The Elements of Lunar Harmony
Part Thirteen: The Other Guy’s.
The magical storm that engulfed the woods blasted all of its trees into the surrounding fields and nearby road or into matchsticks as it was razed to the ground, on the very edge of this destruction and cowering behind a small overturned cart the four remaining companions of Luna’s group waited it out.
Eventually the storm dissipated and as they carefully moved out from behind the cart the devastation was clear to see and the four exchanged horrified looks as the embers of what had been a thriving wood burned brightly.
As the magic dissipated so did the fire and this left just blackened tree stumps and blasted earth as far as the eye could see which wasn’t far considering the thick black smoke and ash that had engulfed the surrounding area.
“Ah’m guessing that witch did it.”
“I-Is she that powerful… …I thought she was bragging…”
Roseluck watched as Apple Cobblers face went through a variety of contortions as she concentrated hard on her response without using words that might offend the rose tinted mare.
“Ah didn’t think she had that kind of power that’s for sure.”
“…Ouch… Some pony… …Mind telling me what happened…”
Three sets of eyes turned to Berry Punch who was upright but had a look of frailty and at any moment might collapse or be blown away on the wind.
Berry had been woken up seconds after the storm had begun finding that she was being quickly and unceremoniously dragged by Roseluck and Fleur to behind Apple Cobblers cart which the farm pony had only just bucked onto its side after two or three attempts.
After the others had explained this and they had spent a moment in silence still surveying the shattered landscape it was Fleur who spoke next.
“Are we going to look for Spitfire and Trixie…?”
“Ah reckon we’d better find out what happened… …Give them a decent burial.”
Roseluck and Fleur both gasped at Apple Cobblers fatalism but jumped when Berry snorted loudly and began woozily making her way into the remains of the woods.
“H-Hey… Wait for me…”
Fleur dashed forward to catch up with Berry but her upper class upbringing meant that she practically pranced through the piles of still smoking ash whilst trying to maintain her beautiful appearance but had she a mirror she would have realized it was already futile as her coat was now more of a mottled grey pattern than the pure white she was usually.
Berry watched the two or possibly three Fleur’s as they drew level with her and when her vision began to settle a bit more she gave a smile of reassurance to the nervous pony and a nod and set off again this time with Fleur close by to help her walk in more of a straight line.
The normally pristine white pony looked visibly upset but earnest in her desire to find the missing pair as they wandered off calling Spitfire and Trixie’s names (not too loudly due to Berries latest hangover, all the effects of the previous nights booze already wearing off).
Roseluck and Apple Cobbler both wondered what it was that was motivating Fleur, after all the two didn’t have a problem with her in fact they both had gotten to know her a bit better and both would agree she was quite fun once you got past the upper class facade she kept adopting out of pure habit and as long as you kept conversations and jokes simple and clean then she was a very sweet and gentle pony to know.
Fleur however was scared, she didn’t know if these new friends of hers were safe or not and she was near panic at the thought her great adventure may already be over…
She thought of Luna and how it would hurt her if she were to lose her student and a Wonderbolt to boot… All these things raced around her mind as she slogged through the debris with Berry who now seemed to be getting frailer by the minute.
Shrugging wordlessly Roseluck and Apple Cobbler followed the other two as they all continued to marvel at the apocalyptic level of devastation as their minds fought to deny the fear that was coldly creeping into all of their hearts as they continued…
…Were they dead…?
…Well not quite but the ethereal pony now stood over the pair was waiting patiently for them to shuffle off the mortal coil as his huge black cloak billowed in the wind, a pair of small hour glasses were floating in a swirling blue aura in front of him its color matching his eyes that of cold blue fire in their sunken pits.
Nearly an hour passed and the four hadn’t covered but a fifth of the ground where the wood once stood and already they were covered from mane to tail in dirt and ash mostly thanks to Berry slipping into a small ditch hidden by debris and the others being pulled in after her when they’d tried to rescue her.
Led in the ditch and exhausted the four laughed at each others complexions and shared a moment as their cares were momentarily forgotten but as they settled down it was clear to all they would need help and soon.
“What in the Hay are we doing out here anyway…?”
Roseluck cocked her head as did Fleur both looking at Apple Cobbler as she lay back sprawled out staring up at the sky.
“Ah mean ah got press ganged an all but what about you three? Don’t seem like something you’d do lucky… And begging your pardon Fleur but it don’t seem like you get out the city much.”
It was Roseluck who spoke first a smile hovering on her lips.
“At first I was scared… I mean I didn’t get much of a choice at first… but I don’t know I’ve never been so scared in my life yet… …I want to try.”
“Ta what survive…?”
“No… …Well yes obviously but I want to try and do something no pony would expect me to do something brave or adventurous or just plain different…”
At this Roseluck giggled at the surprised look Apple Cobbler gave her and turned to Fleur who at first shied away and blushed but eventually responded.
“P-Pretty much the same except I’ve never done anything except look good I don’t know who I am if I’m not beautiful…”
“Well sugar you might not want to look too closely at yourself right now but you look like a Fleur to me you just need to do things so you know you can do them an if you like it you do it again.”
Roseluck nodded sagely at the advice as Fleur pondered it.
“I do exist… …I’m pretty sure anyway if I’m not dreaming…”
Roseluck replied sheepishly as the wine maker huffed,
“Oh… Sorry Berry… …Why did you join Trixie and Spitfire?”
Roseluck paused before she continued…
“And you haven’t told me why they were there at your house in the first place…?”
Roseluck thought back to her first encounter with the witch and the Wonderbolt at Berries house and how events had unfolded…
“And why were you all in the same bed…?”
This immediately perked the interest of the other two as Berry first belched loudly then scratched her chest with her hoof and licked her lips.
“Well…”
Fleur Roseluck and Apple Cobbler listened intently as Berries hazy recollection stuck close to the facts.
She began by describing how they had run into each other in the woods and how she threw up on the both of them (to accompanying cries of ‘Ewww’ from the others).
A night of drinking followed by the high speed chase to Ponyville and passing out after arrival on the bed after a modest crate or two as a nightcap, much to the disappointment of the assembled trio of mares who had hoped for something saucier…
Berry continued onto her waking up after Roseluck arrived and the eventual fiery destruction of her home and the recruitment of Apple Cobbler which said pony strongly corrected her on some of the details since Berry could have sworn Apple Cobbler had volunteered...
As Berry finished Apple Cobbler struck the nail on the head as she piped up with a nagging question…
“Uh that’s great sugar but that don’t explain why? Why’d you decide to follow those mares?”
“Damned if I know, guess because it sounded fun I suppose or maybe I was bored and there was nothing else…”
“Or because you were drunk…”
Roseluck blushed at the frank way she said it but it rang true regardless so she just stayed silent waiting for Berries reaction.
“I don’t get drunk all the time you know…”
The guilty way she said it and the nonchalant look of disinterest in any further discussion would normally have put any further inquiry or debate to bed but after the events of the day Roseluck was going to say what she’d always wanted to say to her friend for a long time.
“Berry… I think it’s time you maybe cut down… A little perhaps… …Or maybe quit…?”
“Don’t need to I’m fine as I am.”
“You’re not Berry… You’re always drunk and it’s bad for you, you’re only hurting yourself…”
“Every pony thinks you drink because you blame yourself for your mother leaving… …Is that why…?”
“Not my fault she couldn’t hack a little competition…”
Roseluck tossed her eyes as she remembered the drunken row between mother and daughter in the middle of Ponyville town square on market day.
“You drank almost all of her wine…”
Roseluck gave the best stern look she could manage but failed.
“And her beer…”
Apple Cobbler chimed in helpfully then remembered something and added…
“…And her cider…”
“Yes thank you Cobbler… Like I was saying…”
“And all the spirits…”
Berry raised an eyebrow and went to get up unwilling to discuss the matter further, she immediately regretted it as her head thumped and her bones ached, each sobering up period for her was different depending on what had been consumed previously and the situation in hand.
On this occasion it would be fast and painful as she forced herself wobbling as she did to stand.
“My mother understands as I do the importance of being drunk to our family, it’s not my fault I have such a need for the stuff to keep me… Well… Me.”
Apple Fleur and Roseluck all shared strange looks as Berry huffed and crossed her hooves before realizing she would have to explain it now… She began in a quiet serious tone.
“I can get a little dark when sober.”
“You mean you go all emo or something right?”
Berry gave Roseluck a sarcastic roll of her eyes as she continued.
“What I mean is I can get a little crazy when I’m not relaxed from drinking…”
Every pony gets withdrawal symptom’s and I can help you get through them, we all can, the others all nodded enthusiastically as Berry laughed in a hollow depressed way as she gave them all a sympathetic look.
“For generations the mares in my family have suffered from a curse…”
The others exchanged yet more looks as Berry sighed deeply taking a deep breath she revealed her deepest secret, her Achilles hoof.
“It started a long time ago… An ancestor of mine once served in the royal guard and when the dark god of chaos Discord was defeated by Celestia… …His last act was to throw a curse at Celestia… …My Ancestor sacrificed herself by jumping in its path to save the princess.”
Checking she had their attention Berry took a deep breath and carried on.
“At first she suffered no consequences but as time went by she became more and more aggressive and violent…”
“…Discord had cast a curse that removed all of the victims inhibitions and moral dilemma’s would no longer effect them since the curse’s victim would no longer have any sense of right and wrong…”
Fleur piped up first as Berry paused, Berry raised an annoyed eyebrow at the interruption to her soulful recollection of a tragic past.
“What…”
“W-Well your ancestor served the royal guard… Surely I’d bet princess Celestia removed the curse… …right…?”
Snorting loudly causing her head to ache Berry replied a little too sharply.
“I was getting to that… …Ha… Not even Celestia could remove the curse…”
Noticing Fleur wince at her tone Berries expression softened as did her voice as her friends all looked shocked by the idea that something magical was too much for even Celestia to be able to break!
“The curse was meant for the princess so it was a pretty powerful piece of magic and so tainted by chaos my ancestor left the service and traveled far and wide to remove the curse.”
“She caused havoc by being totally out of control with no care for social etiquette or convention, where ever she went her behavior was so unacceptable that after a particularly hedonistic weekend in some small town she was arrested by the local guard… Since they had no jail they threw her in the cellar of the local ale house.”
“It was while she was down in that cellar she decided to drink all she could before she was run out of yet another town, drinking everything to hoof she came across a barrel of something that wasn’t ale or cider… …It was something she had never tasted before… A liquid that didn’t fizz or bubble and that tasted of Berries and Grapes…”
“Wine..?”
Berry nodded as Apple Cobbler smiled at her own smarts at guessing the right answer.
“Now the stallion who ran the ale house was an inventor who liked to invent new drinks and his latest was sat in four barrels in the cellar awaiting it’s unveiling to the world of alcoholic connoisseurs in a few days time.”
“When he returned home to find guards stationed outside his cellar he immediately demanded they let him past to make sure it was safe…”
“Let me guess she’d drunk the lot…”
Berry nodded her head gingerly as the three all spoke at the same time the chorus ringing loudly in her ears.
“She’d drunk the lot… All four barrels which thanks to the way it was made would take a while to replace, but contrary to what he’d been warned by the guards he found a drunk yet quite friendly young mare that seemed quite harmless…”
“…Struck by her beauty he threw the guards from his business and took her in…”
“Aw that’s so romantic…”
Fleur blushed as the other two made hushing sounds as Berry just continued on.
“Of course when she sobered up she returned to her cursed self and nearly destroyed his ale house by getting drunk on ale trashing the place and escaping before the guards could be called for.”
“Sometime many moons later she once again came through town causing a ruckus and vaguely remembering something happened at this place so she made her way to the ale house, well in her absence the inventor had brewed more of this liquid which then had become a huge commercial success that he had expanded to the point he shipped the stuff to the four corners of Equestria.”
“Well her reputation hadn’t dimmed and the townsfolk evacuated the bar leaving the inventor all alone to suffer the scattershot antics and violent tendencies.”
“Still confused by the two sides of my ancestor that he had seen and their totally opposite personalities he decided to try to talk with her… …after a fair bit of singing smashing of glasses and other unmentionables he found out about the curse and as he listened he noticed that as she consumed more ale she only got worse but when her attention turned to his new drink she began to calm down becoming once again the quiet and demure mare he had met in the cellar…”
“Right then he figured it out… His invention suppressed the curse!!! Other spirits and similar drinks also repressed it but only in considerable volume.
But if she was kept topped up with his concoction… Sick of traveling and doing the things she had done she agreed to his request for time to see if this liquid could be altered to cure her, from that moment on she lived with him in relative peace.”
“Years passed and eventually after so long looking for a cure and many drunken nights experimenting with different brews it became more and they married and had a foal together… A little mare who when she came of age also began to display signs of the curse…”
”…The sheer amount of power contained in that curse meant for a goddess had forever and irreversibly tainted the bloodline… From then on only mares would be born to the line and when of age they too would become slaves either to the curse or the drink the inventor named wine… …After my ancestor whose name was Wynn…”
“Ever since then when their daughter has come of age one of them leaves in search of the cure in the hope they can end the curse and because one drunken mare is more than enough in one house...”
The others sat speechless, Apple Cobbler was skeptical as was Roseluck but Fleur was entranced and took in every word.
“So your mother left to search for the cure and when you have your own foal so will you?”
“That’s the plan or so it’s supposed to be…”
“What do you mean supposed…”
“Well if I don’t have any foals then the curse ends.”
The three young mares gasped in unison at the thought of never being a mother or having a family, together they cried in sync.
“But how can you not have children? Or have a family!”
“That’s the reason I exist… The allure of love and the desire for family has every generation proved too strong and the curse continues.”
“So you are going to just spend your life drunk until you’re a spinster and then just die alone is that it…?”
“Pretty much Roseluck that’s my lot in life, nothing I can do about it unless I want to have a foal who one day will suffer as I and my ancestors have for all this time.”
“So you really came on this trip as one last chance to find the cure for yourself and thereby give yourself the opportunity to find your prince charming and become a mother!!!”
Fleur’s mind was filled with images as in her minds eye the curse and the legacy caused by it came across as a fairy tale tragedy of which Berry was the plucky young mare who would be the one to break the curse while on a journey of self discovery in the name of the princess Luna.
Berry sat back down as she hadn’t thought of it quite like that before, even though it made for a great summing up of the whole affair in a perfect world.
She would have replied or at least tried to convince Fleur it wasn’t like that but her voice died in her throat as she felt something large climbing up her back…
…The giant spider clicked its fangs twice as it reached Berries shoulder before making frantic motions with its front legs as its multitude of eyes blinked repeatedly.
“AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
Berries scream and the screams of Fleur and Apple Cobbler ripped through the silence that permeated the remains of the wood.
“WILL YOU THREE KEEP IT DOWN I THINK SHE’S TRYING TO TELL US SOMETHING IMPORTANT,”
“What is it little one, what can we do…?”
Roseluck focused intently on the rapid signalling from the slightly charred spider.
Earlier that night:
When Spitfire had been captured the spider had followed to find out what was going on and after pursuing the captive Wonderbolt as she was dragged through the woods she had been witness to what had transpired after and the following explosion.
Her relatively small stature had been what enabled her to hide in a hollowed out log that barely escaped the destruction of the entire rest of the woods.
After escaping the inferno and waiting for the ground to cool she had gone in search of the kind pony who had shared her fire with her to tell the kind pony where to find her friends in repayment for that kindness.
The spider hopped down from what appeared to be the most lifelike of statues and scuttled up a small mound of ash using her legs to point urgently in a particular direction all the while clicking her fangs.
“She wants us to follow her… …she knows where the others are!!!”
Roseluck hurriedly got up and made to follow the spider but had to stop and turn to her friends who remained motionless as they quaked in fear despite the urgency of the situation.
“Oh come on will you… We have to find them… She seems really worried I think she’s trying to tell us to hurry…”
Roseluck’s voice broke as she rallied her resolve despite her imagination running away with itself as to the fate of the missing ponies, turning she forced her tired legs to move as she took off in pursuit of the spider that had began to head off deeper into what had been the woods clicking it’s fangs furiously.
Galvanized by this the others followed her at speed albeit at a conservative distance from the spider and taking into account the shambling pace of Berry who followed the rest as best she could.
Meanwhile in the direction the spider was headed a black robed pony stood watch over the missing pair impatiently tapping his hoof as the last few grains of sand fell to the bottom of one of the pair of floating hourglasses in front of him.
As the spirit of the unfortunate pony rose from its previous home it took a moment before it spoke, the voice sounded distant and inevitably in shock as she took stock of her surroundings before settling on the mysterious looking pony.
“Right then well I guess… …I mean… “
“… …”
“…Aw screw it that’s not fair...”
Silently the robed figure summoned from the air in a flash of magic a long pole made from what looked like bone with intricate carvings of ponies and long forgotten beasts and horrors all along its length, plucking it from the air with his teeth and with a practiced flick of his head that caused a long magical blue blade to spring forth from one end.
Raising his head in a swift motion he brought the blade down on the thin line of spirit energy that connected the body and spirit...