Golden Prose

by Field

11

Being an earth pony was regarded by some as being on the low rung of the society ladder. Being a little heartier than unicorns and pegasi was hardly a skill. Tonight it just meant that the part of the crater caused by my body would be a little bigger than the other three ponies.

Without the forward momentum from our pegasus deputy propelling the chariot the unicorns’ levitation magic was failing. Their magical attachment to the vehicle kept them from being thrown, but I wasn’t so lucky. With my forehooves wrapped through the reigns and the spotlight in my teeth I was useless. I was being thrashed around too much to aim the light on the Taken for longer than a split second.

I was tempted to try stashing the light and breaking out the flare gun, but I was afraid just opening my saddlebags would turn them into sails and tear me away from the reigns. The ropes were meant to provide control, not support my thrashing body weight.

Relatively stable thanks to her magic, Golden Prose shifted her position in the chariot and brought one of her saddlebag flashlights to bear on the Taken pegasus. The shadow pony squirmed in pain but refused to release its grip on the deputy’s wings. Even if one of us could manage to get our hooves on a gun we couldn’t risk hitting Ironbars.

Suddenly I felt a hoof invasively probing through my vest and the chariot listed violently to the left. Vinyl Scratch had released her levitation spell on the left wheel and jammed her foreleg through the back of my vest, hooking onto it to dangle behind my back. I tried to yell out to her, but with the light in my mouth nothing came out comprehensible.

The chariot was threatening to spin into a full blown spiral of death. If the DJ was hoping to use me as extra padding when we hit the ground I seriously doubted it would help.

I tried to look over my shoulder but Vinyl’s body blocked my view, though I was certain I felt her magically rummaging through my saddlebags. She must have found what she was looking for because soon after I felt her other forehoof loop through my vest again and her chest planted on my back. I tried to look back again, but before I could the space above my head abruptly burst into blinding red flames.

An emergency flare sheathed in Vinyl’s magical grip pushed past my head and slowly fought its way against the wind up to Ironbars. It hesitated above the deputy and the Taken pegasus, and then burrowed itself into the back of the shadow pony’s head. The creature let out an unearthly shriek and dissolved into a cloud of ash that blew back into our faces.

Ironbars flared his newly freed wings and tried to ease out of the dive. The adjustment leveled us out but pitched us sideways, nearly twisting the pegasus out of the sky once more. Vinyl Scratch quickly resumed her levitation of the left wheel to even us out once more.

As we stabilized I flopped hard onto the floor of the chariot. The DJ’s body landed with a thud on my back and then rolled off onto the floor beside me. We looked back and forth out the back of the chariot to each other and then shared a ‘did that really happen’ nervous laugh. The tree line was only about ten yards below us.

“Here come the other two!” Golden Prose shouted, shaking us out of our false sense of victory. The remaining shadow pegasi were passing upside down overhead a yard or so overhead, their shrouded heads tilted down to look at us.

We were too close to the ground to recover from another fall and the trees below us were too thick to afford us any hopes of landing. The Taken pegasi would have to be dealt with before they could get their hooves on Ironbars again.

Pinning the spotlight between my hooves on the floor of the chariot and quickly extracted the flare gun from my saddlebags. After confirming the loaded round was live I adjusted the bit-grip in my teeth and said a little prayer to Celestia that my aim wasn’t as bad as I feared.

One of the Taken shot ahead of us and did a quarter loop down, aiming himself to hit Ironbars head on. The other dropped back behind us. I planted my hooves on the front of the chariot, aimed the gun as best I could, then let loose with a flare at the oncoming shadow pegasus.

The gun was fairly idiot proof, but the flares weren’t meant to be shot directly into oncoming wind. The thought didn’t occur to me until the flare left the barrel of the gun and blew back past my head, nearly igniting my mane.

Celestia was on our side this time. The flash from the flare scared the oncoming pegasus enough to make him divert his course. The pursuer was not as lucky. The tumbling flare caught the Taken pegasus squarely in the nose and reduced its head to ash. The rest of its body sailed gracefully downward and shattered into dust on the trees below.

With that lesson learned I ejected the spent cartridge and loaded in a fresh one. So much for saving the rounds for the tornado; I now only had one spare shot left. That was assuming I could take out the remaining pegasus with one round.

The last pegasus, however, was nowhere to be seen. Apparently they airborne Taken retained a bit more of their intelligence than their earth pony counterparts. This one was unwilling to put himself in the line of fire again after seeing what had happened to his wing-pony.

I felt a hoof touch my back legs and immediately turned to look at Vinyl Scratch, wondering what she was getting at this time. The look on her face told me I was wrong in my initial assumption, but by that point it was too late. I was already sailing off the rear of the chariot, courtesy of the Taken pegasus clinging to the underside.

In a split second Golden Prose and Vinyl Scratch caught me in their magical grip, at the cost of the chariot’s levitation. The rear of the vehicle sagged horribly, pointing Ironbars in an upward angle at which flight was nearly impossible.

The sudden drop of the chariot shook loose the last Taken pegasus and gave me a split second opportunity while he was still regaining control. I fired off a round from the flare gun and watched as it rocketed toward my target. The flare went high and burned through the pegagus’ wings, dissolving them to ash.

If I hadn’t been squirming uncomfortably in midair I might have laughed as the Taken pony shrieked and flailed comically, trying to flap wings that were no longer there. He tumbled down past me and shattered to pieces on the trees below, just like his wing-pony.

Similarly we were too low to recover. The mares managed to raise me back into the chariot just as we struck the treetops. The wheels of the chariot snagged and tore off as Ironbars scampered through the upper canopy, trying not to dump us out. Finally the deputy managed to crash land us relatively snuggly into the upper boughs of an enormous white oak tree.

From the crash site it took us another forty five minutes to reach the radio station. The small patches of forest that covered the landscape between Ponyville and the Everfree were much less dense than the magical forest itself. We easy navigated through by following the blinking pegasus warning light at the top of the station’s broadcast antenna. From its perch on a rocky hillside on the horizon it called to us with the promise of light and safety.

When the building itself came into view however, we realized that promise had been broken. Though the antenna itself still blinked with life the studio itself was dark.

“The warning lights are on a separate circuit running off a solar battery.” Vinyl Scratch explained as we approached. “It’s enough to keep the lights running for weeks in case of an outage, but not enough to run the studio itself. That’s what the generator is for.”

Like many other buildings in Ponyville the radio station was a rather dull looking single story affair. Most of the plaster and paint had been stripped from the wooden timbers by wind and weather of the higher elevation. It looked more like a residence that’d had its sunroom converted into a studio. This didn’t seem a very fitting lair for the obnoxious DJ.

“Excuse the mess. I didn’t bother cleaning after I thought you two had snubbed my interview.” Vinyl ushered us through the front door into what still very much resembled a living room, complete with pizza boxes and empty cardboard soda cases.

The open windows kept the room from smelling stale, but the air had a strange mixture of scents. A hint of fraternity house with overtones of mare mane product. Either the station was also this unicorn’s home or she had severe workplace cleanliness issues.

We all piled into the sunroom studio and found corners to rest in while the blue-maned unicorn busied herself at fuse box partially hidden behind a miniature potted palm tree. She flipped several breakers and paused for a response. None came so she repeated the process again, but to no avail.

Vinyl Scratch huffed and dropped to her haunches. “There is no reason for the power to be out, and besides that the generator should have kicked in immediately anyway. Some pony needs to go start the Luna-damned thing by hoof while I reset all my equipment.”

Golden Prose started to open her mouth to volunteer but I quickly cut her off by loudly clearing my throat.

“I’ll go. Remember what happened last time you let yourself get separated.”

The mare shot me a look. “Let myself?”

I made a point to ignore her and turned to Vinyl Scratch, pointing a hoof out the door hoping for directions.

“Back door is through the kitchen. Generator is out in what used to be the root cellar.”

Before anyone else could protest I scooped up the spotlight in my mouth and trotted quickly out to the kitchen. I had to chuckle as I passed through. It had the same look of disuse as the kitchen in my old apartment. Only the refrigerator and the microwave had the tell-tale nicks and dents of repeated use by hooves.

The cellar was just at the edge of the small clearing before the forest resumed dominating the landscape. It looked essentially like a glorified hole in the ground. Under the half rotted door was a set of earthen steps that descended at least fifteen feet below ground.

I wasn’t worried about encountering any Taken down there. After dealing with the Taken pegasi in midair, dealing with anything on the ground seemed like a walk in the park. In the narrow confines of the cellar my spotlight would be brighter than they could handle.

With my light pointed dead ahead I trotted down into the dank cellar one hoof at a time. The beam hit the dusty floor at the bottom of the stairs, but when I reached the floor myself I was startled. In no direction could I find a wall aside from the one behind me. The darkness seemed to extend out infinitely in every direction, consuming the light before it could reach anything of substance.

If this really was a cellar there was something very wrong with it and I wasn’t going to stick around to see what it was. I spun round on my hooves and made for the stairs, only to find that they were gone as well. The rectangle of moonlight where the doorway had been was nowhere to be found.

“I was beginning to wonder if something had befallen you. I’m glad to see that you have finally arrived.” A silky smooth voice oozed out of the darkness behind me. My light fell from my mouth as I whirled around, nearly bumping into the nose of Princess Luna.

Or maybe it wasn’t the princess. Not quite. This alicorn’s coat was much darker, almost black. But maybe that was just the darkness playing tricks on my eyes.

“Princess! I didn’t expect to see you again after the other night.” I took a step back so that we weren’t muzzle to muzzle. “But what do you mean ‘finally arrived’? Coming here was sort of a last minute decision.”

The princess took a step forward, erasing the personal space I had created.

“My dear stallion, how could I have not known where you were going?” A glint of white appeared in my periphery as a scroll floated into view. “It is all just as the author has written. One only has to skip ahead in the narrative.”

I didn’t need to read the scroll to know it was probably another page from Golden Prose’s manuscript. I wasn’t sure what the princess was doing with it besides just making me uncomfortable.

“But if she wrote all this than why doesn’t she remember writing it?” I carefully nudged my fallen spotlight with one hoof, turning it so the beam was shining on one of the princess’ hooves. Outwardly at least it showed no reaction to the light. She wasn’t a Taken, but something about her just felt wrong.

“Well now that would be a question for the author herself, would it not?” The wrong-Luna tilted her head quizzically. “If she does not remember writing it, then she must have had her reasons for creating such a twist in the story. But are you truly certain that she does not remember writing it?”

I had taken Golden Prose’s word as gospel since the night we had met. She had seemed as genuinely distressed by the situation as I had. Maybe I had been naïve. It had been a while since I’d heard her mention Bookmark. Something about that didn’t seem right.

I took several more determined steps backwards from the alicorn. “Alright, if we’re really going to talk about this why don’t you tell me who you really are?” I braced myself. “I know you aren’t the real Princess Luna.”

The alicorn tilted her head and then cracked a grin that seemed wholly inappropriate for the situation.

“Well I am not the one you met, but I am a Princess Luna. She and I are two halves of the same whole. It would be unfair to say that either one of us is anymore the princess of the night than the other.”

That was when it clicked in my mind and the alicorn’s coloration became familiar.

“You’re… you’re Nightmare Moon, aren’t you?”

The pony blinked out of the darkness and reappeared by my side.

“I do not care much for that name, you know.” She reached under my chin with a hoof and forced me to look up at her. “But for you I will make an exception, if only for the sake of moving this conversation forward.”

She brought her muzzle so uncomfortably close to mine that I could smell her breath. It smelled like the humid air with a hint of ozone common after a late night thunderstorm. I recoiled both out of fear and embarrassment.

“You’re just something from the Dark Presence playing off of everypony’s fear of Nightmare Moon.” I tried to explain her away as if it would diminish her power. “The real Nightmare Moon was destroyed by the Elements of Harmony. Princess Celestia hid the truth about the Everfree Forest from everypony, but she wouldn’t have announced her sister’s return if she wasn’t completely certain you had been destroyed.”

Nightmare Moon laughed loudly and flexed the hoof I had recoiled from. “This is the same Princess Celestia that created Discord, the harbinger of chaos. She is not infallible, as you ponies seem to believe. Had she known that I had merely been split off from my counterpart I am certain she would have suppressed knowledge of our return just as efficiently as anything else.”

The alicorn flared her wings, putting on a show just as much for her amusement as mine. “You have been spoon-fed tidbits of the truth, my dear stallion. Just the choice morsels that serve the purposes of those who perceive themselves to be your better.” Her horn glowed and I found myself dangling helplessly in the air before her. Oddly enough the tingling and nausea I usually experienced during levitation were absent.

“I was cast into dormancy upon my return, but Princess Luna was well aware of my existence after the Elements of Harmony split us apart. Yet she told no one. Why do you think that was, hmm?”

I squirmed helplessly in the air as she slowly spun me like I was a product in a showcase display.

“Because you’re just a part of the Dark Presence!” It was hard to sound intimidating when she had me so vulnerable. “If she had told anyone about you they would have come to the Everfree to try destroying you for good. The forest would have corrupted them and started the whole process over again!”

“Then I should think it was fortuitous that you and the author arrived when you did!” The mare in the moon lowered me down and nuzzled the side of my neck gently. Her touch was cold. Given the humid night air it was almost pleasant. “And you too are quite lucky that I found you when I did.”

“How do you figure?” I scoffed, unable to shy away from the unwanted contact.

“You are just a pawn in all of this, Mossy Hooves. Both at the hooves of my counterpart and the author, Golden Prose.” She finally released me from her magical grip, easing me back down to the earthen floor. “Tell me, why is it that you help her? She means nothing to you and your efforts to assist her have very nearly gotten you killed twice so far.”

I shook my mane, trying to rid myself of the lingering sensation of her touch.

“She needed help and I was the only one there. Anypony would do the same.”

Nightmare Moon touched a hoof to her chin and rolled her eyes upward thoughtfully.

“A lovely sentiment, but are you certain it was not because you foalnapped her colt?”

She knew.