Preview

Still working on the epilogue, and expecting a Tuesday release. Sharing the first section.

Twilight casually sipped from her mug of coffee as she closed out yet another decayed book then let off a long sigh. It was sad that the preservation spells on these particular books and manuscripts were applied after they had already started to begin to crumble. This may be the restricted section, but somepony needed to come here and transcribe all these in case those spells ever failed. Otherwise knowledge of this part of history might be lost forever.

The edge of her mouth turned slightly downward.

Of course, with what was described in these histories most of Equestria might very well wish that they were forgotten. She hadn't imagined before today how Equestria could have had such a bloody chapter in its history. There were reasons these were kept here, rather than being made public knowledge. Even most of what was recorded here only came from accounts well after the original events, first-pony accounts of the events were few and far between. Either lost altogether, deliberately destroyed, or never written down in an effort to let things be forgotten.

She looked over at the few remaining documents written in the old night pony script. She was still trying to decipher them. The language had died off completely centuries ago, and the form of writing had ceased being used even before that. A mere half dozen documents remained in the old script, and a little over a dozen documents in Ponish script using night pony language. Books here and there written in Old Ponish would reference the meanings of specific night pony words, but that was all she had so far.

Trying to piece together the long dead language to try to read these was going to be extremely difficult, and she wasn't sure if she could spare the time for it with everything else going on. Like many things lately it was a research project she was going to have to delay to focus on duties.

"I hope you have had more luck researching in books than I've had trying to talk to night ponies," Starlight said as she entered the room. Twilight's eyes widened as she saw Starlight was covered in loose cobwebs.

"What happened to you?" Twilight asked.

Starlight reached up and flicked a cobweb from her mane. "Night ponies apparently breed spiders, great big spiders, for food!"

Twilight nodded. "I did read about that. It's not just spiders. They keep nests of all kinds of bugs, as well a few crustaceans and mollusks. This dates all the way back to pre-Equestrian times when they lived exclusively in mountains with little access to fruits and vegetables and had to find ways of supplimenting their diets. I'm actually curious if this high protien diet helped lead to their more aggressive..."

"It's disgusting, Twilight," Starlight said flatly.

Twilight blinked. "Well, it's different than what most ponies would typically do, but we're all perfectly capable of getting nutrition from invertebrate creatures if forced to turn to that for food. It's the vertebrates that are near impossible for us to digest. I'm not exactly sure why." She tapped a hoof to her chin, but then her ears and posture slumped. "I'd do research on it, but I barely have time for even this research project."

Starlight picked a few more bits of web out of her tail using her magic. "Well, I did my best to try to get the night ponies down in the caverns to talk. They're more than happy to talk about their families, rock climbing, the Lunar Guard, and their giant prize winning spiders. They even seem thrilled to have day ponies visiting them. You try to get them to share their oral history about ancient times and the hush up so quick they make Pinkie's sister Marble look talkative."

Twilight looked over her notes "I guess I did have more luck then. I don't have a full picture of what happened, place names and names of ponies are all but lost, but I have a general outline of night pony prehistory."

"So, what did you find out?" Starlight asked as she took a seat opposite Twilight.

Twilight started reading from her notes. "Their original homeland is somewhere in the Foal Mountains, they were definitely living there when the three tribes founded Equestria. How long they had been there and where the migrated in from I haven't figured out. I think they may have been an early breakaway group from the pegasi that developed seperate magic and physical traits in isolation, or an earlier ancestor of pegasi that persisted even after the rise of pegasi. Or that both came from some proto-wing pony species and just developed along different paths."

"Okay, so where they're from and some conjecture about their origins," Starlight said. "What else?"

Twilight kept looking over her notes. "From what I could gather, when the earth ponies began building farming communities the night ponies began desiring farm grown produce, which was a luxury item to them. Instead of trying to trade for it, they started trying to mind control the earth ponies into giving it to them, and eventually mind controlling whole villages to just farm as slaves for them."

"Well, if I was forced to eat bugs all the time I might try something like that too," Starlight muttered. Twilight gave her a hard look. "Just kidding...mostly. Go on."

Twilight sighed. "Well, as can be expected the three tribes recognized the night ponies as a dangerous threat and began fighting back. The night ponies in turn started using mind control to make slave armies to confront the three tribes. To be fair, it was a minority of night ponies that were actually involved with this entire conflict at this point. Most were simple ponies that had little idea where the new fruits and vegetables were coming from, and lived fairly simple lives--probably not much different than what you encountered in the Canterlot Caverns."

"Basically nice ponies with some really bad eggs leading them," Starlight summarized.

Twilight nodded and flattened her ears. "Equestrians didn't really recognize this distinction though. The military goal when fighting the night ponies was to do everything they could to avoid engaging the slave armies and to try to elliminate every night pony they could. The fear of night ponies reached such a peak that when the army finally penetrated into the Foal Mountains they didn't differentiate between the leaders who were actually at fault and the regular population."

Starlight frowned.

Twilight continued. "This prompted the remaining night ponies that hadn't even been involved with the earlier troubles to begin fighting back against Equestrians, for the sake of their families. They began helping trying to defeat the Equestrians in much the same way their leaders had before, trying to take control with either mind magic or more often invading their dreams regularly."

"Which probably made our ancestors even more hostile," Starlight surmised.

Twilight nodded. "From there on it turned into a full on genocide, not even foals were being spared. Night ponies were treated as a plague that needed to be elliminated."

At this point Starlight looked ill. "But they did manage to survive and get incorporated into Equestria."

"Just barely, and mainly because of Princess Luna," Twilight said with a sad shake of her head. "Princess Luna's abilities with dreamwalking suddenly increased exponentially at this point. The histories are mum on how--mainly crediting it to her status as Princess of the Night, but I now know this is the point she took on the mantle of Dreamwarden. She used that position to force the night ponies to stand down and surrender, executing in the dream realm those that refused. She used her position as Princess to try stop the full on genocide from the Equestrians at the same time. Neither side was very compliant after everything that had happened. In the end, only a little over a hundred night ponies survived, most of those foals or the elderly, out of a population of several thousand."

"Sweet Celestia," Starlight breathed.

"It gets worse," Twilight said mournfully.

Starlight went wide eyed. "How could it possibly get worse?"

Twilight sat her notes down. "The conflict with the night ponies made ponies in Equestria much more fearful of the night and shunned everything associated with it...including Princess Luna, and the remaining night ponies were terrified of her. I think this is what started the downward spiral that turned Luna into Nightmare Moon."

"Trying to save a tribe from extinction, almost failing at it, and being hated by everypony afterward sounds like it could definitely get to a pony," Starlight agreed. "Why does this justify her making these Dreamwardens on Earth though?"

"Luna had a precessor as Dreamwarden here, named Kir'ta," Twilight explained. "Luna blames what happened on Kir'ta. I've never seen Luna so angry and resentful than when she explained Kir'ta's refusal to get involved. As far as Luna is concerned it would never have happened if Kir'ta had been doing her job."

"And she is scared enough of it happening on Earth that one of her first priorities was making Dreamwardens?" Starlight asked.

Twilight nodded. "She is worried about them though."

"After seeing that trial I think that's fair," Starlight replied flatly.

Twilight shook her head. "Actually, what she says she is worried about other things."

"Like what?"

Twilight bit her lip before replying. "She says they have knowledge, abilities, and things impacting their judgement that she can't account for. From what she described new Dreamwardens gain the knowledge and memories of the previous Dreamwardens. That means their knowledge and even part of their personalities should reflect her. She says they have knowledge she doesn't and behave in ways that she didn't predict. While they seem to love her they're also highly critical of her when they weren't before."

"The knowledge part is weird, but the rest could just be the power going to their heads," Starlight suggested.

"One of the first things they went against her on was the idea of them holding power for as long as a Dreamwarden normally would," Twilight said, and took another sip of her coffee.

"If Luna was so hostile to her predecessor maybe that carried over to them too."

She set her mug back down and continued. "She doesn't think that's it. Luna wanted them to be Dreamwardens for thousands--if not millions--of years. They'd been onboard with the idea before becoming Dreamwardens, but immediately after they stated they were going to pass the jobs on to others after just a few centuries. It actually hurt Luna a lot to hear that. It's like having your foals say they intend to commit suicide soon after they grow up."

"So what does Luna think the cause of them being all weird?" Starlight asked and then stole a sip of Twilight's coffee.

"Her working assumption is they somehow absorbed the memory and knowledge of that universe's previous Dreamwardens," Twilight explained. "That worries her a lot because she has no knowledge of what those Dreamwardens may have been like, and they're not being forthcoming about it at all."

Starlight groaned. "Urgh! So...Luna may have inadvertently resurrected some billions-of-years old evil and it may know more about the dream realm than her. Is that what you're saying?"

"In a worst case scenario...yes."

"What do we do about them then?" Starlight asked.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

Starlight blinked. "Explain to me how doing nothing is a good idea."

Twilight looked her friend in the eyes. "Because we don't know if it really is a worse case scenario, or how likely that is. We do know that if we're hostile to them, and treat them as our enemies rather than our friends, we might very well make enemies out of them even if they weren't dangerous. Luna still trusts them, and I'm going to trust them until they show they can't be trusted. I'm the Princess of Friendship, and I'll behave like it."

Starlight groaned. "I hope this doesn't come back to bite us."

Twilight cast a spell to reheat her coffee. "Me too."

Comments

[Javarod]

Heh, just a little foreshadowing, hmmm? Love the back story on bats there, pretty much the same as mine. Fluttershy should go with Starlight, I can imagine her sitting and cooing as she cuddles the spiders.