The Letter
The Pale Wood Forest, while not as dangerous and unpredictable as the Everfree, was nonetheless one of the last stretches of untamed wilderness within the borders of Equestria. The soil that nourished its ancient trees was dark and fertile, and entire cities could have been erected from its lumber without doing any lasting harm to the sprawling green ocean. And yet, civilization refused to encroach on its borders, and whenever somepony inquired why this was the case — something that happened rarely enough already — the only answer they would get was a shrug and a brief comment about how it had always been that way. There was a better explanation, but only a select few remembered the reason as to why not disturbing the forest had become second nature to those who lived close to it.
At the very center of the forest, a single mountain rose up from the ground, standing out against the surrounding trees like a giant among ants. With its steep cliffs and slopes, its countless rocky spires that could have been mountains in their own right, and its snow-tipped peaks that reached to such dizzying heights that they seemed to touch the bottom of the sky, the mountain was impressive enough by itself, but even more so if you knew that it housed the ancient palace of the Princess of the Night.
The existence and location of Luna's palace was not really a secret. But as the centuries went by, most ponies had simply forgotten about it, just like they had forgotten about many other things related to the disgraced princess. But the fact that few ponies knew of its existence did not mean that the palace was abandoned.
Although the Princess of the Night had been banished almost a thousand years ago, her personal guard had never been disbanded. New members came and went, but the Night Guard had remained at its post all these centuries, faithfully guarding the seat of their beloved Princess, their loyalty and sense of duty never wavering.
Well, more or less. After a thousand years of being stationed in a palace with nopony to answer to and no duties to perform, all while still receiving regular pay, discipline and protocol had understandably become a little lax.
* * *
Swift Shade awoke from her less-than-restful sleep, immediately regretting it when a bright light stabbed into her catlike purple eyes like hot needles. She groaned and quickly warded off the cruel brightness by pulling her straight black mane across her face like a curtain. It took several seconds before her eyes had adjusted enough for her to take a look around.
She was lying in the great ballroom, a massive cave that had been remodeled into a magnificent hall. When the palace was dug out from the mountain caves, the architects had taken special care to preserve the natural beauty of the place, and their efforts showed most prominently here. All throughout the hall, dozens of natural rock pillars stretched from floor to ceiling, adorned with masterful carvings of the night sky. The floor of the cave had been evened out and polished until it was as flat and smooth as glass, and the vaulting ceiling was streaked with veins of precious metals and gem deposits that shone and glittered in the silver light of the magic lamps illuminating the hall.
However, the grandeur was somewhat diminished by the junk and garbage strewn all around the floor. There was hardly a spot of ground that wasn't covered with heaps of empty bottles, glasses and tankards, columns of dirty dishes, empty food packaging, or overturned chairs and tables. And lying in the middle of this chaos were Swift Shade and twenty-one other bat ponies, who were completely dead to the world at the moment.
Swift Shade wanted nothing more than slip back into blissful unconsciousness. Her head felt like a dragon was performing a tap dance inside of it, she had the revolting aftertaste of stale cider and cheap liquor in her mouth, and her stomach was extremely outspoken in questioning some of the decisions she had made last night. But she knew she would not be able to go back to sleep, so she figured that she might as well get up.
Apparently, she had spent the entire night lying on her side, and her left wing had fallen asleep. Also, Dusk Chaser had passed out right next to her, and his head was currently resting on her belly.
“Dusk,” Swift Shade croaked, but the stallion was out cold. “Hey, Dusk. Wake up. I said wake up! That's an order, lieuten... ah, forget it.” She finally gave up and just rolled over, robbing Dusk Chaser of his pillow, and the stallion’s head bumped on the stone floor with a dull thud. His crimson eyes shot open, and he let out a garbled sound that Swift Shade had only heard from a few species of giant cave worms before.
She gave him a toothy grin and rose to her hooves. “Back among the living, Dusky?”
The dark gray stallion looked up at her and folded his front legs over his head. “Unfortunately. Hey, if you feel like doing me a favor, maybe you could give me a good kick in the head so I can pass out again? That would be phenomenal.”
Swift Shade walked over to a table that was somehow still standing, trying to clean something that looked like a mustard stain off her dark blue coat by scratching at it with the tip of her wing. “No can do. If I have to suffer, you suffer with me.”
She checked the bottles and packages on the table, fortunately managed to find what she was looking for, and picked up a bottle of hot sauce and an open bottle of tomato juice that was still half full (Shade had always considered herself to be an optimist). Looking for a clean glass would be completely hopeless, so she just dumped the contents of the glass closest to her on the floor, filled it with juice, and added almost the entire bottle of hot sauce to it. There was a salt shaker on the table, but somepony had spilled it, so Shade just held the glass under the table and scooped some of the wet, lumpy salt into the mix.
When she turned around holding the glass clamped in her fetlock, Dusk Chaser looked at her in disgust. “You're an animal.”
Shade just shrugged. “As long as it helps.” Then she took a big gulp of the vile concoction, and it immediately made her eyes water. The tricky part was keeping down the first swig, everything after that was foal's play. She kept it down.
“All right,” she coughed, “Lets wake the others, shall we?” She then turned towards the enormous stereo system they had wired up inside the ballroom.
Dusk went pale, and his ears drooped. “You wouldn't...”
Swift Shade bared her sharp canines in a cruel grin. “Brace yourself Dusky. It's gonna get loud.” Then she turned the volume up to maximum, pressed “play,” and instantly, the bass-heavy rhythm of DJ Pon3's Wub till you Drub started thundering through the hall.
A chorus of tortured moans and groaning swelled up behind Swift Shade. “Up and at 'em, my little ponies,” she shouted. The other members of the Night Guard looked like they had freshly risen from their graves, and Shade pranced past them while blaring an off-key song at the top of her lungs, “Oh, what a beautiful moooooooorning! Oh, what a beautiful daaaaaaaaay!"
When she cantered past Starlit Sky, the mare glared at her from underneath the unkempt thicket of dark-purple insanity her wavy mane had transformed into overnight. Despite being the Guard’s appointed medic, right now she seemed much keener on opening up some wounds rather than patching them up. "Hate you. Hate you so much."
Shade patted her on the head with one of her leathery wings, but quickly pulled it back when Starlit Sky took a snap at it, her pale-blue eyes spraying flaming murder. Yet more proof that a bad enough hangover had the power to transform even the most amiable pony into an irritable grouch.
"Aww, don't say that, Sky. Hate is such a strong word."
Starlit Sky's marefriend Moonlight Sonata was lying right next to the medic, and while Sky and Shade were having their little spat, she groggily pulled a small bottle of painkillers from the saddlebags that she had used as an improvised pillow.
“Oh, hey, could I please have one of those? My head is killing me,” Shade asked when she saw Moonlight shake two pills onto the underside of her left hoof.
Moonlight briefly stared at her with a flat expression. Then she popped both pills into her mouth, and shook the upturned bottle a few times to emphasize its emptiness.
Shade's eyes narrowed slightly, and she had a quick internal debate if this was worth getting into an argument over. But after a few moments of contemplation, she just turned away and walked back over to Dusk Chaser. Not so much because being in Moonlight Sonata's good graces was something she placed any real value on, but because she knew Sky didn't like it when her friend and marefriend were quarreling with each other.
Dusk was still lying on the ground, and Shade began poking him with the tip of her wing. "Get up."
Dusk Chaser rested his head on his forelegs and closed his eyes. "No."
Swift Shade's poking grew more insistent. "Come on! You said you were going to go grocery shopping today. Are you really gonna make me pull rank here?"
"Oh, shove it up your nose, ma'am!" Dusk growled, "It's a full day’s trip to the next store, and I'm in pain here. What exactly do we need that's so important?"
"Everything!" Shade said, "We are literally out of everything. Having food would be nice, you know. I'm a big fan of food."
That gave Dusk Chaser some pause. "We really don't have anything left?"
Shade looked around the room. "Well, if push comes to shove, whatever is growing in that pizza box over there might last us for another week. But I'm afraid if it gets any bigger, it might start eating us."
"I guess,” Dusk Chaser said, but he still seemed hesitant. “You know, I hear all that processed, pre-packed stuff they sell in stores these days is really bad for you. We got all that nature just outside our door, and I've been meaning to eat more grass anyway..."
"You know, when I say 'we're out of everything,' I mean booze as well, right?" Shade interrupted him.
Dusk Chaser was standing on his hooves faster than Shade's eyes could follow. “I'll have to take the chariot with me.”
“Hey!” Shade called, “I wrote a list, all right? Don't come back with nothing but alcohol, we really need some food.”
“Booze is food,” Dusk insisted, as if the mere suggestion of that not being the case offended him.
“Booze is not food!” Shade objected, “Look Dusk, we have done very extensive case studies on this subject, and I think we have proven that the pony body needs more than hard cider and hay fries. I'm honestly worried that I might get scurvy if we go on like this.” She put a leg around his neck and pulled him close so she could glower at him more effectively. “I wrote you a list. Don't make me nail it to your forehead.”
Dusk rubbed his temple and let out a pained chuckle. “Kinda feels like you already did. All right, you shall have your precious 'fibers' and 'vitamins,' your Highness.”
Shade smiled and patted his cheek. “Good boy.” She was about to say something else, but then her ears perked up and she thought she picked up a very strange sound. “Hey guys, kill the music for a sec, all right?”
A moment later, the hammering of the bass stopped.
“Thank the Stars,” Starlit Sky mumbled, but then the melodic chime of a bell echoed through the hall. “What's that?” she asked after a few seconds of confused silence.
“Sounds like a doorbell,” Moonlight Sonata said.
Dusk Chaser frowned. “I didn't know we had a doorbell.”
Swift Shade took another sip of her hangover cure. “Honestly, I'm pretty sure we don't.”
* * *
Swift Shade zipped through the winding corridors of the palace at a breakneck speed, catapulting herself forward with strong, rhythmic strokes of her wings. She had her eyes closed, and with every exhalation of breath, she let out a high pitched shriek that most other ponies would not even be able to hear. To her sensitive ears, however, the echos of the sounds she made mapped out her surroundings in perfect detail, and she took twists and turns with such precision that whenever she changed course, there was barely an inch of air between her body and the naked rock of the surrounding walls.
Bat ponies were superb fliers by nature, but even for them, maneuvering through such a limited space at this velocity was a task few would be up to. Swift Shade could have just walked, or flown at a speed that was less insane, especially considering the night she had before. But there was so little to do around here on a daily basis that she liked to challenge herself every now and then. Besides, she was extremely curious to see who was at the door.
Finally, Shade shot into the hallway leading to the entry doors of the palace. It was perfectly straight and very roomy, so maneuvering wasn't a problem here. To make things more interesting, Shade accelerated until the very last moment, and then abruptly shifted her weight in the air and started beating her wings in the opposite direction when she sensed that the doors where only a couple of yards away. She stretched her hind legs out in front of her, and when they made contact with the smooth surface of the doors, she immediately pushed back, did a backflip, and landed perfectly on the hallway's thick carpet. Then she finally opened her eyes to look at the glass she was still holding with her left fetlock.
“Ha! Still got it. Didn't even spill my juice.” She looked around the empty hallway and smiled, a little embarrassed. “Sucks that nopony saw it, but whatever.”
The doors were almost twenty yards high, and had many heavy bars and elaborate locks. With all of them in place, the massive obsidian gates of the palace could have withstood an army of rampaging dragons, but the members of the Night Guard had long since stopped locking the door. Nopony ever came by, anyway. So all Swift Shade had to do was to push it open, which was surprisingly easy, considering that the gate had to weigh several tons.
The massive slabs of black stone swung outwards in complete silence, and Swift Shade squinted and blinked when she saw sunlight for the first time in over two weeks.
Outside the door sat a pegasus mare with a gray coat and a flaxen tail and mane. One of her golden eyes was fixed on Swift Shade, while the other one seemed to be more interested in something slightly off to the upper left. She wore a mailmare uniform and carried a heavy bag, and as soon as she came into view, she gifted Swift Shade with one of the brightest and most genuine smiles she had seen in a while.
“Hello, ma'am. I...” She paused, and looked a little anxious while she studied Swift Shade more closely. “Oh...” Several seconds of awkward silence passed before she spoke again, a lot less cheerful this time, “Ehm... a... are you going to eat me?”
Shade cocked an eyebrow at the other mare. “Wow, girl. You really get right to it, don't you?” She took another sip of her juice. The exertion from earlier had made her headache return with a vengeance. “Now, don't get me wrong. You're cute and all, but I don't really swing that way.” Suddenly, something in her brain went 'click,' and she shot an angry glare at the pegasus. “Hey! That's a really hurtful stereotype, you know? We're all herbivores here, these teeth are just for self defense.”
The other mare didn't say anything. Instead, she just looked at the glass Swift Shade was holding, then at her face, then back at the glass. Suddenly, Shade was acutely aware of the fact that the contents of the glass had a very distinctive color, and that the hasty and sloppy way she had been drinking meant that her muzzle was very liberally coated with the stuff. She quickly lashed around with her tongue to clean as much as she could off her face.
“It's juice,” she said meekly.
The pegasus responded with an eager nod. “I... I believe you,” she was quick to assure Swift Shade.
Shade let out an exasperated sigh. “Look, is there something I can help you with?”
The other mare's facial expression cleared up instantly. “Right! I have a letter for you!” Almost her entire head disappeared into the bag she was wearing at her side, and she pulled out a scroll. “It looks super important,” she said after giving it to Swift Shade, “Sorry, I couldn't find the mailbox.”
“We don't have one,” Shade said.
The pegasus beamed as if Shade had just solved the greatest mystery of their age. “That's probably why I couldn't find it, then. Anyway, I didn't want to put it anywhere where it might get lost, so I rang the doorbell. I hope that's all right.” While she said that, she pointed at one of the many decorative gems that were set into the surface of the palace door.
Swift Shade hesitated for a second. Then she reached out and pushed her hoof against the gem. Nothing happened.
“That's not a bell button,” Shade said slowly, “In fact, we don't have a doorbell either.”
The pegasus frowned briefly and stared at the gem. Then she just shrugged, and her smile returned as brightly as before. “Sorry. I didn't know that.”
Swift Shade blinked twice. Although she was afraid of the answer she might get, she couldn't help but ask, “You know, you don't strike me as military. How did you find this place, anyway? It's not even on a map these days.”
“Oh, that was easy,” the pegasus assured her. “You see, I had to deliver a letter here,” she then said, as if that was a perfectly valid answer to Swift Shade’s question.
For a few moments, Shade was tempted to poke further. But then she realized that in her current condition, thinking too hard about this would probably make her head explode. “You know what? I'm not entirely sure how you do it, but it's obvious that you are insanely good at your job. I don't have any money on me, but if you wait here a sec, I'll go get you a tip.”
But the pegasus simply shook her head. “Very kind of you ma'am, but that's really not necessary. Just doing my job.” She flapped her wings a few times and lifted herself off the ground, then waved at Swift Shade. “Have a nice day.” And off she went.
Shade looked after her until she disappeared in the distance. “Maybe I'm still a little tipsy,” she mumbled to herself. Then she swallowed what was left of her juice, tossed the glass away, and took a closer look at the scroll.
Her eyes went wide when she saw the royal seal that kept the correspondence rolled up.
This has to be a mistake. She thought, while she broke the wax with shaky hooves.
To the hooves of our sister's most loyal servant, Swift Shade, esteemed Captain of the Royal Order of the Night Guard.
It is with great joy that I inform you...
Shade felt beads of sweat form on her forehead as she read through the letter. “Oh, buck me sideways...”
* * *
Swift Shade was standing on the stage in the palace theater, and looked at the other members of the Night Guard assembled before her. “We have a really big problem.”
Dusk Chaser rolled his eyes. “Look, I told you I'm gonna go get groceries. Why are you making such a big deal out of this?”
“Not grocery related,” Shade said, “This is so, so far beyond groceries, it's not even funny.” She sighed, looked intently at the ponies gathered before her, and tried to give her next words as much gravity as she could, “Princess Luna has returned.”
There was a heavy stretch of silence.
“Who?” Moonlight Sonata finally said.
Swift Shade's eyes almost bulged out of her skull. “The Princess of the Night? The Mistress of the Moon? One of the Royal Sisters, ruler of the Night Court, diarch of the nation of Equestria, the pony whose personal guard we are supposed to be, you know, that Princess Luna, does any of this ring any bucking bells?!”
Moonlight Sonata gave her a frown that was half annoyed and half confused. “You mean Nightmare Moon?”
Shade hushed her up with a very insistent hoof gesture. “Hey! First of all, we don't use the N-word around here. It's disrespectful. And second, no, not any more, apparently. Initially, she came back as... her, but it seems like she's herself again.”
“Hold on a second. So, when and where did all of this happen exactly?” Dusk Chaser asked.
“Just over a week ago, in some one-horse town called –” Shade scratched her head “– I don't even remember. Ponytown or Donkeyville or something like that. Sounded like Hick Central. Anyway, apparently we missed the whole thing while we were sitting down here, blitzed out of our skulls like usual.”
Dusk Chaser looked around and let out a nervous chuckle. “Eh... maybe that's for the best? I mean, were we supposed to help her when she first came back? Because I’m not really thrilled by the prospect of fighting in a civil war. How did the Night Guard deal with this a thousand years ago?”
“Oh,” Shade said, and then, as the realization sank in fully, “Oh! Yeah, good thinking there, Dusky. Boy, good thing we sat that one out. That would have been a really awkward situation. But in any case, Princess Luna is now really and truly back, as herself. Celestia has welcomed her back at court, and, this is the important part, tomorrow, as in, the day after this one, she's going to show up here to ‘meet with the members of her trusted guard, and take care of urgent business.’ I don’t know about you, but that sounds like an inspection to me.” Shade waited a few seconds so the full meaning of what she just said would have time to slap her friends across the face. “Now, I'm going to be as nice as I can: This place is a pigsty. I have seen cockroaches leave here in utter outrage. We need to make this palace and ourselves at least halfway presentable, and we need to do it in just a bit over one and a half days.” She let her gaze wander over the ponies in front of her. “Any questions?”
Shadow Charger, a tall, sinewy stallion who had been with them for about fifteen months, raised his hoof.
Shade pointed at him. “Yes, Shadow?”
“Yeah,” Shadow Charger said, “Just so I get this right, you are all in the military?”
Swift Shade's mouth dropped open. “Wait... are you saying you aren't?!”
Shadow Charger grinned sheepishly. “Not as such, no. I'm just an old friend of Dusky. I was kinda between residencies, and he offered me to crash with him for a while.”
“No I didn’t,” Dusk quickly denied, “I didn’t even know they kicked you out of your apartment. You just followed me here all the way from home after I came back from R&R. And that still blows my mind, considering it’s a week-long trip.”
Shadow just waved his hoof dismissively. “Details. Anyway, I guess it became kind of a permanent deal. I thought this was just a flatshare.”
Swift Shade felt as if she was about to go cross-eyed. “A flatsha... Shadow, you live in a palace! You don't pay rent. At all! In fact, you get paid to live here! When I noticed that you weren't getting your pay, I wrote a letter to the Equestrian Office for Salaries and Pensions and told them to send more money. They just did that, by the way, without even double checking it, which raises all kinds of uncomfortable questions about how they spend our tax bits, but that's a headache for another day. What kind of flatshare did you think this was!?”
Shadow Charger looked at the ponies around him and smiled happily. “A really, really awesome one.”
Swift Shade covered her eyes with a hoof. “You are killing me here, man. All right, just so we're clear on this, is anypony else not actually supposed to be here?”
She noticed Starlit Sky poking Moonlight Sonata in the ribs, but Moonlight just shook her head and made a zip-up motion across her mouth. Starlit Sky rolled her eyes and raised her hoof. “Hey Shade? Sorry, but Sonny isn't technically military either.”
Swift Shade sighed. “Define 'technically’.”
“Not at all,” Starlit Sky said with an embarrassed grin. She put her leg around the other mare and went on to explain, “She's here because I asked her to move in with me. She hasn't been getting service pay, though. I think you once asked me if everything is taken care of with her, and I said yes. So I guess we misunderstood each other there, but that was probably for the best.”
Moonlight Sonata looked extremely annoyed at this. “So, I could have gotten paid to live here all this time? What a total ripoff.”
“I always thought that twenty-two was a bit of an odd number,” Shade mumbled, “Okay. You know what? I'm in serious trouble anyway, and we are going to need all the help we can get. So congratulations Moonlight Sonata and Shadow Charger, you are now honorary members of the Night Guard, ranked private. Do us proud.”
Moonlight Sonata seemed unsure how to react to that. “Is that, like, a job?” She emphasized the last word as if it were an obscenity.
Swift Shade scratched her head and shrugged. “I guess it is now.”
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The Description alone warrants this a automatic like from the images of the possibilities it puts in a persons head
This is perfect in so many ways it's not even funny. Rather than bothering to try and express this adequately, I'm just going to hit those little buttons shaped like a star and an eyeball.
So...Derpy is Pinkie now?
Okay, I'll buy that.
This promises to be very entertaining. I'll be keeping an eye on this story.
Quickly, before this story updates, we have to put forward our version of what Luna in this story will be like. The more hilarious, the better.
We could always get stereotypical Gamer!Luna, who recruits the batponies into being her wingponies in multiplayer games (assuming they get a connection all the way out there).
Or she could be some sort of hardcore military sergeant, fighting the slapstick attitudes of these podunkian batponies. I foresee something like this (warning: foul language).
On that note, Derpy is learning from Pinkie Pie? Would explain her awesome antics in this chapter.
I vote that Luna be a mix of like her *new forming Gamer self* after all she has not been back very long yet so she still both in her filly form learns about games ,and stuff, and a fading military sergeant self.
P.S. and a Prankster she is after the former bearer of the element *Laughter*!!
Also was the former bearer of the elements loyalty and honesty as well! 
Ok, funny as hell. I really like the conscription at the end. Plz write more!
How is this still in the grey? How has this not gotten enough likes to show the count? THIS IS BLASPHEMY! >:[
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Oh, now worries there. More is coming, in fact, this particular story is already finished. There are two more chapters coming up shortly, I just wanted to spread it out a bit. Glad you're having fun so far.
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Now that you mention it, Derpy is approaching Pinkie levels of reality manipulation here. But the main idea was to let the Derpster catch a little break. Whenever she shows up in a story (or the show, because amazingly, that's a thing again 
) she has a tendency to mess things up for everyone around her. So I still made her ditzy enough to essentially break reality, but somehow, it all works out in her favor.
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Ha