//------------------------------// // 16 // Story: Golden Prose // by Field //------------------------------// There was a time in my life where one of my biggest worries was how I was going to spend my downtime between shooting episodes of Equestrian Wilderness. I was a firm believer in the saying ‘use it or lose it’. Every day I wasn’t out in the field I felt like my senses were dulling, and that meant the next animal I needed to track would be harder to find. Don’t get me wrong, I knew that the breaks between filming were less about planning and more about giving Atten Burro a chance to rest. He was spry for his age, but by the end of production for each episode he certainly felt the years behind him. I didn’t begrudge him for it, but it didn’t make me any less impatient. I wanted to travel. I wanted adventure. Now all I wanted was to go home to Baltimare for some of that downtime. I wanted my old apartment. I wanted to curl up on my old couch and call my favorite take-out place for something deep fried and horrible for me. And oh how I wanted a tall, frosty mug of hard cider. But instead here I was, soaked to the core, being led through the Everfree Forest by Equestrian royalty to face an enemy I probably had no chance of defeating. My world was upside down and I had to swim hard if I didn’t want to drown in confusion and despair. It probably would have been healthy to take weeks to process what Princess Luna had revealed to me that night. I’d had to process, or at least compartmentalize, my feelings about it in less than half an hour. If I survived this the royal court was definitely paying for my counseling sessions. “So if light is the only thing that hurts the Dark Presence why don’t we just wait until morning to do something? For something this serious couldn’t your sister keep the sun raised? I’m sure she could lie about it just as easily as you two have about anything else.” I offered up as I trotted beside the princess, trying hard to look like I wasn’t trying to keep pace with her long strides. Luna looked taken aback and I realized how harsh the latter part of my question had been. “Blurring the line of truth is necessary enough as it is without us going out of our way to create more opportunities for it, Mossy.” She admonished. “Besides, are you not aware of what time it is currently?” I wasn’t. All I knew was the sun was not even threatening to peek up from behind the horizon yet. I’d been too preoccupied at the radio station to bother checking the time before we left, so I couldn’t really speculate on the exact hour. “I lowered the moon and departed from my guard encampment at six forty two in the morning before spending roughly an hour attempting to find you in the forest. My sister would have begun to perform her duty to raise the sun some time ago.” I frowned. “Something must have happened then. I mean, even with the storm I can still see the moon.” It was hard to look up with the rain beating down on us, but indeed bits and pieces of the moon did still glow through the cloud cover. “That is not my moon.” The alicorn shook her head. “Aside from the power of creation the Everfree is a place of strange magics. It does not always follow the laws of nature, almost as if it stands outside the world in which we live.” The fact that the lack of a sunrise wasn’t the doing of the Dark Presence made it no less disconcerting. Even if it was just incidental it was still a factor working against us. “No, not us. Just me.” I had to remind myself. “Bucking lovely.” Was all I could manage to mutter quietly. Thankfully the rain kept it from the ears of the Princess. The Princess and I spent the rest of our trek in silence. She seemed to be deep in thought, but I was not. I was just waiting for her break the silence with ‘oh and one more thing…’ If she dumped one more heady truth in my lap I would probably just cease to function at all. I heard our next obstacle before I actually saw it. It was the sound of water swirling angrily and pounding against stone. We emerged from the trees to find a deep ravine carving its way through the forest. The river below was probably wild even on a good day, but the flood waters from this downpour had it swollen into a wholly impassable monstrosity. I was a strong swimmer, but one slip into that torrent and I was a goner for certain. Princess Luna regarded the river, then me, and then said the words I had been dreading since she found me. “I am afraid this is where we must part ways, Mossy Hooves. I dare not venture any closer to the castle.” I winced visibly. “I will, however, help you cross the river.” I knew what meant. I winced again. The alicorn spread her deep purple wings up toward the night sky and shook off the last bit of moisture that clung to them from her lapse in concentration. Showing little mind to the heavy armor weighing her down she flapped her wings gracefully and took to the air. Moments later I was enveloped in the same purple glow that still surrounded Vinyl’s levitating lighter, and I felt that familiar unpleasant tingle in my groin as my hooves left the ground. My stomach flip-flopped but I managed to keep my composure better than I had hours earlier. Luna’s levitation spell was much… sturdier… than Vinyl Scratch and Golden Prose’s combined. It made the experience easier to bear. When we were safely on the other side the Princess finally relinquished the lighter back to me. The bioluminescent stones in her armor were glowing brightly from the magical exertion, so I tucked the lighter away into my vest to save butane. It felt like neither of us knew what to say at this point. I didn’t want her to go, and I got the sense that she was reluctant to leave me there. I knew how dangerous it would be if she fell under the sway of the Dark Presence again, but a part of me selfishly still wanted her to come with me and finish what she started a thousand years ago. I broke the silence with a fearful thought. “So if… when I stop Nightmare Moon, what happens to me? If the story ends there do I just cease to exist?” Instead of the sorrowful look I expected, a soft smile crept onto the face of the Princess of the Night. “Fear not.” She took me under her wing and squeezed reassuringly. “Whether for better or worse, things created by the Everfree always have a way of persisting. It will be up to you what happens when my story ends.” Free will for the first time in my life. Before tonight I had never given any thought as to whether or not I had free will. It seemed obvious; of course I did. Before Hayseed Swamp I was living my dream and I couldn’t have been happier. Now the idea that that dream was not mine to control tainted the happiness in my memories. Having complete control over my own destiny was now the most important thing in the world to me. “I’m too stubborn to go anywhere, I guess.” I said with a forced smile. The Princess smiled and gave me one more quick squeeze before releasing me from the embrace. Slowly and deliberately she back away from me to the edge of the ravine before taking to the air once more. “Farewell, Mossy Hooves. I know we will meet again after this night is over.” “Goodbye, Princess.” Fighting back another wave of emotion I lowered my head and bowed as the alicorn disappeared across the ravine. I didn’t look back up until I was certain she gone. Watching her leave would have just made things harder. As I turned to head back into the forest I realized that I had never felt more alone in my life. True to what Princess Luna had said I had little difficulty finding my way from the river to the castle. I didn’t necessarily feel drawn to it as she had suggested, rather when I started to veer off course I was gripped with a distinct sense of foreboding. So long as I kept going in the right direction the forest allowed me to hold onto the faintest shred of hope. Even with its features darkened by the storm the castle was still somehow familiar to me. I’d never seen it myself before, but I had seen artists’ renderings of it in published stories of the Elements of Harmony. It seemed virtually untouched since the night those six ponies had entered it. No stones crumbled further, no vines of ivy choked the walls more than they had before. A further testament to the Everfree standing outside of our own reality. It seemed foolish to march straight in through the front door, but I didn’t have the patience to search around for another entrance that might not exist. It was a fortress after all; easy accessibility was not what the architects strove for. I knew that the Taken weren’t what most would call intelligent, and I doubted they could follow specific orders even from the Dark Presence itself, but still I had expected to find guards posted. Instead the great wooden doors before me were cracked open as if awaiting guests. Apparently Golden Prose was expecting me. “Why couldn’t she have been as convinced as I was that I would give up…?” I hissed to myself as I poked my head through the doors. It seemed like everypony but me had me pegged as the hero type. At least I might have a chance to dry off inside before I went looking for trouble. Vinyl’s lighter still had some butane in it and I could see the remnants of lunar themed tapestries hanging in the entrance hall. I could sneak a little ways inside and start a fire with a tapestry to dry myself and my cocktail off again. They obviously knew I was coming, so I might as well be prepared. Tentatively I tapped my hoof on a few of the stones just inside the doorway. This had been Nightmare Moon’s castle after all. Booby traps wholly unrelated to the Dark Presence were a very real possibility. Nothing happened. I chuckled nervously to myself and took a cautious step through the doorway. Still nothing. I tapped my hoof on more and more of the paving stones around me, preparing to leap back at any moment. My fears, however, seemed to be unfounded. If there were any traps here they had not survived the test of time, or had been set off by those mares from Ponyville years ago. For the time being the castle itself was not a threat. Convinced of my relative safety at the moment I carefully set the lighter down and trotted down the hall to the first of the tapestries. It was ragged and moth eaten, but the scene it portrayed was still plainly visible. A stylized Nightmare Moon swirled around the moon while a white alicorn, presumably Princess Celestia, lay in a crumpled heap on the earth below. Even after everything I had learned in the previous days I had always been raised to treat representations of the royal hierarchy with the utmost respect, I was appalled by the blasphemous image before me. I took pleasure in the idea of burning it to ashes. I sank my teeth into the bottom of the tapestry and tugged hard. For its age it was surprisingly resilient and would not tear loose. With a grunt of frustration I stood on my hind legs and bit higher on the tapestry, then hopped up and fell back down, allowing my full weight to pull on the fabric. With a creak and a snap the tapestry tore free from its fixture and collapsed down over me in a heap. I rolled into the center of the hallway and flailed about as the fabric cast my already dark world into complete blackness. Even over the sound of flapping cloth and my own hooves scrabbling against the stone I still heard the three distinct metallic clicks that told me my luck was about to get much worse. My head broke free from the cloth cocoon just in time to see the floor drop out from under me. It must have been a booby trap, but one too old to function properly. As I tumbled down the chute the stone trap door above me crumbled, unleashing a cascade of rocks. The entire corridor above me seemed to be caving in. It was all I could do to shield myself from the barrage as I fell. The stone floor below was utterly unforgiving as I landed hard on my side with a strangled wheeze. I curled into the fetal position and covered my head as the sound of rocks crashing into the floor around me echoed through the chamber. I waited for the boulder that would inevitably find me cowering there and crush me to a pulp, but it never came. Peeking out from behind my hooves I surveyed the scene around me. The chamber I’d fallen into seemed massive in the darkness. The only features I could discern around me were the stone chunks of the corridor above, now embedded firmly in the floor. Among the debris I spied a strange sight. Between two stones and a piece of the tapestry sat Vinyl Scratch’s lighter, still burning as if nothing had even happened. I made a mental note to ask the DJ just who this pony was who had given her the peculiar little device. As I finally went to stand and untangle myself from the tapestry, I felt something warm and wet dripping down my side. Blood was my first impression. Even though nothing hurt more than it did before the fall I began to gingerly touch my hoof down my side. My saddlebag was drenched, but there was no injury to be found. I was almost relieved until a smell hovering in the air instantly solved the mystery. It was the acrid stink of gasoline. The only weapon I had left was now broken and soaking my vest and the cloth around me in the volatile liquid. A twinge of panic gripped my chest. Vinyl’s enchanted lighter had been like a gift from heaven only seconds ago; now it lurked menacingly, threatening to let its hungry flame lick the corner of the tapestry beside it. Being burned alive was not on my list of things to do tonight. My breath was shallow and ragged as I slowly freed myself. It was irrational, but I feared each exhalation might travel the distance down the tapestry and give the flame the boost it needed to reach the fabric. Mercifully it never happened. I wiped the fuel from my coat and vest as best I could with the dry portions of my tattered saddlebag before tossing it back onto the tapestry. It was beyond saving and I had nothing left to carry in it anyway. “You’ve been a good soldier.” I whispered and saluted the fallen bag. Fire had robbed me of essentially all my worldly possessions just days earlier, and now I willingly offered up my last possession, save for the vest on my back, to it again. I nudged the lighter close enough to the tapestry to ignite the corner. It burned slowly as I closed the lighter and tucked it back into a vest pocket. Within a few moments the fire reached the fuel-soaked section of the tapestry and the entire thing ignited with a satisfying whoosh. It bathed the immediate area around me in a warm light that eased my frayed nerves a bit. I still couldn’t see the walls, or even the ceiling of the room for that matter, but at least now I had a moment of safety to collect myself. Or so I thought before a tiny voice erupted out of the darkness behind me. “You came back!” I wheeled around on my haunches ready to fight, but instead of a Taken pony I nearly knocked the block off a little unicorn colt. “It’s me, Mister Mossy!” The colt cried out, shying back from me slightly. “Don’t you remember? It’s me, Bookmark!”