Chapter Two
The Name of Honor
“You haven’t changed at all, have you?”
The displeased Ditzy tossed Quirk no more asides, staring ahead into her recent thought as Eris trailed somewhere behind them. After some moments lacking a response, Ditzy finally glanced to find Quirk caught in thought at the rhetorical question. But she would interrogate him no further; she did not desire to see into another brother’s mind.
Boredom, however, provokes innovation.
“What do you think of Eris?”
Quirk met Ditzy’s eyes and shrugged as much as he was able, even and unconcerned.
“You’re not mad at her for hitting you hard enough to knock you down?”
Quirk opened his mouth and then paused for a moment as he noticed Eris casually catching up, and he smirked in a way that had Ditzy mentally cursing the gag she knew was coming.
“How could I be angry at a lady with such throws of passion?”
Ditzy blinked, missing the wordplay initially. On realization she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, silently wishing for something to hit her head against. Quirk grinned in his crooked mirth and only took more pleasure at Ditzy’s pained frustration.
Eris said nothing.
Quirk, victorious grin lingering, let it fall slowly as he sized up her lack of response.
He declined to make another pun. It was quiet until they reached Ditzy’s house.
~~~~~~~
“If he’s walking around like that, he can take a little smack.”
“Believe me, I’m not a fan of him either, and he’s not exactly suave, but-“
Ditzy’s continuing barrage of protests to the display of violence caused Eris to sigh internally, regretting the instant she had walked in the door and given Quirk an opportunity to retreat to another room to rest.
Half urbane and half scandalous… that one would be a riot among any kind of court. Give him enough time, and I’m sure he’d cause a literal one.
Eris shook her head among the flying words, and her thoughts drifted. It reminded Eris of her short experiences with some of the nobility of Canterlot, a few meetings bestowed upon her by awards and honors. Her perpetual frown thinned slightly as she remembered the pride and attention she had gained from those encounters.
Pride that I crushed and attention that I let fade. After all, they were not fitting for Eris’s aspirations, despite her hunger for advancement. It had to be earned, properly, by distinction, and the only treachery she would use would be the stealth she prized to defeat her enemies. And her enemy, Eris knew, was no doubt getting further away by the second…
“It just wasn’t appropriate!” Ditzy finished, Eris shaking out of the haze of thought.
“Was tackling him appropriate either, then?” Eris countered, not even looking at Ditzy anymore and only paying half attention to the indignant mare. Ditzy, stymied for a moment, managed to pause her rising anger and reply.
“No, but that doesn’t give you any sort of right to do so!”
Eris rolled her eyes. Hypocrite.
Frazzled and exasperated, Ditzy moved out of the kitchen and up the stairs after another second of silence.
~~~~~~~
So it seems to be the curse of brothers, that we drag each other into pain and through torment even by simple association. Quirk watched from inside the lock of the window, watched the vagaries of the northern forest and northern sky. There was not much use in melancholy, he knew, and with some tired inner harassment chased the dour notions out of his mind. On a whim, Quirk tore himself away from the window and set off back towards the two he had left behind.
And what has Tick done anyways? Did we sign away our souls when we agreed to that venture? I don’t believe this ‘Nightmare’ crap at all, at least for me. How could a shadow of a memory…
Quirk stopped at the door as if running into a wall. He whirled around, looking through the window at a phantasm. Stricken by the words, he saw at once the lake, the cottage, the soft dark forest and deeper demons lurking.
A shadow of a memory…
Quirk, his expression still and cold, left the room and shut the door behind him.
Leave it. Leave it behind.
A sharp, quick exhalation, a longer breath, a steadied mind.
Quirk found his way back towards the kitchen, which he assumed was the waiting place for what he had been told was only a short visit. He ached and longed to stretch, but bound and injured as he was he knew it to be a poor idea. Nonetheless Quirk found the flexibility to crack a few joints, wincing among the relief.
Poking his head into the impromptu meeting room, Quirk spied a plainly bored Eris and felt more than one emotion rile up at the sight.
Well, well. I do like a challenge. The stakes are high, I’m hurt all over and can’t run, she has no apparent sense of humor, and we’re going to be traveling together. What could go wrong?
Quirk walked into the room and behind a counter. Without a plan, he simply took to observing the room, paying no special attention to the bat-winged guard sitting at the table. If Eris noticed his entrance, she didn’t acknowledge it, her head propped up on a hoof and bored slit eyes staring at nothing.
“You. Get over here and tell me about your brother.”
Quirk complied; he sat opposite Eris and took note as she smirked ever-so-slightly at him. Without pretense he took a moment to sift through his thoughts, measuring and remeasuring the fanged brick wall across the table.
I take it back. You do have a sense of humor, although it’s not likely to bring me much mirth.
An open book and an open question, Quirk kept his quiet calm for a few more moments, seeking a mode of caution in his gamble. Eris’s eyes refused to deviate from his, unceasing, waiting. Seeing no reason to continue in silence, Quirk replied.
“What are you looking to find out about him?” Quirk caught his tongue, and then released it anyways. “A detailed explanation of what’s gone on might help.”
“The expedition continued as planned, minus you, and your brother abandoned as at the end of it.”
“I’m in awe of your mastery of comprehensive accounts.”
“I’ll tell you what happened.”
Ditzy walked in, no shortage of hardness of heart in her. Her anger veiled by control bisected the tension, drawing all eyes.
As entertaining as a catfight between these two might be, I think it would be more a duel of lions. Best that I stay far away from this one…
But Ditzy addressed him directly, and her anger did not spill over into wrath.
“Luna took me, Tick, her, and another guard to the abandoned fortress in the Everfree. Then she forced us to go inside without her. No thanks to you either for leaving us. I wish you could’ve seen the place; I thought we had wandered into Tartarus. We were all split up without a moment’s notice, wandering through the dark with horrifying traps and this ball-of-light-thing I can’t even begin to understand or explain. Thank Celestia we all made it out alive.”
Ditzy found her breath and shut her eyes for a moment. The strength of her memory was as plain as if it had been painted on her face. Quirk took the moment to glance at Eris, who was as calm and unaffected as Ditzy was dramatic.
“But then we found out that the whole trip was pointless anyways. The whole library had been burned, and all the books—”
Ditzy seized on something, a memory, and for a moment her mouth hung open and she said nothing. The passion drained from her face, and she sounded at once tired.
“That’s what happened. If more of that is in store for me, I might do what Tick did as well.”
Ditzy left the room.
“So,” Eris resumed casually, “what can you tell me about your brother?”
~~~~~~~~
I let it fail.
Ditzy lay down in her room, shaded with the darkness of a distant light, and stared at the ceiling.
Trapped in continual catastrophe, the fresh light suffusing her sight had faded, vanished. Ditzy was a maelstrom of mixed emotion; she considered all that had happened at once. Things long past now roared to the forefront, of her bleak childhood, of the contours of a mind running, of a paw and claw steepled together and blasting pain. All her reason was shredded, all her conscience was barren; what little she knew of this world seemed to be slipping into obscurity. She hung tenebrously on the last thin line of hope.
When Luna gets here, I’ll…
But her thoughts brought chaos, a cacophony to her mind. It was the illness of torment past brought to the present, and Ditzy was as fearful and lost as a distant child’s dream.
What will I do about Dinky?
Ditzy held herself still before the shuddering worry could overtake her, and hung to the thin line.
~~~~~~~
Like a maw of the void, the absence left by Ditzy seized Quirk for a few moments until Eris none-too-subtly coughed and tapped the table.
“Ah…” Quirk fumbled on the silence, unused to having no words for a situation. It was too delicate, too variable. He knew not his audience, nor did the tumultuous subject seem a safe topic.
“Your brother,” Eris prompted.
Now what do I tell her? I’ll have to watch carefully; she’s dangerous, but advances can surely be made. They always can.
“He’s a bit of a shut in,” Quirk started, his eyes set on her if only to assure him she wasn’t in striking distance. “He’s not very social, either, although he’s not a bad speaker if you can prod him into it. The first thing most notice about him is his eyes.”
Quirk sat back in his chair a bit, losing track of Eris. “You probably noticed them if you spent any time around him; they rotate and have little different black and white and gray sections. That’s how he got the name ‘Tick’. Despite the fact that he spends most of his time buried in one academic interest or another, he’s not helpless in nature.”
Eris had closed her eyes and locked her jaw, an inner conflicting energy only subtly noticed. Quirk picked back up without a significant pause, and her eyes opened without another moment’s passing.
What provoked that? The academics, the eyes, how he lives? I’ll be damned if he did something stupid with that ‘talent’ of his again. You’d think he’d have learned his…
“We spent most of our youth traveling alone. We weren’t always the friendliest to each other, and we still aren’t, but our parents had left us with an obligation to care for each other.”
Quirk let his judgments fall away and out of mind as Eris patiently absorbed the information, every once in a while pushing him on with a small nod. Expecting some kind of interruption, Quirk was instead intrigued by her willingness to let him ramble on.
“…as we got older, we started looking for a place where we could actually get to know ponies better and find a place and a purpose, and eventually we found Canterlot.”
Quirk stopped to catch his thoughts, but he soon found that they were straying. I should be careful with what I tell her. I still don’t know what she wants. She received the familial obligation stuff warmly, yet her reaction on the whole was overwhelmingly blank. What can I read from her?
The peculiar focus in her eyes seemed driving, hungry. She had noticed his hesitation, no doubt, and Quirk knew he was playing games with somepony of a caliber unknown to him. And with different goals, no doubt.
“That’s a reasonable summary.” Quirk stretched in his chair, the motion an excuse to pass the obligation of conversation to Eris. He kept an eye on the unreadable mare as he did, suppressing a yawn and erratic suspicions
“Seems like you talked about you as much as him,” Eris replied—were her eyes a tad narrower, her tone a bit sharper?
Heh, I’m such a sly bastard that I even outsmarted myself. Now, to open the door…
Quirk shrugged. “We influenced each other.” He itched to say more, insinuate that she learn about him to learn about Tick, but the mood had shifted. Quirk’s sixth sense warned him to let it go, but before he could strike out a new trail or not Eris waved a hoof in dismissal, got up, and wandered off.
So much for that foothold.
Puzzled, Quirk pushed thoughts of the iron-faced guard away and let his head rest on the table, forehooves crossed under him and feeling the minor pains of his body come to realization and slowly dissipate.
He would have plenty of time in the days ahead. And risk.
~~~~~~~~
Harried and swept out of the winds of the west, Luna slipped below the trees and out of sight. She had circumnavigated the forest out of desire and necessity, but she at last approached the town with growing resignation and a sigh of the past. The rhythm of the road began to fade from her, and the spontaneity and occasional peace and piece of reflection gained from it evaporated like restful water onto boiling rock.
“You have been measured and found wanting.”
The oracles’ ancient, layered words flittered through her mind again as she set down on the outskirts. Eyeing the distant offshoot of the town, Luna muttered.
“Why doth you bother us, strange thing of the distant past?” No need, no clemency, and out of no desire did we recall you. Indeed, it would have been much nicer to think not at all and to continue in that blissful state…
Luna broke from her pause to cast a quick veil over herself. Reluctance dragging on her like the mire she had avoided, she snapped into movement and cast off the sun striking her, becoming a simple mirage to any curious eyes.
Luna had long since tired of action. But she had a thousand years to make up for, and there was no possibility of another’s atonement sufficing.
~~~~~~~
Quirk did not particularly like the deep, studying glare Luna focused on him. With no excuse to slip away, he resorted to a false show of confidence: sitting high in the chair, Quirk met the searing gaze head-on.
I’m fucked.
Eris stood in the doorway, observing the silent exchange with an ever-bored glance, and then lazily ascended the stairs to gather the missing member of the party.
Deprived of his usual escapes, Quirk at last broke under the withering stare and looked away at something else—anything else.
“We hope that, whatever the cause of your injuries, they serve as a lesson to you as to the wisdom of so trivially abandoning a pursuit mandated by an authority.”
Luna’s words seized Quirk and he found himself meeting her hard and piercing eyes. Her power gripped his attention, and could not rip his eyes away even as she turned to watch Ditzy and Eris enter. Ditzy, clearly already rattled, opted not to speak. Ditzy’s objections writhed clearly inside her, though, and toiled heavily to confine her rampant emotion for a safer time.
For a long minute they were all quiet, uncomfortable shiftings the only noise. Luna looked at each in turn, then issued a question that had Ditzy cringing noiselessly.
“Where is Tick?”
“He vanished,” Eris answered without hesitation.
The ridiculousness of the entire scene dawned on Ditzy. In her kitchen, where minutes previously there had been nothing of consequence, was now a low-life of Lower Canterlot, a seemingly sadistic royal guard with leather wings to boot, and one of the two rulers of her country.
Ditzy seized up and fought the urge to wail or laugh uncontrollably.
Eris, in her usual unconcerned state, failed to notice. Neither did Quirk, who sought only to hide himself from the onslaught. And Luna ever-sphinxlike issued what passed for a silent sigh and took a few short steps away.
"They throw away their honor like a leaf in the wind."
The flat statement did not break the spell, but left Luna in possession of her audience, poised as she turned back to them. And on seeing her eyes, Ditzy knew she would not break first.
"Can they not hear the voice of dignity inside them?" Luna thundered, a sudden burst that rocked all else back. "Is there no justice, no strength in thy hearts? Have the trials of past ages the people have endured been forgotten? Hast thou no honor at all?"
Luna stood tall with her wings flared, the portrait of a mare at merciless war. Something electric rode high in the air, and even Eris's eyes had widened at the spectacle. The warbound mare eyed them all, her precise glance riveting them in place, looking for all the world as if she was about to condemn their very souls as the atmosphere darkened to black.
I can’t take any more of this!
"Do they even know the name?"
Luna's eyes softened immediately, the vapor of fear vanishing, the height of tension drained, something regretful brought to mind. Ditzy felt the rush of air returning to her lungs, the trick of fear harbored in the back of her mind retreating.
"What once was," Luna paused, inflecting her words carefully, "must be again."
The room took a collective breath, Ditzy steadying herself against the myriad onslaughts, Eris returning to her normal discontented observation, albeit thinking steadily about the outburst, Quirk shifting slightly after trying to fade into the background.
Yet Luna’s quiet was intentional.
The three started at the low pulse; the floor rocked under them. Eyes of all kinds darted to the source of the sound: Luna stood, bracing herself, and the only thing she caught was a shimmering halo of magic around them all—
~~~~~~~~
Ditzy’s wings shot out for balance as she dropped a few inches to the floor, her eyes fighting the disorientation and the dreadfully familiar insight that the floor had changed under her. A window and an exit corridor were the only significant features of the hexagonal room. Luna watched Ditzy recover, her expression unreadable as ever. Cold premonitions trickled into Ditzy’s mind as she raised her head, only to freeze when she did not recognize the room.
Ditzy rushed to the window, eyes widening as she found a city perched below. She turned and rose up like a dragon awakened, wings spread in the sunlight. Ignition flooded through her limbs, fear and anger a whirlwind at how Luna had seized her. Like a phoenix burning, Ditzy fixed her stare on the regal mover, each eye a furnace. The question, searing, locked within, went unspoken before Luna’s utterance broke the air.
“Come.”
~~~~~~~~~~
The teleport was complete and unexpected.
Buffeted by the displaced air, Quirk stumbled and nearly collided with the floor. Wildly he sought a glance of the familiar, yet found Eris the only rememberable form. The bat-guard was slack-jawed in surprise and confusion, a revealing display that slowly hardened into measured suspicion.
“Where are we?” Quirk asked, short, stabbing breaths punctuated by similar pains shooting through his sides. What possessed her to teleport us two with no explanation? Where is that crazy bitch, anyways? Dammit, Tick, you just had to go running around with some old books and drag me into this pile of…
Quirk’s profusion of mental cursing overflowed into acidic mutterings as he righted himself and noted his surroundings warily. A plain beige room contained them, hexagonal, one side opening into a hallway.
“Canterlot,” Eris finally answered. “Princess Luna teleported us into the palace.” She hesitated. “I don’t know why.”
Eris did not look at him as she responded, staring down the corridor. Quirk shifted, knowing that things would only get more complicated and thus aggravating. Rubbing a hoof on his forehead, the dismayed pegasus nearly missed his unarmored companion begin walking down the hall without another word. Quirk followed, hastening despite his bodily aches to stay abreast of her. Better than standing around and being awkward. She knows this place at least. Oh Celestia, how much for a restraining order on your sister…
“Where are we headed to?”
Curious to see how the detached mare was reacting to the turn of events, Quirk kept an eye on her that stayed slightly narrowed in a hint of caution. She’s the quickest way to find out what in Tartarus is going on. She’s also the most dangerous way. Fun.
The mental sarcasm and grumbling settled Quirk in and he eventually settled into a rhythm. Giving up on observing the impenetrable guard, Quirk glanced down the halls they passed and out the windows they moved by. Spotting a helmetless guard walking away from them in a parallel hall, his guesses began to solidify into theories about where they were. Near the barracks? Wait—she still hasn’t answered my question.
“So where are we going?”
The irritation of being ignored was tempered by the knowledge that she would be stuck with him for some time; Quirk let just enough annoyance into his voice to get across his displeasure at being ignored yet not enough to provoke a vengeful reaction.
Eris brushed off the repeat easily and answered with a quick line: “We’re going to find out why we’re here.”
“And how would we be accomplishing that?”
“What would telling you that accomplish?”
“I could think of something that would speed the process.”
Eris snorted. “What are the chances of that happening here?”
Quirk stopped, knowing a lost cause. They turned a corner, Eris taking the lead as they approached an exit to the open grounds Quirk had glimpsed earlier.
Ah, but if only I could find a means of communicating with the feisty beast, then what fun we might have… Quirk sighed internally. I’ll get there eventually. Although at this point I’m not sure that I want to get there.
The dazzling light accentuated every polished stone and dutifully tended blade of grass as they entered the appropriately well-kept terrace. Guards in various states of padding, armor, and the rare wooden practice weapon ran about, and Quirk found that he would have no time to study those who he really knew quite little about as Eris trotted out a steady beat towards a concave of the castle walls. The traveled, out-of-place pegasus had no desire to draw attention—not in that place, at least—and so matched Eris’s quick pace. Vague thoughts of a distant amphitheater poked into Quirk’s consciousness as they approached the stairs leading down into the concave—and then Eris stopped him abruptly.
“Wait,” she ordered more than asked, and Quirk followed her gaze. Below, a legion of troops had gathered onto the open-air platform: a stone stage surrounded by terraced seats; the ghosts of a thousand performances flashed before Quirk. His eyes fixated on it, almost against his will, and his breath caught in his throat. Every sound the legion made, be it a scuffling hoof or murmur, echoed in powerful intensity to announce itself undiminished to his ears. Those sounds faded—the moment stilled—memory held Quirk in place.
But it was not memory that had stilled the noise.
Below, a white mare stood in front and waved a hoof in measured gesture. All mouths drew breath at her command. Eris watched intently, expectantly, while Quirk stared into empty space, held tight by corruption of the past.
And Quirk could not deny the solemn glory of a thousand voices—and the breath-stealing beauty of one.
The legion sang.
Swept into being by the wave of a limb, the humming foundation sprung into their ears. Submerged in waves of sound, preserved by curves of stone, the mouths opened as they had of old and let loose melody. No restraint held them now: a single note split into two, four, eight; a profound chord rattled through, enlivening the senses. Breath held and split by tongues somehow ordained sound with majesty. Quirk, mouth agape, saw nothing and only heard.
The past channeled into the present and Quirk found himself transcendent. He beheld it, drank it in, an earthbound stone watching the stars swirl in their magnitudes; it was an eternal dance brought so close to his self, his soul. Scarcely aware of his own amazement, he saw as much as heard the mounting crescendo, the tenor of the voices rise in might and subside. Carefully, so carefully, they drew together now, increasing into a drumbeat that hammered the veins. There was war thundering in their voices now; a darkened march arose from the sweet synergy. It was the essence of the army—the movement as one! Quirk could not breath in the moment, could not be in the presence of almighty beauty, a dark surreal splendor. Had it only just begun? Was it close to the ending? So caught up was he in sweet harmony, sweet energy, that he lived not in thought nor past nor present but was succored on the strength of the moment.
And then the last note cut out.
As if hanging on thin air Quirk caught himself, stunned at what had passed.
Eris approached with what looked bizarrely enough like a true, if smug, smile on her face, and Quirk could only mutter to himself as he stared and remembered.
“Dulcissime rerum…”
Eris stood alongside him, approving of his still-stunned expression. Then the legion began to march away, an unorganized claptrap that gently shook Quirk back into the mortal world. She nodded to herself as if confirming their superiority and began to walk down into the amphitheater. Quirk started as she moved, something of him still spellbound and urgent.
“Among the arts of the warrior, the next highest to martial prowess is singing.” Eris let the statement lay as it would, but Quirk seized it as soon as she let go.
“I haven’t… what about you?”
“What about me?” Eris turned her head back on him with a flat, slightly edgy voice.
“Can you sing?”
“Yes. Barely.” Exasperation lay thick in her tone along with a warring, warning irritation, but Quirk, shot through with amazement as he was, heeded none of it. The unparalleled glory rang in his ears still, yet Quirk saw something to advance in his own right, a door opening into the elusive Eris.
No! Later. Don’t be a fool.
Eris reached the edge of the dais, the armored white mare who had lead the concave idling. “Perilune! There’s been a change…”
~~~~~~~~~
“Who are you, Ditzy Doo?” What is thy path, thy purpose…” Luna muttered, staring down at the intricate patterns of the door.
I am a mother. A very tired mother, who is quickly getting angry at not returning to her daughter. A friend to some, a face to others, and a mailmare to the rest. A better question is…
“Who are you,” Ditzy replied, shock gradually fading to reveal determination and no small depth of raw anger, “to wrap me up in plans beyond my knowledge and seize me from my home and a daughter that needs me?”
Luna stood as if rooted by a mountain, faced away from Ditzy and unmoving.
“We are the arbiter of things in the dark.”
What does she mean?
“We move with the grace of the light.”
Ditzy shifted, thinking to demand a reply.
“Let the steps of those who have gone before echo in our minds.”
Luna entered the hollow and beckoned. “What once was, must be again. Enter this hall and hear their tales.”
It was a grand sanctuary of shadow, starlight dotting small coves and beams etching out reliefs of rock and marble. The deep reaches crept into the mountain, ending a way off in softly illumined solitude. The patterned floors, red and black and gold, lay hard and hidden by the faded light. Each alcove harbored a great relief of stone: they were minutely detailed, as if to gaze into infinity. They composed great warriors and scholars, each warrior in valorous temper, each scholar in refined grace. Masterful inscriptions lined the reliefs, the letters themselves a testament to the dignity of the deeds and proud souls recorded there. Ditzy felt arrested by the silent strength of the room, senses primed, breath on edge and raptly watching. This was a place of respect: the silence was breathtaking. At the far end of the hero’s hall, empty places lay, foreboding in their deep winter stillness.
"These, these names of honor..."
The breath of the mountain dissolved Ditzy’s demands like snow on fire, and she wondered why Luna had brought her to this place of dark nobility.
“Enter this hall and hear their tales…”
Ditzy moved into the hall, every step a stumble before the grand ages, the inscriptions sharp and seeming to glow at her with a tinge of magic as she drank in spare words, forgetting everything else. Ditzy managed to utter a short question, spellbound by the stone faces.
“Why did you take me here?”
“In due time, you will know. Now hear the tale of the names of honor.”
Yet something prevented Luna from speaking. On quiet steps she whispered past the alcoves, Ditzy unable to view her face as she inspected each—long heartbeats passed—and then Luna turned, drawn up resolutely, and walked to stand next to Ditzy.
“This land has changed so very much. It’s nearly inconceivable the scope, manner, and depth of these changes. As we learn anew each day…” Luna’s glance slipped past Ditzy, who found she could not follow the now-wandering eyes. Luna stood as if she had been torn from another place and time; her brittle glance lingered on the last mural, pausing.
“Even after the defeat of Discord, the lives of the average citizen were often experiments in danger and fear. Monstrosities natural and artificial wandered the lands. Most cities, and the safety and civilization they bring, were either ancestral memories lost to myth and legend or the faith of fervent dreamers. We, so newly thrust into leadership, sought those who had strength and those who had lost to cleanse the land.”
Luna cast her gaze to the first hollow in the hushed chamber, and Ditzy, compelled, followed.
“Their memories we have preserved in stone. What we hath wrought is less than we should like, but that is a trifle for less troubling times.” Resting a metal-clad hoof on the stone remembrance, Luna shook her head slightly in regret. “There is more to memory… ”
Ditzy felt a pang of mirrored sorrow; she opened her mouth but held her tongue. Could my empathy even mean anything to her? I’m not sure that I want to, considering...
“But of what we mean specifically shall be told another time. It is not so simple as memory.”
Ditzy cocked her head, unable to discern Luna’s meaning. But Luna had shaken off the hints of a disconsolate mood and began her tale of living mythos, a quick thrust into the past.
“They came out of the earth.”
Minds warped back and created a place of the past, and it was all too easy for Ditzy to lose herself in it in the dark. Luna had begun abruptly and so left her audience of one with no option to be drawn in. She spoke a tale of elegant terror.
“Monsters without names were once more common than their counterparts. Hidden in cloaks of shadow, they crept out of their dens and into his village. He had been away on an errand and witnessed none of it. He returned to find his village slaughtered. Decimated. He was the last one, standing among the ruins of his life.”
Luna uttered the words deliberately, slowly, and without hesitation. She kept an unceasing vigil on the chiseled relief as if it brought the words back to her. Ditzy’s stomach turned at the words, cold spikes of fear and sickness tunneling like fangs into her.
“We remember only the desolation in his eyes, as if his soul had already passed from his body. It was then that Celestia and I knew that we were spread thin, and what we could offer was not enough.”
Luna closed her eyes.
“It was a miserable realization.”
Dragging herself out of mnemonic mire, Luna continued.
“The two of us knew that our growing responsibilities could no longer be bore alone. We could not be everywhere and could not protect them all. Thus we crafted a commission: granted him our aid in seeking the right path of justice for those fallen. We gave him time to recover. We trained him in war. He was the first. Years after we had trained him, he went back to the village… he had told us he had no desire to go back, and we did not tell him that he must go. It was a journey of only two days to the now-abandoned ruin that was once his small village. We did not see him again for seven.”
“When he returned, he was grievously wounded. He spoke then of how he had crawled into the deep dens of the monstrosities and had done battle with them, slew them, avenged his friends and family. Yet he said that his soul was not at peace, and as the sun set he exhaled his last breath.”
Addressing the speechless and visibly sick Ditzy directly, Luna changed tack.
“That was ages and aeons in the past, lost to history, lost to legend… lost to those, except we who witnessed it. There were many such tragedies over the centuries despite our attempts to prevent them. The mainstay of civilization is the hard worker: sometimes he must wield arms and seize honorable retribution in the face of murderous atrocity. As time passed, the commissions were reduced in number, formalized, and forgotten. Citizens rallied together and we formed armies and militias to fend off the dangers of the uncivilized lands. A commission became a rare thing. Militias became armies, armies became protectors, protectors became guards, and guards became a formality. Still we sought to recognize those who followed in his line: those given the opportunity to do the honorable thing against all inhibitions.”
Luna gestured down the row, eyes alighting on each knowingly. “You can find but a few remembered here. Most were lost when the castle in the Everfree was abandoned. Take for example the next-to-last; she found a cure for a plague at the cost of her own life. Thousands she saved. It is likely some of your ancestors owe their lives to her.”
Luna glanced at the last inscription.
“Even to this day, the need for valor lingers. Although progress has wavered in recent centuries, it is a far cry from the turmoil of old.”
Ditzy feared to move, yet inched closer to view the enshrined stone portrait.
“She is of a comparatively recent age. In the spirit of old, a mere hundred and some years ago she took up arms… but that is a tale for another time.”
Luna swapped her gaze from the portrait to Ditzy, nodded to herself and continued.
“So why hath I brought you here? Disasters are no commonplace occurrence in this land, nor is it for monsters to spread fear through our towns and cities. Yet through the ages, it has always been a solemn honor to receive a commission, a blessing to carry out these great acts. Thus, our anger.”
The last pieces of the puzzle of the ancients had fallen into place, and Ditzy, having absorbed the analects of yesterday’s tradition, found she had nothing to say. A whole other history had come to occupy her mind: she shifted slightly, lost in the conflicting desires to answer and question or contemplate. For certain Ditzy did not accept her fate as Luna implied it, and though her torn loyalties roiled underneath she stayed that storm instead of stoking it.
“For monsters to spread fear…”
Shrill flashes of a world gone mad and a paw and claw templed together raced across Ditzy’s vision, and she almost stumbled at the apparition. Yet Luna had not noticed, her eyes glimmering with a more recent memory. “We impress this trove of knowledge upon you, for although the dangers this kingdom now face are often of a different scale, be they smaller or larger, we are still in need of heroes. We tell you because you will need strength in this journey, and with luck you may draw power from theirs.”
Ditzy recovered, belatedly processing Luna’s next words, but she would need much more time to process Luna’s next words.
“The contract we made with you those long days ago is in the spirit of the commissions of old. We chose you because you are gifted: you are blessed, you are cursed.”
~~~~~~~~
Ditzy could see the life unleashed below, the astounding energy of civilization pressed together at work, at play, at creating greatness in all its forms. Their quest to release their spirit was grand indeed—but she had other things in mind.
Luna had granted her a reprieve, and had recommended that Ditzy seek rest and reflect on trials imminent and bygone. Yet Ditzy had acquired a strange urge in the fleeting moments after Luna’s invective. For in her muddle of thoughts, there remained one itch stronger than the others. And so she had abandoned the magisterial view of the city to dive into murkier waters.
The garden below lay shrouded in mist and mystery; the mind descending throbbed with unnameable agitations. Down defunct halls Ditzy flew until she had escaped the obscure corner of the castle, looking out on the great shroud covering sky and sun and earth.
No verbal thoughts in mind, Ditzy took a breath and walked forward. She thrust herself into the fog, her mind a single cog among machinations. For she feared—what did she fear? Ditzy heard her questioning thoughts, but told them to hush, demanded shivering quiet. Out there it was, the certainty, the purpose, the victory! It was a hot promise in a freezing winter, nearly inconceivable.
Honor.
The word shuddered and roiled around, seeming to stoke the fog into a wind, seeming to touch Ditzy’s every nerve as she held her wings against her. Warmth had fled in the garden. The seasons had changed, and her steps fell short of the grace that had empowered her.
If I can find him, then I can face it. And then…
Her spirit, half-loaded, floundered in the wind, seeking ignition. Yet the plants creeping with grey fog mocked her, an infinite vague mass obscuring all things.
“Oh my, what’s this? An unexpected visit? As much as I would love to feed off your conflictions, my dear Ditzy, I’m afraid you have other obligations. You also seem to have lost your way, but that I expected. Move along now, you have secrets and memories to chase.”
Her breath only multiplying the aegis of fog, Ditzy shouted “show yourself!” to no avail, and yet she knew her words amounted to a drop in a crumbling thundercloud.
Is he doing this to me?
As thick as the fog Ditzy’s quiet ran, delicate composure shifting in the formlessness.
The knowledge did not sit well with her, and Ditzy felt the cold brush against her skin, a harbinger of coming mountain snows.
Hanging on for a last lucid moment, Ditzy vainly searched the opaque void before despair slipped in.
I have to get back.
A turn and ascension through the fog availed Ditzy of her blindness, but she lacked true sight. No maze or barrier of sinister groves held Ditzy back, and within moments of flight she had spotted an alabaster wall.
Now emotions of displeasing color piled in at the gates, a tide as common and predictable as the movements of the moon. But Ditzy held it off, the sharp, cold air provoking her at every intake. Holding back the rising tide, she instead examined it.
What am I worked up over? The rhetorical question sat none too well with her, but Ditzy forced it down anyways. There’s no use getting like this. The most I can do is get on with this business, as much as I hate it.
The austere reasoning cut like a hot knife through the chill air, inflaming Ditzy’s wounds, yet hopefully cauterizing them. A few more breaths, a few more attempts to slow the tempo, and at last Ditzy had her exit.
On soft and desolate steps Ditzy traversed the emptied halls, seeking the quiet reverie so swiftly lost. She would have expected a greater show of life in the palace, although it was a cold day and she suspected only unusual routes ran through that particular hall. After climbing a few stories, Ditzy stopped to examine the sight offered to her by a well-placed window: some low-lying cloud had been severed by the mountain and now tumbled down and wafted away in bits and pieces. Her mind was mute for once. It relaxed her.
Eventually she trekked on through the remaining passageways back in towards where the two had first appeared. Resisting the urge to yawn, Ditzy felt the backswing of events liberally draining what little was left of her fortitude and wondered if it was at all acceptable or proper to find an inconspicuous place to curl up and nap.
Two increasingly familiar voices approached.