XV. Bed, Brad, and Beyond

His silver armor shone with cold light like the moon’s, but the spear in his hand blazed with golden fire. His palms were sweaty, his hands growing weak; the rein in his left began to slip through the fingers of his metal gauntlet.

Princess Luna was between his legs. She spared him a sharp glance, but her eyes had turned to blazing white flame. “Drive!” she shouted, and then she surged forward.

The great monster before him, covered in a mismatched jumble of waving arms and legs, held Rainbow Dash in a pincer like a crab’s. It had already crumpled Rainbow’s barding like a tin can, and she screamed.

Brad roared an inarticulate battle cry. He forgot everything Luna had hastily taught him, and the spear slid from his grasp as it struck the monster’s hide. One of the monster’s arms swung down, and the back of its gnarled hand struck Brad full in the chest, dislodging him from the saddle and sending him backwards over Luna’s croup.

As he fell, he saw Luna rear, and her horn crackled with lightning. He heard her yelling something, but he could no longer understand her words. After that came the lilting voice of Luna’s page, crying the emergency spell.

Through the black clouds overhead, a great square-rigged ship in full sail burst into view. Brad’s back struck the ground. The crackle of electric current met his ears and the stench of searing flesh met his nose. The monster’s snarls turned to high-pitched shrieks, but over the cacophony, Brad heard Luna laughing. She shouted, “The veil is rent! Pipsqueak, thou hast called it down from the Lighter Slumber! We are saved!”

The ship plummeted toward them, and the wasteland dissolved to inky blackness. All sensations of fatigue and pain disappeared. Then the blackness, too, dissolved, and nothing was left except pure, white light.

Brad’s head swam with shadows. When he opened his eyes, he at first saw nothing but a blue expanse, yet he felt soft sheets and heavy blankets around him, so he supposed himself in his bed at home. He was warm and comfortable, so, with a yawn and a stretch, he turned onto his side, and his arm fell across something furry and warm.

Like a lock falling into place, his mind snapped fully awake. He realized he was not at home in his own bed, but somewhere in Equestria—apparently in bed with a pony.

His stomach clenched up.

A few apropos but unprintable expressions passed through his head as he sat upright. Then a few more passed through when he realized he was wearing nothing but an ill-fitting terrycloth bathrobe.

. . . An ill-fitting but exceptionally soft terrycloth bathrobe. For a moment, he ran his fingers over it, distracted by its luxurious texture and wondering where he could get one cut to fit him, but then the pony at his side yawned, smacked her lips, blinked her eyes, and looked up at him.

“Oh,” she said. “Hey.”

“Rainbow Dash,” said Brad. “Dammit, why are you in bed with me? I definitely do not remember—oh, damn it all to hell, it was the tea, wasn’t it?”

Something behind Brad stirred, and he realized that what he had been propping himself against was not a pillow. He turned around and found himself staring into the eyes of Princess Luna, against whose shoulder he had presumably spent the night lying.

“Excellent,” said Luna. “Thou art awake. I had thought I might be forced to arouse thee.”

“You keep your arousals to yourself.” Brad tucked the bathrobe around his legs and skittered away from her.

Rainbow yawned again, stretched her forelimbs, hopped off the bed, and shook herself like a dog. Her long forelock stood in ratty bunches around her face. “What’s your problem, anyway?”

“What do you mean, what’s my problem? What are you doing here? What am I doing here?”

Luna sighed. “I feared as much. Tell me the last think thou dost remember.”

Brad looked at her again. Her expression and voice were both perfectly calm, but that parade of emotion still flowed across her luminous eyes like a raging river.

Brad opened his mouth to answer, but then paused and frowned. “The last thing—?”

Luna nodded.

“Uh, we played chess—”

One of her eyebrows lifted, and Luna turned her face from him. “Then I must explain it all again. I suppose it can’t be helped.”

Rainbow Dash spread her wings and lifted into the air. “Wait, you don’t remember last night? Anything about last night? But you were awesome last night!”

“Indeed,” Luna added. “I was most satisfied, especially considering that it was thy first time.”

Brad blinked. “What?”

“The Dreaming,” Luna said, her voice now tinged with a faint hint of impatience. “I took thee into the Deeper Slumber, as I said I would. I was thy princess and thy steed, and we did battle against the forces of Nightmare. ’Twas glorious!”

Brad blinked again. “Really?”

“Indeed.”

“You seriously don’t remember?” Rainbow asked, forelimbs crossed.

“No . . . and how did you get here, Rainbow Dash? And for that matter, where am I—?”

Rainbow groaned and rolled her eyes.

Luna hopped gracefully from the bed. “Come, Brad, let us rise and meet the new day. I shall explain—again.”

Muttering to himself, Brad made sure the bathrobe was tightly closed about his frame, and then he followed. He sucked in his breath when his feet met the ice-cold floor.

At last, he took notice of his surroundings. The bed on which he had spent the night was large and luxurious, a featherbed, no doubt, as evident from its softness. The sheets were silk, and piled upon them were pillows encased in intricately embroidered samite. The frame of the bed appeared to be a single piece of cast gold made with high, spiraling pillars at its four corners, which together supported a Persian dome, also of gold, the underside of which was a canopy of dark blue silk studded with diamonds arranged to represent the constellations of the night sky. Sculpted into the imposing bedframe were high-relief images of wraith ponies like those Brad had met on the Black Ship the night before. They swarmed around the high pillars and flew across the dome, and under the bed itself, on the platform, sculpted wraith stallions were depicted swooping upon terrified earth pony mares. Intermixed with the sculptures, and apparently carved into the gold with a chisel, were strangely shaped and elaborate runes that Brad thought almost seemed to spell words he knew, though when he looked at them directly, they held no meaning for him.

Surrounding the bed was a blank floor of dark basalt blocks, deeply carved into which was a vast druid’s claw. Some gummy black substance filled its grooves. Surrounding the pentacle was the carven image of a serpent devouring its own tail. Outside this protective circle stood five tall stanchions, also of gold, holding smoldering censers. Brad’s nose twitched, and he detected the heavy scent of olibanum.

Beyond the stanchions was inky darkness, though hints of murmuring and skittering in the distance suggested that the chamber in which he stood was vast.

“There was little danger last night,” Luna said, “since thou slept within my wards. Thou couldst have died, ’tis true, but thou couldst not have been Destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” Brad’s teeth chattered, and he wrapped his arms around himself.

“Indeed. For one who ventures into the Deeper Slumber unprepared, there is always the chance of corruption by the dark influences of the House of Silence. But come, we have much to do today, and I believe my hoofmaiden hath readied my bath.”

“Where are we?” Brad asked again.

Luna laughed and tossed her head, causing her starry mane to whip in its mysterious wind. “I am sure I told thee at the first: we have come to the Aerie, Brad, my stronghold.”

She lifted her head, and her horn glowed like a beacon. The small circle of light around the bed expanded, and now Brad could see that he was upon a platform at the top of a massive stone pyramid set with steps, like a temple of the Aztecs. This imposing dais stood within a vast chamber, the walls of which were of blank basalt cut into cubes, each three or four times the height of a man. Luna’s light did not quite reach to the ceiling high overhead, but Brad heard rustling and squeaking and shrill cries that suggested this enormous hall was home to a colony of bats. He smelled only dust and heavy incense, however, so he supposed that Luna had some magical method of preventing these bats from befouling her home.

The bats disconcerted Brad a little, but they were nothing compared to the wraiths, who lounged on the high, steep steps of the pyramid. They stretched themselves out languidly and sometimes even draped across one another, as if they were snakes. They also hissed like snakes and sometimes yawned widely to show their needle-like fangs. Their slit eyes glinted yellow in the light of Luna’s horn, and they stared at Brad with expressions cold and cunning.

The pyramid was at least six stories high, but far below, at the base of the steps, Brad could see strange instruments of brass, shelves of books, and a table laden with scrolls, all surrounding a vast pentagram of beaten silver set into the floor, in the center of which was a dark stain, like a burn.

“Whoa,” Brad muttered under his breath, “this princess is metal.” In his head played one of his favorite songs from the band Redressed Several Times Over, “Satan Is My Homeboy.”

He heard squeaking and chattering behind him, and when he turned around, he saw a sight still more horrible than all the others he had thus far beheld in Luna’s dreadful Aerie: there, crawling out of the silken sheets of the bed and stretching its furry little paws as it yawned, was a large, bushy rodent.

Brad’s heart stopped, and he swayed on his feet. One cheek twitched as he raised a hand and pointed. “Uh, uh, uh—”

“Ah, Tiberius!” Luna cried. She swept up the rodent in her hooves and rubbed its nose with hers. “How is Mommy’s little Tibby-wibby-kins? Who’s a good little opossum? Yes thou art! Yes thou art!”

Brad clutched his chest and ran his tongue across his dry lips. “Opossum,” he muttered. “I hate oppossums—”

Rainbow Dash hovered at his shoulder. “Bad experience?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it. Was I in bed with that thing all night, too?”

“Dunno, but probably. I didn’t notice ’im last night.”

“I just got up, and this is already the worst day ever.” He turned to Rainbow and poked a finger against her breast. “Not a word to Twilight, got it?”

“Word about what? Your fear of opossums?”

“No, she knows about that. I mean about this.” He gestured toward Luna’s elaborate bed.

“Yeah, she is gonna be kinda mad about that.”

“Not a word, Rainbow!”

Rainbow scowled. “Sorry, but she’s gonna ask.” Still flapping her wings, she began to lower herself toward the floor far below. Luna, with her opossum clinging to her mane, walked down the steps, and though the wraiths hissed and snarled and snapped, they moved aside for her. Brad swallowed a large lump and, wincing from the cold stinging his feet, followed.

“What are you going to tell her?” Brad shouted at Rainbow’s back.

She looked over her shoulder. “The truth. Don’t worry—I’ll tell her you were awesome.”

“Don’t tell her that! Yow!” A wraith champed at Brad’s bare heels, and he stumbled as he jumped out of the way.

Luna also cast a glance over her shoulder. “You might wish to know,” she said, “that this Aerie was formerly a fortress of the pegasi. When Equestria was young, the city we now call Canterlot was Unicornia, ruled by King Bullion. The three tribes had recently made peace, so the Equestrian Order under Commander Hurricane constructed this fortress to protect Unicornia’s water supply: the Aerie sits, you see, atop the springs that feed the Latigo Falls, which flow through Canterlot.”

“Makes sense,” Brad said. Another wraith bit at him; he lost his footing and fell hard on his rump.

Luna continued, “It was Star Swirl the Bearded who anointed Celestia and me as princesses, though we at first intended only to be the ponies’ guardians, not their rulers. However, after the king, commander, and chancellor threw their crowns at my sister’s hooves and declared her the sovereign lady of all the land, she immediately disbanded the Equestrian Order. Celestia, you see, believed that with her skill in diplomacy and my skill in the fight—and with the Elements of Harmony—we had no more need of the pegasus ponies’ warlike ways. Thus the Aerie became neglected.” Luna lowered her head and said more quietly, “So, as I grew distant from my sister, I took it as my own.”

Brad rose again to his feet and rubbed his bruised backside. Rainbow Dash still had her back to him, but he noticed that her ears had swiveled around to point behind, apparently listening to all that Luna said.

“From the history I have learned since my return,” Luna continued, “I am made to understand that the three tribes formed a new military alliance to protect the kingdom once I was . . . ah . . . indisposed. That was the EUP, which in these days has degenerated into the Royal Guard—little more than a color guard, really—and the Wonderbolts.”

They reached the base of the pyramid, and one of the wraiths there gave a long, low chuckle. Rainbow Dash glared at him.

“Aye, the EUP,” the wraith said. “’Twas General Firefly decided to take the Aerie back from us wraiths, it was. She and five hundred pegasi came to storm the place—and a wraith ripped out her throat right in front of the main gate. The wraiths know he gave her fair warnin’, but the ponies claim his attack were unprovoked. Unprovoked! She ’ad a battalion at her back, but it were unprovoked, eh?”

He rose to his hooves, shook himself, and hissed at Rainbow, “History almost repeated ’erself last night, didn’t she, Missy?”

Rainbow Dash flew down and pressed her nose against his. “I coulda taken you.”

“Wanna test that?” He champed, forcing her to leap back.

Luna turned a cold glance on him. “Shivers, I expect better manners from my servants toward my guests.”

Shivers bowed his head. “Aye, Yer Worship. I dinna mean no harm, but she’s a saucy little chit, she is. Looks like one what needs a few nips from a stallion to settle ’er down.”

Rainbow ground her teeth together.

Contempt plain on her face, Luna turned from Shivers and said, “One good thing did come of it: by defending the Aerie, the wraiths protected my library and my wards, which my sister would have burned and destroyed, not knowing what she did. Had she accomplished this, all knowledge of the esoteric sciences would have disappeared for good, and the ponies would have been undefended against the malice of the Nightmare Realm during all my absence.”

Shivers gestured back up the stairs toward the bed. “Aye, we follow the Dark Princess, even when she be in chains. This tower, me lad, is the barrier between this world and yon world o’ dreams. ’Twere it to fall, Equestria would fall, and then all the world. The ponies hunted us wraiths without mercy for a full thousand years, but all that time, by keepin’ this tower, we kept them sane and kept their souls out of the torture pits of Uhnuman, the ungrateful nags.”

Brad looked back up at the high pyramid, his head tingling and hs heart thudding loudly in his ears.

“’Tis a dark business,” said Luna, “and one that hath much risk. Many of the creatures of the Deeper Slumber are pneumophageous, feeding on the souls of mortals, and the means by which we combat them are often as dark as they are. That darkness consumed me once, and I committed deeds I can nowise undo. Behold.”

She reared, exposing a set of scars on the inside of her right hind leg.

Luna’s voice echoed throughout the vast chamber. “Too proud of my power, I conjured divels and demons and had truck with the spirits of the middle air. The names of the lords of Acheron I carved into the flesh of my inner right thigh so that, within this circle before thee, I might call them up and make dark pacts. So long as the scars remain, the divels cannot touch me, but should these names be somehow effaced, the owners of those names would drag me in an instant to my eternal torment.”

With a ringing thud, like a doom bell, she landed on the floor again. A few minutes passed, during which all was silent in the great hall aside from the chattering of bats in the darkness overhead.

Brad cleared his throat. “You know,” he said, “I think I’d like to pass on this whole dream-warrior thing.”

Luna tipped her head back and laughed. “Ah, it will be fun! ’Tis an adventure! But come, we must ready ourselves for the day.” She shook her head and muttered, “Why must we have these meetings in the day? This hath utterly ruined my circadian rhythms . . . Starch Pudding! Where art thou, wastrel?”

“Here, Yer Worship.” The same stiff wraith Brad had seen the night before, with the same stiff collar, appeared at Luna’s shoulder, his face locked in an expression of disdainful gravity.

“Ah, good. Prepare tea for young Brad by my recipe, and put some of it in one of those fancy modern bottles—”

“A vacuum-sealed container, Yer Worship?”

“Indeed! So that he may have it with him in Council. And order Mandrake Root to prepare the bath.”

“Aye, she’s anticipated yer request and stands ready, she does.”

“Excellent!”

“Will ye sup, Yer Worship?”

“Nay, Starch. We shall travel to Canterlot and there, with my sister, break our fast with pastries and the juice of oranges! Come, Brad! Come, rainbow-striped one! Come, Tiberius! Let us away!”

Luna cantered off. Brad and Rainbow Dash looked at each other for a moment, shrugged, and followed. As they went, Shivers called, “’Ey, Rainbow Dash, now that ye have spent a night in yon princess’s bed, just remember there be another bed in this here Aerie what could use a warmer like yerself, and in which ye be always welcome.”

At that, the other wraiths sent up a chorus of cold laughter. Rainbow Dash ground her teeth again, but she continued on her way and didn’t turn around.

“Do you know him?” Brad asked.

“We met last night,” Rainbow answered through clenched teeth, “and he’s a complete jerk.”

“I gathered that much.”

“I flew here cuz Twilight asked me to, and that jerk wouldn’t let me in.”

“So what did you do?”

She chuckled, and some of the tension went out of her limbs. “I flew right past him.” She polished a hoof on her breast. “Gave ’em all a good show of my aerobatic skills—I dodged a few other wraiths, made a few quick moves, and had them all flappin’ around, runnin’ into each other, tryin’ to grab me. Luna stopped us with a spell, so then I explained how I came here because Twilight didn’t want you goin’ into the deep sleep thingy.”

“What did Luna say?”

Rainbow shrugged. “She said you were goin’ in anyway, so I said, okay, then I’d go in with you. And that’s how it went down.”

Brad nodded. “Okay, I think this is starting to make sense. I have just one more question.”

“Yeah?”

“Why the hell am I naked?”

Rainbow laughed.

A few minutes later, Brad was standing in the Aerie’s bath and protesting to a young wraith pony, neither still a filly nor yet quite a mare, who wanted to dress him.

“Milaird,” said the pony, “we spake on this yestereve, we did, when I disrobed and bathed ye. Dinna ye remember?”

The bath contained a broad pool recessed into the floor and abutting a rough wall of natural rock, down which poured a meandering, foaming stream of water. In the waterfall hung large satchels, which, Luna had said, held cloves, chrysanthemum blossoms, and other spices. The pool was dark, so dark Brad couldn’t see the bottom. But his teeth still chattered and his feet were numb, and he saw no rising steam, so he was sure the pool could not possibly be heated.

Luna, apparently unbothered by the cold, swam back and forth with easy, powerful strokes. “Thou must forgive him, Mandrake Root,” Luna called. “His memory hath been warped by his ventures into the Deeper Slumber. A lich struck him.”

“Are you honestly telling me,” said Brad, “that, last night, in this very spot, I let you take my clothes off?”

“Aye,” said Mandrake Root. “They were befouled with the stench o’ mermares. But I have laundered them for ye, I have.” She gestured to a small niche where Brad’s suit, freshly cleaned and pressed, hung on a rod.

“I didn’t even take them off myself?” he said. “I let you do it?”

“Aye.”

“Now I’m sure somebody slipped me something last night.”

“I am me mistress’s hoofmaiden. ’Tis me duty to entertain her guests.”

“That’s not a kind of entertainment I’m looking for.”

Mandrake Root furrowed her brow and ran a hoof along her short-cropped mane. “I dinna ken, milaird. As I told ye before, ’tis a disgrace for a laird to dress and undress his own self. That’s servant’s work, that is.”

“Why? Are your ‘lairds’ such imbeciles that they can’t even put on a shirt?”

Mandrake Root’s brow furrowed again, and plain confusion settled on her face. She looked to Luna.

Luna dunked her head under the water for a moment. When she surfaced again, she gulped air and tossed her wet mane. “Do not bother explaining, Mandrake Root. He wot not our ways, as I told thee before, and we wit not his. It is enough that we bear one another. But Brad”—she turned her bright gaze on him, and her face grew stern—“we have a saying here: ‘When in the griffon territories, do as the griffons.’ Say they nothing similar in thy land?”

“Well,” said Brad with a clearing of his throat, “I guess they do—”

“Is it considered polite in thy land to refuse the hospitality of thy hostess?”

“Uh, no. I don’t think so.”

“Neither is it here. So then, shew me whatever respect thou wouldst shew a householder of thine own kind. I offer thee the services of my hoofmaiden: accept them graciously, and I shall consider it a kindness to me and mine.”

Mandrake Root blinked her large eyes at Brad, smiled, and made an equine imitation of a curtsy.

Brad rubbed his temples. “You’re putting me in a tough position. You see, there are a few different things going on here. Where I’m from, no hostess offers to have a young girl take a guy’s clothes off or put them on—”

Luna climbed from the pool, and her opossum waddled up to her with a hairbrush in its paws. Luna clicked her tongue, and the opossum scrambled up her foreleg, over her shoulder, and onto her withers, where it began to brush her mane. “Allow me to cut this short, young Brad,” Luna said. “Thou didst explain yestereve that, in thy world, to walk about unclad is a mark of shame. I assured thee, as did my hoofmaiden, that to our equine eyes, thy strange body is but as that of the creatures of field or forest. Thou didst then agree, therefore, that there was no shame.”

“I don’t really know if I can explain the concept,” Brad said. “We have a thing called modesty—”

“We have it also,” Luna replied, “but it pertaineth to a mare’s concern for her scent or her demeanor, not her clothes. That would be not modesty but vanity.”

“What about a stallion?” Brad asked.

Mandrake Root laughed. “A modest stallion? ’Tis a funny thought.”

Although he didn’t remember, Brad could guess why he had acquiesced the night before. He was inclined to acquiesce now just to stop to the argument, but one thing prevented him—Rainbow Dash was climbing the rough cliff beside the waterfall. Luna and Mandrake Root he didn’t mind so much, but for whatever reason, the thought of dropping his bathrobe in front of Rainbow was painfully embarrassing.

It’s probably because she reminds me of Roxy—

“Geronimo!” Rainbow shouted. She let go of the rock, spun once in the air, and dropped straight into the bath, producing a wave that rose up and splashed over Luna and Tiberius. The little opossum squeaked pitifully, and Luna’s eyelids lowered into an expression of annoyed longsuffering.

Rainbow instantly shot out of the pool. “Great Celestia, that is cold!” she shouted.

She lowered back toward the ground, looked at the dripping Luna, and giggled sheepishly. “Ah, heh heh. Oops.”

“’Tis fed by Latigo Spring, rainbow-colored one,” Luna said. “’Tis pure and clear and runneth whence the snow never melteth. Of course it’s cold.” With that, she reached into the pool with a hoof and splashed Rainbow, who gasped.

Once those two were occupied with flicking water at each other, Brad turned to Mandrake Root and said, “Okay, make it quick.”

Mandrake smiled. “Aye, milaird.”

Luna’s crew looked like something out of some bizarre production of Treasure Island with an all-horse cast, but even though they dressed and swaggered like Hollywood’s imaginary cutthroats, the wraith ponies were plainly efficient sailors, as even Brad could tell, though he knew nothing of ships. As soon as Luna had led him and Rainbow Dash into the vast cave where the Selenic Maiden was moored and told the captain to put her underway, the entire ship became a flurry of scrambling wraiths, hearty singing, and loudly shouted but unintelligible orders. Brad had barely crossed the plank before the ship lifted, broad steel doors rumbled open, and the Selenic Maiden hove out into the reddish predawn light.

Luna again wore her dark cloak, which whipped about her in a fierce, freezing wind. Although she had said the night before that she could not interfere with the working of the ship, she took a trick (as the wraiths called it) at the wheel, her mouth and eyes set with a mixture of concentration and pleasure as she guided the ship down the narrow and hazardous Latigo Canyon.

Brad and Rainbow, unable to do much else, huddled on the deck by her side, hugged themselves, and shivered.

“You actually flew up this canyon last night?” Brad shouted over the wind.

Rainbow nodded. “It was awful!” she shouted back.

“How’d you do it?”

“I was awesome!”

Too miserable to speak further, they merely listened to the raging of the wind and the hoarse, shouted orders of the mate. Whenever the mate gave orders to the helm, Luna shouted them back with a hearty, deafening boom.

Captain Reaver, holding his tri-cornered hat in place with a hoof, walked back and forth on the poop deck. For the most part, he observed silently, though every once in a while he stepped forward to converse quietly with the mate, after which the mate would holler new orders to the ponies on the masts or else run to the speaking tubes by the wheel to issue orders to the engine room.

After everything was running smoothly, the captain saw to his passengers; he stepped up to Brad’s side and offered a smile full of gold and silver teeth. “Ain’t no pilot to take us in an’ outta this port, me lad,” he said, “but ’ave no fear: nary a wraith can take a trick as yon princess. That there is a true airpony, that is.”

“I think I’m lucky,” Brad said, “that I don’t know enough about ships to know if I should be scared that we’re sailing down this narrow canyon in this high wind.”

“Aye,” the captain replied as he clapped Brad on the back. “If ye did know, ye’d piss yerself.” With that, he went back to his pacing.

Brad again felt the sensation of lonely plateaus and empty skies; the effect of the tea was apparently wearing off, and Luna’s magic was beginning to press on him again. He didn’t dare try, in this wind and on this swaying deck, to open the Thermos and pour himself a drink, but at least Luna’s magic was quiet and tolerable, unlike the roiling heat of Cadance or the debilitating awe of Celestia. Nonetheless, under her influence, he sank into a brown study and contemplated dark things until the Selenic Maiden at last entered the open skies.

Once the ship was free of the mountain and had begun venting hydrogen as it wound its way toward Canterlot, Luna turned the wheel over to an airpony and stepped forward to the fo’c’sle. Brad poured himself a cup of tea and, not expecting it to have remained so hot, burned his mouth.

“Have you seen Luna lower the moon?” Rainbow asked.

“No,” Brad replied as he sipped cautiously from his cup, “I don’t think I have.”

“Then come on. You don’t wanna miss this.”

Once they had left the canyon and begun to drop along the mountain’s steep side, the ride was smooth, so Brad had little trouble keeping his footing or holding his cup upright as he followed Rainbow to the ship’s prow where Luna stood just behind the bowsprit. In every direction, the horizon glowed a deep, expectant red, and the stars overhead were beginning to fade. The black of night had already turned to a rich purple.

The moon was round and full. Luna gazed at it, and, as Brad watched her, he saw the turmoil of emotions in her eyes momentarily cease. All at once, her face became a mask of calm, like a placid lake reflecting the moon at midnight.

Her horn glowed with silvery light, and the moon began to creep gradually downward, appearing to grow larger as it did so until it was enormous. Once, in his own world, Brad had watched a full moon set at dawn and had seen the same strange illusion.

At last, the moon sank beneath the rim of the world, and then the red glow at the horizon grew brighter until the fiery edge of the sun appeared in the east.

Luna’s horn ceased to glow. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The feeling of dark vistas and loneliness swept across Brad again, so he drank his cup dry, and the feeling passed.

“Does it make your magic stronger?” he asked.

Luna smiled. “Couldst thou sense it? Yes, it doth. It also extendeth my life. It was once a great burden and torment to the unicorn ponies to move the sun and moon, and many lost their magic when they did so. But Celestia and I only grow more powerful.”

In the land below, the light of the sun dissolved the darkness into long shadows. Smoke rose lazily from the chimneys of the little hamlet nestled in the valley, and the flaps of that strange tent city near it waved in the wind. Again, Brad peered at the tents and wondered.

He heard Luna give a long, low sigh. When he glanced at her, he saw that she was looking at the tents as well.

“Can I ask?”

“Hm?” She turned her eyes on him.

“The tents.”

“Ah.” Luna looked away and sighed again.

A twinge of irritation appeared in Brad’s chest, but he decided not to ask further.

“My sister’s greatest folly,” Luna whispered. “Thou art looking, young Brad, on the last remnant of the once-great kingdom of Wuvy-Dovey Smoochy Land.”

“Of what?”

“It lay to our south, beyond the Forest of Leota. In all the world, there was no kingdom more peaceable: the love and goodwill of the luvcats rival even that of the ponies. So it is no wonder that Chrysalis and her Changeling swarm were drawn to them as flies to a corpse.”

“Gross!” Rainbow shouted.

“It was Princess Twilight who defeated Chrysalis in single combat and freed the luvcats,” Luna continued.

“Wait,” said Brad, “my Twilight did that?”

“Yes, of course. Do not interrupt. Princess Twilight bound Chrysalis and her swarm with a magic ward, one from which they would no doubt free themselves in time. So Celestia led a force into Wuvy-Dovey Smoochy Land to gather the remnant of the luvcats and bring them here to safety.” Luna snorted. “Most of the luvcats perished in Leota, of course. The guardsponies name it the Trail of Blood.”

Luna smashed a hoof into the bulwark, turned, and marched aft.

Brad looked to Rainbow Dash, who simply shook her head and floated after Luna.

“I’m still confused,” Brad muttered. Then he followed.

Amidships, Luna spun and faced Brad and Rainbow. “My sister hath never understood war. She thinks all can be resolved with sweetness and much talking. She could have crushed Chrysalis, but instead she let her slip through her hooves!”

“I thought there hasn’t been a war for years and years,” Brad said. “That’s what—”

Luna cut him off with a bitter laugh. “Yes, of course. It is the ‘Celestial Peace,’ after all. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”

Luna pounded her hooves against the deck, and Brad thought he heard the wood crack. “There is war, a war for their lives and their very souls, and they do not know: on the moon are two races, those of Light and those of Nightmare, and they have no rest from war. The more we fight the Nightmare in the Deeper Slumber, the stronger the Light will grow. You and I, Brad, and all we can recruit—we can push the Nightmare back until at last the Light besiegeth Uhnuman itself and its iron walls fall.”

Grinding her teeth, she hissed, “Chrysalis serves the Nightmare. She is what she is because she hath prostrated herself before the House of Silence. We should have destroyed her. Mercy is not for the likes of her!”

With another snort, she pulled the hood of her cloak over her face and turned her back on Brad and Rainbow.

Several minutes passed, after which Luna said quietly, “Rainbow Dash, tell the director I will hear his case.”

Rainbow spun in the air. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Yes!” Rainbow pumped a hoof.

“I only said I will hear him!” Luna snapped. “But the time may indeed have come for what he proposes. The EUP is weak, and our enemies are gathering. If desperate measures are required, then desperate measures we shall use.”

After raising the sun, Princess Celestia staggered into her private boudoir, walked to a corner, and pulled down a samite drape, revealing a tall mirror. For several minutes, she gazed at her reflection. The magic of the sunrise flowed through her, and it had left her calm, composed, serene.

But then the calm left her like the tide receding out to sea. She fell against the mirror, pounded one booted hoof against its unyielding glass, and sobbed.

“I am discovered,” she cried. “He knows! He knows everything! It’s over!”

“Auntie?”

At the sound of that voice, Celestia looked up. Reflected in the mirror, over her shoulder, was Princess Cadance.

“I came to take you down to breakfast,” Cadance said. “We’re supposed to have it together before the Council, remember?”

“I do remember.” Celestia stood straight, closed her eyes, took a deep breath—

“What’s wrong, Auntie?”

Celestia trembled, and her head sank. After a minute, she whispered, “Oh, Cadance, my long reign is ended.”

Cadance laughed. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”

“Please heed my advice: create an aristocracy in the Crystal Empire before it’s too late.”

“Auntie—”

Celestia whirled. “I mean it. Look at me.” She held up a hoof. “When Star Swirl anointed me and Luna, we insisted that we would be only guardians to guide and protect the ponies. But then the rulers gave me their crowns. I took them, because I thought I could make peace. Over the years, more and more, the ponies came to me to make their decisions, and I made them, because I wanted peace. Eventually, the noble families acquiesced all to me and merely reveled in their land and money, doing nothing, happily ceding their power until Equestria’s aristocracy became a sham, and I let them do so, because I wanted peace.”

She heaved a long, weary sigh. “So I awoke one morning to discover that I, who once upon a time wanted only to guard and guide, had slowly but surely become a despot.”

“You are not a despot, Auntie.”

“I have too much power, too much for one pony . . . and now I’ve found it is an easy thing for another pony to take a despot’s power—”

Cadance touched Celestia’s neck. “What are you talking about?”

“Last night, I met the director of the Weather Bureau. He stood before me and, with perfect calm, almost boredom, as if he were reading a grocery list, recited my every folly, my every mistake, my every sin—everything I thought I had kept hidden from all the world. He knows, Cadance. He knows my every thought, he knows my innermost rooms. Though he made no threats, his point was clear: from now on, Canterlot is a puppet; the true capital of Equestria is Cloudsdale.”

With a small smile, Cadance faced Celestia squarely and placed a hoof on each of her shoulders. “Aunt Celestia, I know you. Everypony in Equestria knows you. There is nothing for the director to blackmail you with. What can he do, announce your love of cake—?”

Cadance’s voice trailed off, and her eyes moved over Celestia’s shoulder to the mirror—the high mirror set in a horseshoe-shaped frame rimmed with jewels. Cadance’s brows came together.

“Is that a replica?” she asked.

“No, Cadance,” Celestia whispered. “It is the prototype.”

“There’s another? Then Brad—”

“I don’t know how to link it to his world. There is only one world to which it opens, at least for me.”

Cadance dropped her hooves to the floor and took a step back. “I don’t understand—”

“Cadance,” Celestia whispered, “you know how I have asked you never to use your magic on me?”

“Yes—”

“Use it now.”

“But—”

“Do it.”

Cadance took another step back. She gazed on Celestia’s face for a few minutes, but then at last she closed her eyes, and her horn glowed. She stood that way for a great while. Slowly, her mouth fell open, and tears squeezed out from between her eyelids and poured down her face.

“Oh, Auntie,” she whispered, “how long—?”

Celestia’s mouth had gone dry, so she licked her lips before she spoke. “One thousand and fourteen years, four months, and twelve days. This is my greatest folly, Cadance, and by it I have endangered the whole world.”

“I never knew,” Cadance murmured. “You seem always so calm, like a warm summer day—but underneath you burn like a forest fire.”

Celestia walked past Cadance out into her grand boudoir full of delicately carved furniture encrusted with jewels. “Fate gave me a kingdom, but demanded I give up my heart in return. For over a millennium I resisted, and now I will pay the price.”

“You could fight.”

“You can’t fight fate, Cadance. Nopony can. Not even the One True Queen could fight it.”

“But you can fight the director.”

Her back to Cadance, Celestia shook her head. “My sister and I are the last of the line of Argyte. I have betrayed what was entrusted to me, so when the One True Judge returns, she will not permit me to enter Paradise.”

“Celestia, stop it!” Cadance marched to her, put a hoof to her shoulder, and spun her around. “You built Equestria with your own hooves! The Valley of Dreams was the Queen’s, but this land is yours! This whole land is—no, this whole land is you, your very body and soul. You’ve poured everything of yourself into it!”

She waved toward the mirror. “This means nothing! So what if you’ve held back one small thing when you’ve sacrificed everything else? Forget the director and his veiled threats! Nopony else would hold this against you.”

“What did you see in my mind, Cadance?”

“Love—love burning strong. How is that a fault?”

“Did you see the name of the one I love? Did you see his face?”

“No.” Cadance paused, and she clenched her jaw. “Why, Auntie? Who is he?”

A single tear coursed Celestia’s cheek. “Oh, Cadance, my dear, dear Cadance—his name, the name of the stallion I love, the name of the only stallion I could ever love . . . is Sombra.”

Cadance caught her breath, but she said not a word. She turned away from Celestia, and after several minutes of silence, she sank heavily to the floor in a faint.