could reach.  “I like it.”

I itched to ask him what happened to the dragon in the tale.  It was unsettingly familiar, yet so...alien.

“She likes it too, don’t you?” prompted Whimsy hastily, when she noticed I wasn’t paying attention.

“It’s very...um...”  I wasn’t sure I knew the right word.  “Strange.”

“Strange, eh?”  Whimsy harrumphed.  “I see how it is.”

I pretended to hold up a sign.  “Seven out of ten.”

“I love you to—uh oh.”

“Shhh.” Descant silenced us both with an alarming level of urgency, simultaneously slowing his beats to a crawl.  I was about to ask him what it was when I heard the unmistakable trumpeting of dragons, and it wasn’t far.

My veins were instantly flooded with a frigid focus, and I felt Whimsy flatten herself slightly to Descant’s back.  I listened intently, picking the flurry of wingbeats apart.  Three dragons at least.  Maybe four.

We started losing altitude; Descant couldn’t flap without giving us away, and I felt him tense up, straining to keep us above the clouds.  They were really our only cover.  A single hole, and...

“They’re gone.”  Descant sounded as relieved as I was.

Whimsy waved cheerily at the fading sound of dragons.  “Buh-bye, suckers!  I didn’t want your spaghetti anyways.”  She stuck out her tongue noisily; I’d’ve smacked anyone else for potentially giving us away, but Whimsy knew better.

“Ten out of ten,” I said.  Whimsy haughtily turned her snout up and huffed with a level of pretentiousness that would’ve made Prince Blueblood glow with pride; we dipped briefly as Descant snorted, but recovered quickly.  “So...”

“Search party.”  The fwooms of his beats punctuated every few words, and herubbed his limp foreleg absentmindedly..  “A goddess cannot go missing and unsearched for, but by now they will have heard of your feats.”

“I figured,” I grumbled.  If it was hard to catch my last two marks vulnerable, it was impossible to catch them alone; it only followed that every dragon who heard about it would at the very least keep an eye and ear open for me.  Well, every dragon but one.  Sort of.

“Fan-freakin’-tastic,” said Whimsy.  “How’d’ya know, Des’?  I’ve always wanted a bunch of murderous dragons for Hearth’s Warming.”

“The Forbearer should be more concerned, no?”  Descant asked.  “You can disguise yourself.”

“She can defend herself,” Whimsy retorted.  “I can’t.”

“You can.  Just not in the same way as me.”  I turned to Descant, barely able to contain the surge of anger.  “And you.  Just how much do you know about us?”

I could see enough rolling around his mouth, but he was wise enough to not spit it out and instead chose to fly on.  He did so in silence for what seemed like both an hour and a second.

I wasn’t sure whether that was because he was cautious about letting us know exactly how much he knew, if it was because Whimsy was so tense she had almost toppled off, or if it was that my  hooves were none-too-gently clamped around as much of his neck as I could reach.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough for him to notice the threat, and sure enough, there was the smallest bit of hesitance and the tiniest electric shock coursed through my hooves.  Yet he did not give any further acknowledgement—his voice held barely a whisper of thunder.

“I know enough to know that you two have a better chance than any of us at finding Lucifa.”  If she is avoiding us, she will not be avoiding you, and I daresay you have a knack for tracking down those who like hiding, no?  And you, little one,” he directed at Whimsy.  “You are a weaver of illusions.  One cannot be adept at that without being skilled at the reverse.”

I wasn’t too surprised to hear he knew Whimsy’s talent; he was smart, perceptive.  Perhaps one of the few threats to us, if he weren’t on my side.  Whimsy tilted her head, unperturbed.  “And...?”

“Lucifa is a master of imagination,” said Descant.  “She crafted weaves so vivid that even we, creatures of magic, often lost track of what was reality and what was merely her illusions run rampant.  I imagine you might fare a better chance.”

“Damn straight,” she said.

“But I must admit.  I do not know how you...see.”

“I don’t,” Whimsy said bluntly, leaving the crippled dragon waiting for an answer that would never come.  The way she compensated for her blindness was too easily exploited.

“You manage well enough without,” he noted, still pushing.

“Practice does a lot.”

He paused, efforts shunted aside by her curt reply.  “That it does,” he conceded, and pressed us no further.  For now.  He’d keep needling us later, I was certain.  It was too compelling a question to let go unanswered, but I hoped he was smart enough to keep it to himself.  I would never admit it, but the dragon was intriguing, and I didn’t want to have to intervene because he went too far.

Silence fell for a long while after that, Descant’s last words echoing around in my head.  No more search parties passed by, but I bolted upright every now and then, when gusts decided that it would be a really nice time to sound like flying dragons.

I periodically poked my head over Descant’s side.  Every now and then the cloud layer would break, exposing some small chunk of the quilt beneath—a lake, then a forest, then another lake, until finally the clouds dwindled and we were left riding the thermals rising from a colossal span of suncrisped sand.

There was vegetation directly beneath us, remnants of the forest, but they dispersed as quickly as we flew over them, and the desert’s full grandeur was free to reign.  Sanddrifts wandered lazily over the desert’s contours, accumulating briefly on exposed rocks before being ferried away once more.

“It’s a desert,” I whispered to Whimsy, but her little puzzled frown stayed put.

“I figured that out,” she snapped.  “But underneath...”

It was not a voice she used often.

“Centuries of civilization,” Descant finished for her.  “Buried in equally many centuries of dirt and sand.”

My silence was answer enough, but it was in part because I was expecting Descant to take the opportunity to ask how Whimsy could tell that this was not just a desert.

“There’s...a city under here.”  Whimsy sounded strange, and for her, that was really saying something.  “But some of the buildings are...”

“Yes.”  Descant wasn’t even looking down.  “Made for ponies.”

Whimsy didn’t contest the statement.  Shock and the need to understand, to know what had changed, what had transpired, lanced through me with such jarring force that I physically felt every one of my fibers stiffen.  “Why?”

“Duh,” Whimsy said, though the word lacked its usual bite.  “We used to live together.”

Her conviction was proof enough.  I followed with a question that seemed only natural.

“The calamity?”

“In a way.”  He tilted into a shallow dive, veering slighly offcourse and threading his way in between thermals until he scuffled his way to a stop on the sand.  “Let me show you.”

If he was going to show us something, I couldn’t tell what.  Much less see anything besides tan.  Whimsy was a little more fortunate.

“Is that a...?” she said, eyebrow cocked quizzically.  “What the heck.”

Descant remained mute, as did I, but after a moment, I noticed him blowing gently, sending flurries of sand scurrying to join their windborne brethren.  Then he limped forward and raised one claw, tip crackling, almost cackling, with electricity.

“Don’t move.”

And he moved his claw towards the tip of an exposed rock, where a single ephemeral spark bridged the gap.

It was as if someone had turned on a giant fan.  The wind went from a lazy, sand-laden breeze to rank-five tornado speeds before I could so much and draw breath, but it was immediately apparent that it was no storm.  The wind parted around us with such fluidity that it hardly touched my mane, and it went right to work uncovering an area around the exposed rock with the care and precision of an archaeologist.

As the sand was excavated, we were lowered almost unnoticeably, until we were left standing on a circular stone platform; the rock Descant had activated turned out to be the top of a curiously shaped, smooth rectangular rock, decorated with holes that ran cleanly through it.  Yet the wind kept going, revealing a pillar underneath our platform, then more and more roofs of smaller buildings.

Which was all fine, except beside me, Whimsy’s brow was severely furrowed, and her mouth had contorted itself into a grimace of pain.  She managed to stay silent—Descant had his back turned to her—but I could see her struggling, fighting the agony with a silent discipline that must’ve taken every ounce of her concentration.

Yet even despite that, I saw ghosts well up around her, ethereal outlines that took the shape of grotesque and fantastic creatures. Ones with too many legs, ones with none, some with pointed crystalline wings, others with too many tails, some with horns.  I caught a glimpse of something that looked vaguely like Cavantina, but it vanished before I could look closer, and still Whimsy’s illusory montage of impossible creatures barreled past.

Descant gave no indication that he noticed her convulsions.

Trying to not draw attention to Whimsy’s phantom entourage—Descant could turn at any second—I watched, frozen, as the wind unearthed more and more of the city, pillars and spires and towers and tiny little huts.  Most were of the same stone as our platform—this vaguely marble-colored stone—but others were darker, much darker.  They looked like they were made of the same pitch-black glass of Whimsy’s sword.

The sand beyond the city’s borders was blown upwards in a soft arc, flying away in a musty curtain upon reaching surface level and tinting the sunlight to this odd, off-orange color.  Some of the sand arched over the crater, enveloping us inside this see-through dusty bubble, but it was held at bay by the swirling winds.

Gradually, eventually, the wind brought its work to a close, and the city was laid bare before us, every surface and entrance completely free of sand, yet strangely weathered.  Numerous pockmarks and scratches were visible even from our vantage point, and every edge had been worn smooth by rain, but not one of the buildings showed any sign of structural failure.

As the final grains of sand departed, the lightning around Descant’s claw dwindled to minor sparks, and the windstorm died off.  Whimsy’s spasms subsided accordingly, although she was breathing so hard that she had to sit down.  I shot a glance at her; she let out a little exasperated sigh, but returned an I’m okay look.

We tore our eyes away from each other when the stone whistled to life; neither of us had noticed Descant had touched the rest of his claw to the stone, drumming them upon it as though it were a piano.  The wind ebbed and flowed, capering along with his movements, blowing across and through the stone’s holes with a flutelike voice.  The notes wavered with a mellifluous dance, this way and that, upwards and downwards, and with such mesmerizing grace that we were robbed of breath and the flow of time itself ceased its immutable march to listen.

Eventually Descant brought the mournful melody to a quiet close, and I found myself applauding right along with Whimsy, who had recontained the last traces of her fits and looked as normal as ever save for two tiny bags under her eyes.  Mind freed of the dragon’s musical shenanigans, I noticed for the first time that the city was shaped like a volcano.

The spire we stood atop was the tallest structure, and every one that radiated outwards from us got progressively smaller and shorter, until the outermost dots melded seamlessly into the fresh sand crater.  There were no roads, but small skyways connected adjacent buildings, and there were several open entrances to the spires that only the winged could reach.

“Behold, Aeolia,” said Descant.  “The crossroads of ponies and dragons, and home to all who wish to visit the shrine.”

“Shiny,” said Whimsy, her voice very quietly ragged.  Even I could feel weathered magic emanating from every structure, now that the windstorm had subsided; it was weak, very weak, but if I could feel it, it was more than sufficient to throw Whimsy off guard.  It was a mark of how much Whimsy had strengthened herself that she had even survived the magical onslaught.

  “I’ve never heard of this place,” I said honestly, and little quietly.  Descant was the quietest,  most courteous lightning-spewing dragon I’d met, yet here he was, upturning half a desert with a talon and a rock.  It was difficult restraining myself; he already knew much about me, too much, and it would apparently be less than trivial to level some of that power at me.

  “No,”  Descant said, though I wasn’t sure what he meant.  “This used to be a gathering place, once every year, where pony- and dragonkind alike would mass to pay our respects to the Goddess.”  He looked wistfully outwards, eyes darting from spire to spire.  “It has been a very long time since I opened that gate.”

  Whimsy edged outward, though she stayed a healthy distance from the dropoff.  She was still moving weakly, with less liveliness in her step than usual, but her horn was faintly glowing.  I peeked over the edge again, as casually as I could manage.

  Where before there was an abandoned city, a thriving one now took its place.  Dragons of every size and color darted between spires, and tiny little pony-shaped dots of equally many colors peppered the skyways.  There was occasional flashes of unicorn magic, and now and then I’d spot a pegasus in flight alongside dragons.

I didn’t need my goggles to know they were just Whimsy’s illusions.  The phantoms weren’t up to her usual standards; some of them were slightly see-through, some seemed incomplete, missing limbs or spines.  Whatever had powered the windstorm had left its mark on her, and by the looks of it, that mark wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“Glad it’s empty,” I said, watching as the ghosts faded, and the city was left as desolate as ever.  Descant smiled, the kind of self-satisfied smile that made me want to hit him again.

“I wouldn’t have brought you here if it wasn’t.”

“That’s great and all,” interrupted Whimsy.  “But what’s with the boat?”

The dragon’s mouth half-frowned, half-curled.  “There used to be a number of water dragons here.”

  Barren desert.  Former water dragons.  Emergency boat.  I was missing something.

“You guys have a fight or something?” Whimsy asked.

“The...calamity drove wedges between us.  All of us,” he added morosely.  “We fought without fighting.  Many lost everything but their life...war is kind to no one.”  He drummed his claws on the platform, sighing.  “The desert could have weathered any sort of accidental disaster.  Thunderstorms, earthquakes, wildfires.”

“But not floods?”  Whimsy asked, ear cocked.  Her horn was still slightly lit, and she was still standing back from the ledge—Descant was near the center—and I knew it was because she was fueling more illusory catastrophes out of sight.  Keeping her imagination in check was something she still needed to work on.

  “A flood would have turned the desert into an ocean of quicksand.  The water dragons chose to leave rather than shoulder that risk—high emotions throw any kind of magic into disarray—but they were our only source of water.  W—The inhabitants trickled out after that.”

“A boat for quicksand?” Whimsy said skeptically.  “Seems legit.”

Descant’s grin widened, baring an expanse of teeth I could’ve gone without seeing.  “You really think dragons would make just a boat?”

“Of course not,” she snapped.  “But it’s hard imagining what else a boat might do.”

As it turned out, Descant had a few more teeth hiding in the back.  “Then you, my friend, lack imagination.”

Whimsy turned her head towards him curiously, and the light from her horn was suddenly amplified, shrouding her in smouldering orange tendrils.  It took less than a moment for the magic to peel off and coalesce into her her draconic guise, and Descant soon found himself locked in an unannounced staring contest with a red-eyed, snow-white dragon.  To his credit, he took it in stride.

“Oho,” he said nonchalantly.  “What a pleasant surprise.”

There was a small whoosh of rushing wind, and Cavantina disappated, replaced by a pout-lipped Whimsy.

“You were saying?”

“Oh nothing,” Descant said unconvincingly.

I cleared my throat.

“Right,” said Whimsy, as though we hadn’t just taken a detour to a perfectly preserved city buried in the desert.  “Let’s press on, shall we?”

  Descant took one last look of longing at the city, and we were back in the skies not long after—it’d taken less than a minute for him to reverse the process, leaving the desert as barren as ever.  I found for some reason I couldn’t relax, and at first it seemed to be that niggling feeling that there was more beneath the sand than just one hidden city.

After a while, though, I realized that there was a faint trickle of magic that was neither Descant’s nor Whimsy’s ahead of us, like a fine mist that I couldn’t see.  We were close to the shrine, very close now, if I could feel it; I just hoped it didn’t get too strong.  Whimsy’d already filled her magical-seizure quota, and not lightly at that.

The other two started cracking jokes at each other, but I wasn’t listening; I was steeling myself, gathering my focus, prepared to analyze every last clue or not-clue at the shrine.  The faster I got this done, the faster I could guarantee Whimsy would be safe.  Descant had his faults, but I could be sure that she’d be in good claws if I left her with him.  Otherwise she’d have to spend the rest of her life hiding with me.

“Sis.”  Whimsy’s voice broke into my thoughts.  “Sis.  If you don’t stop, you’re gonna rip your feathers out.”

“I am not!” I blurted, hurriedly facing front again.

“Are too,” she said, sticking her tongue out, but I didn’t reply.  We both knew it was a bad habit, and sooner or later someone dangerous was bound to notice the habit.  As if I needed any more pursuers.  I leaned forward.

“How bad is it?”

“Not bad,” she whispered.  “Still a butterfly in my stomach, but this is...different.  Like...not weaker, but softer.  Gentler?”

“Good.  Don’t need you getting sick.”

“I’m not a filly anymore,” she snapped.

“You’re no mare either.”

Whimsy was denied the chance to respond as Descant tilted us into another dive, and with his head out of the way, our destination was visible at last.

The shrine was seated in the middle of a small oasis.  It was a massive creme-colored obelisk, its spliced-and-tapered point rising so high it tickled the clouds’ bellies.  Even from distance it was clear that it was heavily weathered; small patches of discolored mold and fungi crept up its rounded base, but it still stood there, as unyielding and as regal as the tallest mountain.  And—just like Descant had said—six trees stood in a perfect ring around it, all different species.  I only recognized the weeping willow, but one was absolutely tiny and only visible because it occupied a small island in the center of a stillwater pond.

“Wow,” Whimsy said, genuinely awestruck for once.  “Who made it?”

“I do not know.  This structure is as old as history itself.  Probably older.”

It felt like it, too.  It appeared hollow inside, like a rain gauge for giants; the walls were more than thick enough to weather the elements, and definitely more than thick enough to convince me that it was as old as Descant said.

“Sure it’s not just fossilized bamboo?” Whimsy smirked, and I could see what she meant.  The only odd thing was that, from the upper tip to about a third of the way down, there ran this straight cut that seemed to serve no purpose other than aesthetics.

  The dragon let her comment pass, and contented himself with hopping to a remarkably smooth landing near the shrine’s base.  Whimsy stumbled on her way off, but stabilized herself with the help of a bit of magic before wandering around the oasis, examining every tree.  A quick glance through my goggles confirmed that the real Whimsy was, in fact, standing near the shrine’s base, letting its primal magic flow and curl around her, while her illusory twin had already found herself a comfortable seat in the nook of the tallest tree.

“It does look like bamboo,” I said casually.  Despite appearances to the contrary, Whimsy never did anything without a reason.  Not that the reason was always sound, mind.

Descant chuckled, or at least that’s what it seemed like.  He let off this low, hiccuping sort of growl, but the corners of his mouth were curled upwards.

He gave no answer, though, so I trotted up to the shrine’s base.  There were archways, tall enough for dragons, to the inside every couple hundred metres or so; I headed for the nearest one.  It was definitely stone; it was as hard and had the same dull nonresonant thud when I tapped on it, but it didn’t smell like it.  It smelled like...old.  There was no other way to describe it.

On the other end of the tunnel appeared to be a mirror, but after a closer look it turned out to be large pond, or a small lake.  Like the one outside, which was recessed into the ground, its surface was perfectly smooth.  Unlike the one outside, it was perfectly circular, and nothing rested at any point inside the circle; no islands, no trees, nothing.  Even the bank I stood on was absurdly thin, like the only reason it was there at all was so there was something to stand on.

I heard the flapping of leather wings behind me, and turned to find Descant next to me, hovering about a foot off the ground.

“Beautiful, no?” he said.

“In a way, I suppose,” I said honestly.  It was very pretty, but there was really nothing remarkable besides the structure itself.  Admittedly the six trees were a bit suspicious, but they were far from the strangest thing I’d seen.

“Can you feel it?”

“Yes.”  It was easy—even for me—to feel the magic permeating every blade of grass and every particle of this place, but it didn’t fill me with the same sort of heady dread that a suite chock-full of security wards did.  It somehow seemed...natural.  Not just like it belonged here in the oasis, but like it was the soil from which...everything had sprung.

“I can!” piped up Whimsy from behind us.  I couldn’t check if it was the real one or not with Descant so close, but she had that bounce in her step and that grin on her face, and it really did seem like the real Whimsy.  But of course, that was the catch.  Whatever the case, though, she shot me a worried glance whose raised eyebrows read: We are not alone.

“Then there is little more I must give for you to believe that this place marks the birthplace of Equestria and beyond.”  He brushed the grass fondly.  “This is the only oasis in this desert, and it has been here for as long as anyone can remember.”

For a second it looked like the water’s surface started to ripple, but it was just the light glinting off his bright-green scales.  The dragon took another deep, drawn-out breath that reeked of longing, and the wind sighed lazily, drearily with him.

“And it is where I met and married my mate.”