//------------------------------// // “….why she shrouds her light away.....” // Story: Stories in Stone, Reign of Night // by TDR //------------------------------// Stories in Stone Reign Of Night By TDR “….why she shrouds her light away.....” House Loyalty is known as the core House of the Empire. Gender, age, and even species are irrelevant to belong to House Loyalty. Family ties, linage, and who you know are likewise pointless. In House Loyalty status is based on accomplishments. House Loyalty holds the primary might of the Equestrian military and is the leading edge in all magical and technical forms of innovation. There are countless families and individuals that are sworn to House Loyalty, in each of these there are varying ranks of status and accomplishment. Status however, can change on a whim sometimes. For example, a pony might craft a flawlessly imbued gem and find themselves placed in charge of their task force as a result, or they may fumble several gems in a row and find themselves taking orders from some one who was a subordinate before. It doesn't really work like that exactly, but it is difficult to explain to those who have not lived it their whole lives, so this is a fair, if simplistic example. There are three great families in House Loyalty, positions all but one of the families have held for generations due to skill and dedication. They are the Sparkles. The Amores, and lastly the Melodys. House Sparkle is considered the one with the highest standing. Not in any small part due to my own position as First Student, but far from the only accomplishment to my family name. The current head of the family is my brother, Shining Armor. He is a ranking member of the Lunar Guard. His coat used to be white when he was younger, with a two toned blue mane and tail, now like all the other Lunar Guard his coat is black and his mane and tail are a dull gray. He was never really a jovial sort, but admission into the Empress Personal Guard has made him much more dour, though despite the removal of his tongue and what he has surely witnessed in the line of duty there are times I can see the old him Shining through. Shining proved his worth by single hoovedly holding back the flood of water rushing from a ruptured dam with his magic to protect a village at the edge of the river. He held his place holding the shield for three days until the damn could be repaired and the escaped water dealt with. His actions saved hundreds of lives and millions of bits worth of property further down river. The act moved him quickly to the head of the Sparkle family. Once he was firmly in place as the house head he made a bold and completely unexpected move. One that caused a great deal of shock among the houses and permanently locked him into the head of the family House. He married Mi Amore Cadenza. The Amore's are the second great family in House Loyalty. One that has been jockeying for the position of the greatest family with the Sparkles for hundreds of years. The one two punch of my own status and my brothers act of heroism made it seem as if they would never catch up and would be the second greatest house in House Loyalty. While the Sparkles are focused primarily on magical power and what can be done with it, the Amore's focus is on the technical aspect of magic, message crystals, recording crystals and many other things that ponies now take for granted that magic made came about due to the research and work of the Amore's. The family leader is Mi Amore Cadenza, while there is little of note in way of her personal accomplishments, at least compared to my brother any way, it should be noted that she is a pegicorn, or a winged unicorn. It is also something to note that she was Empress Luna's student before me, and one of the few who have ever successfully used that status to keep a position near equal to that of what she had as the Empress's student. She and my brother had developed feelings for each other while I was still young and they kept it hidden for a long time. My brother refused to pursue her if he could not be her equal in status. It seemed as if he would never achieve it when she was made head of her house, though some how he still managed to pull it off. Their marriage brought an end to the minor feud between the two houses and it is considered that before long the two families may eventually become one. The third family is the smallest and also the youngest, but it is considered by many to already be the most successful, and it is definitely the most dangerous. I cannot go into it without speaking first of it's head Octavia Melody. The Melody's were part of House Laughter, a unicorn family in fact. While they were not good enough to be noticed by the Head of House Laughter, Lady Scale, they were prominent enough to be well known for their magically amplified musical ability. So imagine the scandal that it generated when a pair of gifted unicorn musicians had a child who was an earth pony. While it was before my time, it is no secret that her birth destroyed her parents marriage and careers, with the father blaming his wife for cheating on him, and the mother blaming her daughter for everything. When Octavia turned four her mother had enough of the ridicule and blame that was forced upon her by everyone who believed she had cheated on her husband. Clearly she lost her mind as she tried to kill her daughter. Though in typical House Laughter fashion it had to be dramatic. The unicorn took Octavia to the tallest building in Los Pegasus and threw her daughter from the top of it. Fortunately for Octavia, Lord Kaisur was present in the city visiting Lady Scale and saw the filly be thrown from the building. He caught Octavia in his magic before she was any where near the ground and brought her to safety. Octavia's mother seeing what had happened leapt from the roof her self rather than be arrested for attempted murder. Lord Kaisur did not bother to save her. Her father was investigated and found innocent of any wrong doing, but unfit to care for Octavia, as his fall from grace had nearly ruined him. While it is unknown what happened next, the filly was granted to a small family in House Loyalty to raise soon after her rescue. For the first years she remained certain that she was worthless, despite what any one told her. Again Lord Kaisur intervened on her behalf and spoke to her at length in private. No one knows what he said to the filly, but afterward the change in Octavia was immediate. In her thirty two years of life Octavia Melody has mastered four musical instruments, two of which were thought to be unplayable by earth ponies. She turned around and took all of her pay from her musical career and she purchased a number of mines that were thought to be tapped out and useless for next to nothing. Some how, despite the belief that the mines were barren she managed to make them profitable again though various new mining techniques. She advanced the technology of Equestria by leaps and bounds. She designed and built the first great airships and aided in the creation of several components for the new magic powered trains that are replacing the pony and coal engine trains. The mare proved herself time and time again to be an absolute genius at everything she tried to do. She was also reported to have defeated an escaped maticore unarmed and by herself, She is often seen wearing it's pelt as a coat and it's head graces the space above her office door. Through it all she raised herself and the few friends she made into a family that rivals the Sparkles for the first position within House Loyalty. Octavia Melody is perhaps the greatest self learned prodigy that has ever existed. Octavia is merciless, cold,calculating, and has no issues getting her own hooves dirty if need be. It is also no secret that she is completely infatuated with Lord Kaisur. Despite the favor he shows her and her new family over the rest in his House, Lord Kaisur is the Consort of the Empress and he will take no other. Lady Melody has unrivaled ambition, but she is not stupid, nor is she suicidal. Her Loyalty is to Lord Kaisur more than any other, but she would not dare cross the Empress as even the one she desires would turn on her at the Empress's word. The Empress's student however, that is a different matter. ************************************* Have I mentioned how much I hate these ponies already? I mean besides the obvious yellow bitch and her bunny, the drama queen half dragon, the secretive zebra mix, and the brutally honest body guard. There's also the power players like the Mayor, trying to get on my good side, thinking that will get them closer to the Empress, not like that was something I could do way out here in the middle of no where, but that fact seemed to elude most of them. A one Filthy Rich a Jet Set, what I was sure where a couple of nobles from Winnyshire and other cities who were only there because the Empress was supposed to be coming. Given the distaste they showed and the fact that they likely never left their hotel rooms it was rather obvious they were not there for the celebration itself. Then of course there were the common rabble who simply wanted to gawk at me. It hurt my brain considerably to think I would be trying to ask this lot intelligent questions when I started my studies. Then there were the inane questions , What did the Empress like for Lunch, what was her favorite Hoofball team? The inanity went on for what seemed like days..... unfortunately by the time I got them all to leave me be I found it was only lunch. For bucks sake, the only pony I'd met so far that I don't wish I could straight up murder was the pink one that ran into my luggage last night, at least that interruption shut the Mayor up for more than five seconds, though I feel that my attitude will change once I actually speak with her. Perhaps I am not being fair. I am not a sunset pony and one mug of stale coffee is not going to fix that. It also did not help that aside from that tin of stale coffee there was nothing else in the library to eat. The Mayor had neglected to stock the cupboards At the very least Rainbow Dash has the common sense to kick into the stoic guard mode when others are around. I can deal with that, even if she's here to watch over me, and watch me, I am sure I can handle the quiet when she's like this. Unfortunately it usually only lasts until the door closes. Then she paced and hummed. I'm not sure what it is with pegasi, but I have never known one to be able to sit still longer than five minutes with out flying, pacing, or doing something. Lord Kaisur seemed to know this fact and the castle guards were all earth ponies or unicorns. The Empress's Guard of course has pegasi in it, but they were always put on recon and never stayed in any type of static position for long. Maybe it was an ingrained thing into their minds. 'If you stop moving you die' or some such nonsense. It would likely be a interesting field of study, but that was for some lesser scholar to ponder. I, Twilight Sparkle had a greater cause, yes Twilight must stop this curse at all costs............ Oh by the stars I'm thinking in third pony now, some one stab me and be done with it. Any way back to Rainbow, I don't mind the pacing, her movements are like clockwork and the light hoof falls had a rhythm all their own that I could let drone on while I looked over the day's preparations. So aside from the annoying movements out of the corner of my eye even this I could get used to. I digress, it is very easy to let my mind wander in situations like this. Once the brunt of the fools left the Mayor arrived again. Clearly she was looking to bother me about the budget or something and to make a long story as brief as possible, some how or another I got roped into checking on the plans for the Midsummer Moon Celebration. I'm really not sure when it happened, Mayor Mare droned until even the coffee wasn't keeping me totally coherent and the next thing I knew she was thanking me for agreeing to help and was out the door before I could even figure out what I had agreed to. I spent the next few minutes retracing the meeting in my mind trying to figure out what I had agreed to. Once I figured it out I was rather disturbed to realize how good the Mayor was at the games of politics. Everything else was clearly a distraction to get me to lower my guard enough for her to slip something in that wouldn't seem like an issue until after the fact. The last mare in was a chubby blue earth pony who had some issue with her bakery. I mostly ignored her noting that she seemed mostly upset about another sweet shop that had opened in town and wanted it shut down. Something I couldn't do. I pretended to be interested as I looked over the paperwork the Mayor had given me. In all the checklist was not long, mostly they wanted some pony to make sure the Empress would be happy with what set up in town for her arrival. Something that should be easy to do as the Empress didn't give a flying buck as the most she would do would be' show up, raise the moon, wave a few times, and go home. Just like always with these things. I had been to a lot of them with her as her student, they were all dull. I should have told the Mayor that the Empresses didn't give a minotaurs hindquarters about some celebration she was going to be part of for all of five minutes. Buck, that was if she showed up at all. She had a habit of doing that, if the Empress didn't want to do something, the only pony who could convince her otherwise was Lord Kaisur, and he rarely went against what she wished. Still I had quickly learned that the easiest way to get things done was to be nice to other ponies. Do them a small favor and they would do one for you at another point when you needed it. With nobles it went to a much higher level, but with common ponies simply a kind word or a small trick with a spell could change their entire attitude towards you. I decided to play nice as I would be interviewing a vast majority of these ponies for my research and I wanted to keep things, if not friendly, at least civil. That would get me more honest answers. And it seemed the fat mare was looking for a reason to expand her bakery int the new shop that was set up. None of that was in my power to give, that was the Mayors thing, did she really expect me to pass this little bit of nonsense on to the Empress? I digress a second time. Back to Rainbow. I didn't mind Rainbow's pacing, it was the humming that got to me. I recognized the tune almost immediately, even in the off key and disjointed nature of the song. Daylights End. It was a small piece made by some composer or another from House Laughter, they were a big deal but I think we know by this point that music is not my thing. Any way, I had heard it preformed while I was still a filly by none other than the head of House Laughter, Lady Bleu Scale herself. Despite her terrifying visage, the dragon had a voice that would make the stars weep. The song was decidedly dark, written to honor the Empress and her victory over the cruel sun god a thousand years ago. But the tone and music it was set too was unbelievable. My hearing it from such a talented singer, spoiled me on any one else preforming it. It also had a rather profound side effect on me when I was younger, a effect that still is with me to this day. Basicly if I hear even just a few notes of the song I can't help but run the whole thing through my head in it's entirety, from first note to the final trail off. It is a short song so that is normally not a issue. Unless a stupid pegasus standing guard not a ponies length away from me keeps humming the same two or three lines over and over again with no indication that they know the rest of the song or plan to continue the song in any shape or fashion. My brain was full of buck already and that song kept playing over and over again in it as a decidedly disturbing addition. Just as I was weighing the benefits of having House Honesty after me versus a few moments of peace and quiet, the pegasus mare uttered the most glorious thing I had heard all day. “Hey, Twilight... Wanna go get some lunch?” ================================================================= Lunch is a surprisingly simple affair, word might have gotten around about my arrival , but thankfully not many of the locals seemed to recognize me. I was greatly enjoying this faux anonymity when I ordered my lunch , noticing most of the stares were directed towards Rainbow Dash. I suppose her mane color would make her stand out, either that or the fact she was still wearing her Shadowbolt armor. In either case I was glad to stick to the background. Every pony in town would know my name and face soon enough. Rainbow was sitting next to me and barely seemed to be paying a bit of attention as to what was going on around her. She seemed fully focused on her bread, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, so focused in fact I wondered how she could be considered to be my guard like that. “I know that look.” Rainbow stated without looking up. “I used to get that a lot when I first started training. Trust me I am keeping a very good eye on you.” I blinked as Rainbow looked up at me staring intently at me with her red eyes slightly narrowed. “I do not see how, you have been staring at your sandwich the whole time we have been at the table.” I stated. “There are seventeen around us in the cafe. Six unicorns, eight earth ponies, four pegasi, and one griffon in the back assisting the earth pony chef. One of the unicorns is moving off to my left, at eight o clock holding a tray with garlic soup in his magic, green glow he has on a dark blue suit with a small stain on the sleeve of his right foreleg that judging by the color and smell is from basil and noodle soup. The four pegasi are all at the same table, three mares one stallion, all four work with the weather patrol and are here on their lunch break, they are currently talking about the latest local hoof ball game and attempting to get the only male to ask out one of their number who isn't there with them. The two earth ponies on your four o clock are from House Generosity and are likely here watching you. They didn't follow us in, but they finished their meal before our order was taken and have yet to move since despite seeming to be ready to head out when we walked in, also neither of them are cursed. The unicorn mare who ordered the soup was just startled by how hot it was and lost her grip on the spoon... two, one....” I blinked in surprise hearing the clank of metal on stone. Looking over I see a teal unicorn mare glancing down at a spoon laying on the ground before she tries to flag down the waiter for another. I look back to Rainbow who simply smiled. “How in Equss.....?” I question. “I found out when I was younger that I learned things at an almost insane rate so long as I was doing something else at the same time, usually flying, but it didn't need to be just flying. Mother brought in a number of ponies to help me train and refine it to the point that peripheral vision, sound, smell, even wind currents tell me anything I want to know about what's going on around me. It works best in closed areas or if I'm in the air where there's not much variation in material to screw with the sounds, but I can use it to a lesser degree elsewhere too. Add in a damn good trained memory as well and you got me. Gimme a bit more time just standing around the library and I can probably tell you where every single book is.” I stare at her a moment, pondering the truth of this. I did believe her, not only for the little display of her training she had just shown, but because of the house she represented. While it was true members of House Honesty could lie, it was highly discouraged. With her being the First Daughter, and considered the prime example of her house right under Lady Silvertail, it was very likely drilled into her head enough to the point that she actually couldn't lie any more. “That is actually quite impressive. I could have used an ability like that a great number of times in my lessons.” I respond. “I get that a lot too. It's gotten so I can sort of do it in my sleep. Mother and a number of other Guards had a habit of dropping in on me for surprise checks. Even when I was a little filly.” Rainbow sighed. “Really, you can't be that old?” I smirk. “Fifteen, sixteen?” “Twenty one last season. I've been in training since I was six. I was pulled from my flight school one day. Was gonna race a guy that afternoon and never got a chance too. They took me out of class, told me I was the new First Daughter and well the rest is history, never got to talk to any of my friends again and well. You see how Flutters turned out. Makes me a little worried about what happened to Gilda, never heard anything about her again after either after I left.” Hmm that put her two years older than me, she would have been chosen on the same day I had completed my test and was accepted as the First Student. My eyes narrow at a realization. Why was she telling me this? Oh wait, I should simply ask, House Honesty, duh. “Why are you telling me this?” I question, my real voice not sounding nearly as sarcastic as the voice in my head did. “I dunno. Figure you were gonna ask about my history sooner or later any way when you got into studying why I don't have a cutie mark. We're gonna be stuck together until you find a cure for what ever this is so I figured we might as well try to get along better. You're more civil than yesterday, but it still seems forced. I'd rather work with some one I'm cool with, rather than some pony who resents me being there.” Rainbow states flatly staring at me.” Plus it's not as if I really have had a chance to hang out with any one since I was six. I kinda missed it.” She had a point, while I had already planned to attempt to stay on her good side, actually attempting to be friends with her would help out even if I failed. Still thinking like that did cause me a momentary pang of regret. Knowing I would be using her for my own ends. She may be as well, but it didn't seem it. And that bothered me a little. I had never met any one as upfront as she was. She didn't really have anything to hide from me, she was a guardian who had no issue telling me she was there to keep an eye on me and report to Lady Silvertail. Still I felt like I wanted to trust her, despite how dangerous such a thing could be. She really had little to look forward to in life. The first child often died young. Be it some reckless stunt in training, or in a conflict of some kind. It was not a position one retired from. They also tended to be encouraged to have foals about the time they hit 25 five to keep the blood line of a successful First Child alive. There was often a grueling contest for the position of the father. Only the best flier would be allowed to mate with the First Child. The goal however was a female and copulation was encouraged until such an off spring was produced. Oddly Lady Silvertail had no part in this event and often seemed disgusted by it. The lords of house Honesty however were adamant about such a thing and Despite her dislike Lady Silvertail let it happen so long as the First Child agreed with the end result. Given the training was not all done by Lady Silvertail, I was certain there were classes about accepting orders and what her role in life would be. Reflecting on that I actually felt myself pitying the cyan mare. “Alright, might take a bit for me to settle down, but that is a good idea. I will be having enough trouble with everything else it would be nice to have some one I can. Well no offense, mostly trust on my side to help out.” “None taken, if the order came down to do so I'd snap your neck in a heartbeat. But I'd at least let you know it was coming.” Rainbow commented taking a drink from her cup. “Not very long before mind you, I don't fancy dodging magic.” “Well I have that going for me at least.” I sigh not having expected much else, though I doubted such an order would come from House Honesty, they were not fans of some of Octavia's dealings, and money rarely could sway them. ”Well if that's cleared up there is one thing you can do for me already that will be a big help.” I comment taking a bite out of my sandwich. “Oh? What's that?”Rainbow asked. “Stop bucking humming that song!” I snap. =========================================== The celebration preparations would not take long. In fact I could have simply summoned those I wished to speak with to me in the library. But now that I was out of the library I realized that it may be best to investigate the living conditions of those here and see if there may be anything that might give me a clue as to the cause of the curse. I had no great expectations of a revelation like that, and countless other studies had been done on the subject of the environmental impact of the curse. But I was a stickler for hard data, and the only pony I trusted to give me information untainted by their own views, was myself. At least until I could train Rainbow in the proper method of collecting data, her little trick could be used to my advantage. Looking over the list left by the Mayor there were four items I needed to check on. The food, which would be provided by a farm at the towns edge, the decorations in and around the town hall, which should be fine if Reignolds was doing them, the musical accompaniment, and the weather patrol. Thankfully that last was as easy to tell simply by looking up at the cloudless sky. The Empress's glorious night was on full display, stars dotting the heavens and a nearly full moon just rising above the horizon. I rather enjoyed the night, not just of course because of my position as the Empress's student. Looking up in the night sky one could see countless points of light in the sky. Mostly void, partially stars. There were many who believed them to be the souls of the dead watching over us from the afterlife. While this is a belief that Lord Jer'rahd and the Empress both share, I believe that each of the stars is another sun, likely circling around a planet much like the sun does on Equss. The movement would explain why they twinkle and they are so small because we are viewing them from a vast distance. Preposterous I know, but I would rather believe they are planets with limitless potential for other life and possible future exploration, than remnants of the past judging us from on high. But I digress, I truly need to cease my ramblings as I am writing this or I shall never finish.