Chapter 1: Into the Light
People always talk about the three major types of ponies in Equestria. The Earth Ponies, strong of heart and body, their hooves pounding the land into submission before nurturing it delicately to bear all the necessities ponykind builds and thrives upon. The Unicorns, with their magic and majesty, masters of both the arts and the sciences - using their minds to guide and shape the world around them. And of course, the Pegasi; kings and queens of the sky, weather and clouds, soaring high above the masses.
However, there are other, less known races of pony. Of course, the royal Alicorns are few and far between but certainly can’t be ignored. One could say the Breezies resemble the larger ponies, and there are whispers of ponies deep in the sea. Our story, however, isn’t about those ponies.
Long ago, they were the royal guards of Princess Luna. Her chaperones and bodyguards, these strange ponies were often dusky in color. Deep blues, browns, greys and purples, on the opposite side of the spectrum of their overworld-dwelling cousins. They possessed bat-like wings and fangs, with slightly longer tufted ears and slitted eyes that easily cut through the dark.
The names of these ponies are long forgotten, as they disappeared back into their mountain caves when Princess Luna was banished to the moon. They call one another by their names, obviously, but due to their limited interaction with the outside world they’ve had no need for a name for their species. For the sake of ease, let us name them after the Princess they were once loyal to. We shall call them Lunar Ponies.
Their legs are strong, but they lack the matching stamina that the Earth Ponies possess, used more for chipping away layers of rock and rubble rather than running long distances and tilling fields. With exercise, they may be able to match the flying speed of a Pegasus, but few of these strange ponies use them for more than gliding or hopping from one ledge to another; and they certainly have little cause to stretch them and catch thermals.
Perhaps most notably, they possess limited magic. Unlike Unicorns who can learn a nigh-endless amount of spells, each Lunar Pony possesses a single ability. Sometimes magical, sometimes a physical augmentation; the strength and nature of a Lunar Pony’s ability varies from one pony to the next. Like their sun-dwelling cousins, each Lunar Pony possesses a cutie mark on their flank that typically indicates their ability.
Lunar Ponies live in mountains and caves, most commonly along the northern slope of the mountains that circle the Badlands and the Macintosh Hills. When Princess Luna was banished to the moon, the Lunar Ponies feared that Celestia would never lower the sun again, and the world would be burned and barren by never-ending sunlight. So they fled underground, forming colonies within the mountains. They’ve spent hundreds of years digging intricate systems of tunnels throughout the rocks, cultivating farms of fungus, mold and cave vines. Deep in these caves is where our story begins.
Sable was a young Lunar Pony. Her coat was a dark grey, like most of her kind, and her mane was a deep maroon, loosely hanging around her neck and unadorned. Violet, slitted-pupil eyes cut through the darkness as if it were day, curious and kind despite the ominous color. She was an only child, and came from a stable ‘home.’
She and her family lived nearly a quarter mile into the mountainside. The Lunar Ponies had hollowed out a massive, round cavern, pockmarked like a golf ball with caves and crevices in which individual families lived. None of these familial caves had a door, and were a neighbor nosy and impolite enough they could simply perch at the opening and watch the goings on. Fortunately, no one ever was.
From the ceiling hung massive globules of glowing goo, each attached to a faintly glowing orb that cast a faint light over the cavern. They were more for sentimental sake than anything else, after all; Lunar ponies were more than capable of seeing in the dark. Were one to sit at the bottom of the cavern and stare upward, the dangling orbs resembled the stars of the night sky their beloved Princess governed.
The most difficult part of the Lunar Pony’s engineering was the careful management of the water that babbled and lapped at the bottom of the cavern. It had been carefully tunneled inward from the mountain top, allowing the melted snow to flow down into the cavern, then back out to the river west of the mountain range.
Finally, raised slightly above the water in the very center of the cavern, laid the fungus farm. It was there all the food for the colony was communally tended and grown, each family taking no more than they needed. It functioned on an honor system, and no one had dare taken more than they deserved in ages.
This was the life Sable knew, and she found it so.. so…
boring.
The walls were grey. The food was grey. The ceiling had little dots of light on it, but it was still grey. The ponies were grey. Everything was grey! It was the same, and by Luna it was so incredibly boring.
She loved her people and her family. They’d never been anything but kind to her, the fillies and foals she’d grown up with were still her friends to this day. There were no silly rivalries and no bitter disputes. But that was precisely what made it so dull. Day in and day out was the same thing - crawl out of the cave, use the stone buckets to haul water onto the fungus and make sure everything was moist, listen to the Elders tell the stories of the old days when their wings kissed the sky, then back to sleep.
Day and night cycles were strange this deep in the mountain. They determined it by the amount of water flowing from the mountain top. Their ‘day’ phase was when the water flowed freely, the snow from the mountaintop melting in the sun and dripping through the channels. The night was when the water stopped, when it became cool enough for the snow to remain in its white and fluffy state. Most of the time they were active during the night, in memory of their lost Princess.
Grumping, Sable hauled her bucket out of the pool of water, wrinkling her nose and grunting with effort. Hooves splayed to either side, she staggered toward the fungus cropping and carefully tilted the bucket atop the brown and grey mushrooms.
“You seem cheerful today!” a voice chirped from her side, and a helpful nose appeared underneath her bucket of water, helping control the water.
“Ith that tharcathm?” Sable asked, lifting a brow.
The pony helping her was her best friend. She called him Mole, because he loved to dig - a trait that was an understandable asset given where they lived. He was a deep brown, his mane and tail resembling soot, with brilliant yellow eyes. His real name was Tremorhoof.. but she liked Mole better.
“Of course it’s sarcasm dear. You look like a snake ate your favorite toadstool,” he teased, giving a toothy grin as she took a few steps back and set the bucket aside. “What’s got your mane in a knot today?”
Sable paused, wrinkling her nose again as she peered at Mole, debating with herself. Complaining was usually frowned upon, nothing good ever came of it and if wind got back to the Elders that she was dissatisfied… well, nothing would happen. She’d be scolded, at best. Oh no, the disapproving stares, what ever would she do.
“Aren’t you BORED?” she asked her counterpart, her ears splaying to either side of her head as she turned toward him, stomping her hoof in the mud with a soft splorch.
“Bored?” Mole repeated, looking thoughtful as he tilted his head slightly to the side, seeming confused. “Well, tending the farm is never that exciting. I’d rather be digging the new tunnels, but we all gotta pitch in, right?”
“Not that,” Sable interrupted, sighing faintly as she gestured around them at the cavernous complex they called home. “Bored of all of this. The stone, the fungus, the same thing day in and day out. The Elders always talk about running under the sky, chasing the moon; don’t you ever.. well, want to?”
She turned her gaze to the other pony imploringly, but the stare he returned was blank and perplexed. She realized that the concept was evidently foreign to him, and why shouldn’t it be? Mole loved his life under the mountain. He was born for this.
“Nevermind,” Sable started with a sigh, breaking the stare.
“No no no, hold on,” Mole insisted, lifting his hoof and turning her face back toward him. “What are you talking about, Sable?”
“Well,” she began, and frowned, shifting her weight nervously. “Don’t you ever wanna get out of here? Actually see the sky? See what it’s like out there?”
“Why would you want to?” Mole asked, cocking his head to the side and dropping his hoof back into the mud, his wings trembling and folding close to his sides. “We have everything we need in here, and for all we know the Sun has baked everything outside to a crisp. It could be just as barren out there as it is plain in here. At least here we know what we have..”
“But we don’t know what’s out there!” Sable cried, her eyes widening as she stamped her hooves insistently. “It could be anything! Colors. Life. The Moon.. when was the last time a Lunar Pony saw the Moon, Mole? Seen our Princess?”
“I don’t know.. but why would you want to look upon our imprisoned Princess? The greatest tragedy to ever befall us? How could color possibly be worth the risk?” Mole asked with a soft gasp.
“So she knows she isn’t forgotten?” she stated flatly, peering at the brown pony with lidded eyes. “Because maybe, just maybe, we’re not meant to be stuck in literal holes in the wall?”
“You’re talking nonsense, Sable. Maybe you’ve just been around the shrooms too long, or some of the loopy ones have gotten into the field again… you should get some rest. Take the rest of the day, I’ll cover your shift,” Mole insisted.
“But- I’m not- I- guh!” Sable gave a frustrated snort, turning around sharply and stepping into the shadow of the bucket she’d set down, disappearing.
Sable’s special ability was known as shadowdancing. She had the ability to step into and out of shadows that were within a reasonable distance of one another, which was particularly handy within their colony. After all, everything was shadowed here.
Certain shadows were deeper than others, and the darker - and more stable - the shadow, the easier it was to dance between. A moving object like another pony was extremely difficult to move to, whereas things like buildings were very easy.
Sable stepped out of the shadows several hundred feet above the fungus farms, ruffling her leathery wings and looking around. Several Lunar Ponies milled about, going about their daily tasks. A little filly wove in and out of their mother’s hooves, as she carefully balanced a basket of fungus between her wings. Above her, a stallion tended to the water channels.
Nothing would stop her from simply walking out. It wasn’t forbidden, there were no guards or doorways or obstacles in the way. It was really quite amazing how that quarter-mile gap to the outside was the only thing that had stood between them and the rest of the world for so long. That no one had, in all this time, thought to just leave.
Could she do it? It was unheard of, but things were only unheard of until they happened, that was certainly no excuse. Could she leave all of her friends, her family? The life she knew, and brave the great unknown?
Maybe she was just getting a bit ahead of herself. Small steps at first. Surely it couldn’t hurt just to go the entrance of the cave. It was only a quarter mile, after all. Mole would think she’d gone home, and her parents would think she was working at the farm. She could be at the exit and back within an hour, two at the outside.
Just to the entrance. She could handle that.
Quietly nosing around the crowd of ponies, Sable edged into the wide hallway that lead away from the cavern. The dust was thick and swirled around her hooves by the time she made it out of earshot, kicking up and clinging to her coat. She paused a moment and leaned over her shoulder, staring at the circular hoofprint trail behind her.
Her hooves clapped loudly against the stone as she resumed her stride. This tunnel seemed like every other tunnel in the mountain. Sure, it was a bit wider and covered in layers upon layers of dust, but it was as grey and featureless as every other part of the colony. It became hard to tell just how long she’d been walking. Her only company was the dusty miasma and the sound of her own steps.
She didn’t dare shadowdance. She had no idea where she’d come out, and that was always a hazard of shadowdancing. If she didn’t know the space she was stepping into, she ran the risk of trying for a place that was too small. Her worst experience, by far, was when she’d tried shadowdancing into what had turned out to be the shadow of a stalactite. She hadn’t had time to react as she fell toward the ground, and had nearly ended up impaled in the process.
She took to counting her steps. Each sharp clap rang hollowly, and the counting at least gave her a way to pass the time and stop from going absolutely batty. No pun intended.
By the time she hit five hundred she’d lost count at least a half dozen times, but by then something else had managed to capture her attention. The walls were, in spots, adorned with carvings. They looked almost as though they’d been done by horn, and depicted ponies of all shapes and sizes together. Earth ponies, mermares, pegasi, unicorns.. even the lunar ponies. Standing underneath the sun and the moon.
What a load of pony poo.
It did suggest that these caverns were far older than she’d originally thought, but Sable didn’t pause to give them more than a cursory glance. It wasn’t the past she was interested in; they heard about the past all the time from the Elders during their ranting, never ending story times. Though, the stories they told didn’t really match with the carvings.
Shaking her head, Sable looked forward once more and came to an abrupt stop. She coughed loudly as the dust plumed around her, lifting her wings to shield her eyes. After a few moments she cautiously lowered her wings, and stared toward what had made her stop so quickly.
Light. Real, actual light. It was so bright she couldn’t stare at it for long, and it was.. breathtaking. She understood why the other ponies could be tempted by its shine, but it was almost painful to look at. Her eyes, eyes that had never actually seen the light of day, watered and stung.
She couldn’t see anything beyond the light just yet, even as her pupils slitted to nearly needle-thin vertical lines. The light at the end of the tunnel was like a portal to nowhere.. or perhaps a portal to everywhere. Was it really the end of the tunnel, or just the beginning of everything?
Even though her eyes still hurt, she moved toward the spot on the horizon that promised her the world. The pain wouldn’t go away, but her eyes began to adjust, and she could see flecks of color within the sphere of brightness.
They were shapeless at first. Blobs of green and blue, but not the muted blue of the water in the cavern or the the pukey green of the moss and mold that lined the crevices. These were bright greens and vivid blues. Colors that took her breath away and made her pace quicken.
As she grew closer to the light more colors came into view. Browns, yellows, whites… she stopped at the mouth of the cave, and looked over the glorious expanse that had unfolded before her.
The mountainside extended below her, even the familiar rock sparkled and shone as the sunlight caught the tiniest flecks of metal and mineral. Below that waves of grain and grass rolled in the afternoon wind, like hundreds of thousands of tiny hands waving up at the Lunar Pony. She could see what looked like a stitch across the plains, and her eyes grew even wider as she saw what looked like a mechanical caterpillar chugging along it.
In the distance were trees. Tons of trees, each one dotted with flecks of red. Red was a color she wasn’t familiar with, they didn’t have much red under the mountain. Even her mane was maroon, red’s dreary cousin. Things that would have looked red mostly came across as brown or simply… dark.
Her mouth hung open as her gaze continued to pan, slowly turning upward. The sky was obviously the blue she’d seen, and it was vast. The concept of the endless sky was nearly as foreign as all of the colors, and her wings gave a nervous little flutter at just the thought of touching it like the stories said their ancestors once did.
And then something caught her eyes. Another color was soaring against the blue of the sky, one that her mind and eyes said didn’t belong. It was yellow, and trailed blue behind it.. it wasn’t until it burst through one of the fluffy white misshapen things that she could only assume were clouds that she realized what it was.
A pegasus.
It was far too high up for her to see any details, certainly far too high to see her against the mountainside, but there it was. Had they always been so close, she wondered? How many had stood atop this very mountain, not knowing what dwelled within it? Maybe they did know, and they’d just left them alone.
Question after question flew through her mind as she watched the pegasus continue into the distance until it was nothing but a dot. She quivered from the tufted tips of her ears to the bottoms of her hooves, and it took a long time for her to realize exactly why she was shaking. It was an emotion she hadn’t felt in a long time, not since she’d run out of new things to explore within the cavern. Excitement.
She wasn’t quite sure she could bare going back into the darkness of the colony. She yearned to see what Luna’s night looked like, and she certainly wasn’t going to see that back inside. She’d come this far, why not keep going? The world wasn’t barren and burnt by the everlasting sun like Mole had thought. It was vast, and it screamed for her to explore it. Who was she to ignore it?
Spreading her leathery, bat-like wings wide, Sable leapt from the mountainside and let the air catch underneath her wings, gliding toward places unknown.
Meanwhile still under the mountain, Mole hummed happily as he bucked against the loose dirt that had fallen in front of a family’s cave. Each firm strike resonated within the blockage, shaking it loose and causing it to crumble and fall aside. The stallion beamed at the thanks given by the family, and trotted off on his way.
He paused as he passed Sable’s cave. Curious… Sable wasn’t inside. Leaning forward, he peered from side of the hollowed out cave to the other, his tufted ears slowly folding back against his head.
She wasn’t here. She… wasn’t here. Oh, crap!
Mole hopped from one hoof to the other, prancing around in a slow circle. Crap, crap, crap! Had she really gone through with it? Did she really leave? What was he supposed to do!? He couldn’t very well just let her leave and bake in the everlasting sun. She was one pony, out there all on her own!
But he didn’t want to go outside. Nope. He liked the dirt, and the dark, and digging and tunnels. Not the sky… or the concept of the sky. And what would everyone else say?
He took a few stuttering steps forward, chewing on his lower lip with his dull little fangs. Maybe he should tell someone. If a group of them left and went after her, they’d be more likely to get her back and then he wouldn’t have to face the scary light by himself. But if he did that, they’d both probably get in trouble.
He couldn’t do that to her. He liked Sable. If he left now, though, he might be able to get her and get back before too many ponies noticed they were missing.
Mole took off at a run for the wide tunnel that signaled the path out of the mountain, earning himself several confused looks as he passed. The sight of the smaller hoofprints in the dust only confirmed what he feared - someone had gone this way recently. Never breaking stride, the stallion bolted down the tunnel. He had to get to her before it was too late!