Leaves covered the paths and roads of the city, no longer crunching underfoot, but slithery and limp with decay. Overhead, the skies chilled with violet pools and a darkening rim, as though Arctic seas were seeping through. Sunset’s breath crystallized. Ponies shuffled in scarves and anoraks.
The Day of a Thousand Souls smothered the city.
Sunset turned the corner, and the Esculapian Temple loomed as a hulking shadow. An ancient temple it was, all columns and stone steps and carved figures looking down upon the entrants. Surrounded by the modern brick homes and gothic towers, the temple was a leftover of Time itself.
Why are you going? The nagging voice: ever present, never relenting. Until you can feel their pain in all honesty, you’d be a hypocrite to go.
Sunset realized she was pulling at her own mane absent-mindedly. She cut off the telekinetic spell.
A dozen or so ponies tramped up the steps. Several stones behind them, Moondancer walked. Her glower was carved into her face. Sunset realized the mare was in no mood for taking questions.
You coward. Any excuse to not ask her, eh Shimmer? piped up the nagging voice at once.
Hurrying, she crossed the plaza and fell into line beside Moondancer, who for all her faults was no speed-walker. Every step seemed carefully measured, as though she were kicking each flagstone into place.
“I need to talk to you,” Sunset whispered. “It’s important.”
Moondancer walked on as though she hadn’t heard.
“It’s about the lessons. I need to tell you –”
“Are we at the Academy?” Moondancer’s voice wedged into the speech like a knife.
“Well… no, but I thought you’d be interested in –”
“Then we’re not talking about any lessons whatsoever.”
“Please,” said Sunset, voice straining with desperation. “I need help. Your help.”
At the top of the steps, Moondancer stopped. Mechanically, her head ground on its axis to face her. One eyebrow broke ranks, suspicion rising up through the breach.
“You’re asking me at this time, at this place, for help? You?”
Of course she is. Shimmer’s not good enough to solve her own problems. Too much of a narcissist, too.
Sunset came this close to growling; instead, she held Moondancer’s gaze and nodded once. “It’s about Celestia. Don’t you think, in some way, she seems… well, less and less there? Like she’s… going somewhere distant?”
Moondancer’s look could have chilled a bonfire. “Nonsense. She’s always punctual. She’s always there.”
“Oh, her body is. But I get the impression her heart and soul – I mean, insofar as a God has a heart and soul, uh, philosophically speaking –”
“So this is about personal feelings?” Moondancer’s face twisted like cracking ice. Such was the set of her jaw that Sunset shrank where she stood.
“Uh…” Sunset didn’t dare answer. Neither “yes” nor “no” was going to help her case.
You can’t even claim honesty as a virtue.
“Kind of,” she said. “Look, I’ll be honest with you: Celestia and I –”
“Then it’s a personal matter. You shouldn’t discuss it. We don’t ask. We don’t tell. Fair is fair.”
Regular and stiff like a contraption, Moondancer walked through the square frame of the entrance as though she’d faced no interruptions at all. Sunset staggered into a brisk walk to follow her, but then hesitated. She’d never been inside the Esculapian Temple. No one had told her what was inside.
Too self-absorbed to learn about other ponies.
Sunset strode in. Not once did she let Moondancer’s tight bun out of her sight.
Columns opened out to the misty air around them. Nothing but a wide floor, and a long carpet, and, at the far wall, the towering colossus. Enchanted embers orbited the serene face – planets around a star. Sunset’s gaze drank up the proud legs, the archer’s quiver slung over the saddle, the robe billowing from the right shoulder as though thrown back, the smile staring at an unseen target some way to the left, to the west, and thus to the setting sun.
She’d recognize that marble statue anywhere. There were copies of it all over the city, but she’d never dared to see the real thing.
Celestia Callitheorein. “Celestia the Beautiful Sight.”
The gasp escaped her. Then she held her breath.
A crowd gathered at the podium beneath its feet. She forced herself to stride onwards and join them. Moondancer hung back from the main herd, but only by a few yards.
Sunset stood beside her. No comment.
Sunset breathed again.
She risked a sidelong glance. Moondancer stared at the podium. For once, her irritated glower softened to a mere blankness. No emotion.
Once more, Sunset wondered what could possibly attract someone like Moondancer to worship. The mare even read books and listened to lectures as though she were a spy, gathering intelligence but revealing nothing in case it got her cornered. No passion at all escaped her.
Sunset didn’t have to crane her neck; several ponies sat down or bowed low. Celestia stood before the podium. The entire crowd kept clear of her for several yards.
She was bearing a staff along her forelimb, a snake entwined around its shaft. Sunset’s flurrying mind focused on this detail. Past training turned up the name “Pythoness”, though it was tinged with doubt. Definitely a healing staff.
Now that she was closer, Sunset noticed the lists of words behind Celestia, all carved into the stone. Names, perhaps?
No one spoke. They all seemed to know why they were here. More than anything, the silence crept up on her like ice.
To her surprise, she heard someone whispering, like a faint scratching noise. Sunset swivelled her ear. It was coming from Moondancer.
“Celezyon,” whispered Moondancer. “Derived from ‘Celestollyon’: ‘She who utterly destroys the sky’. Celezyon. Derived from ‘Celestollyon’: ‘She who utterly destroys the sky’.”
It sounds like a mantra. Strange: no one else is saying it. Besides, it’s just an etymological fact.
Can you get comfort from a fact? Can Moondancer?
Ice crept onwards, turning her blood into biting slush that bit as it crawled under her skin. Celezyon. This is about – No. How can it be?
So Celestia must be acting as the Oracle… What is the Day of a Thousand Souls really about, then? The prophecy? Celezyon's victims. But Celezyon didn’t claim a thousand souls really, did she? In all that smoke?
Treacherously, her memory froze over just as the image of a thousand shadows rose out of the depths. An army of shadows, marching behind the dark God. All corrupted souls.
Guilt mingled with the ice that engulfed her mind. How could I have forgotten? Those were once normal ponies.
Of course you forgot. I told you: you’re self-absorbed.
She swore Celestia’s gaze met her face for a second, but then the crowd leaned forwards and Celestia seemed to be taking them all in. Or perhaps she was staring at something beyond this temple, perhaps beyond these four walls and this plane of existence.
“Love will consume her too.” Celestia’s voice echoed amongst the columns.
A prophecy. Right here, right now? And with that staff, not just any prophecy, but the Oracle’s official prophecy. The most important one of the year!
And she looked at me. She knows something. That must be me! So that’s why she’s been avoiding me. She knows I’m corrupted!
Love will consume her, she said. If that’s what happened to Celezyon, then… Oh no…
“Moondancer,” she whispered urgently. “They were corrupted. How were they corrupted?”
Sheer loathing cracked through Moondancer’s face. Her cheeks almost burst into flame. Her glower was a solar flare. Her teeth ground together sharper than flints creating sparks.
“Don’t you dare interrupt me,” she hissed.
“I have to know. Please.”
“Were you there? Where were you last year, and the year before?”
“I didn’t know! I swear! But…” Self-absorbed. “But I have to know now. I didn’t realize… I’m sorry…”
Moondancer’s face fought to smother the burning pain. She looked away.
“They chose passion,” she spat. “I stayed loyal to reason. Nothing more to it than that.”
“Who was it?” Sunset’s gaze, her voice, her heart sank to the cold marble of the floor. “Uh. I mean… You don’t have to answer. I understand. Forget I said anything.”
For a moment, it seemed Moondancer would lose the struggle and combust into pure fury. Then the flames died.
“My family,” she muttered to the floor. “And the few friends I made at school.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sunset regretted saying it at once. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Moondancer’s face twitch.
I told you. You’re too insincere, Shimmer. You don’t belong in this temple, among this grief. You’re insulting them just by being here.
At the front, Celestia bowed her head once. The list of words – Of names, Sunset corrected – glowed briefly under a spell.
“She’s sending our wishes to them,” said Moondancer. She spoke with what Sunset thought was deceptive calm.
A general air of relaxation swept over the congregation’s heads. Ponies shuffled about, murmured amongst themselves, and turned around to leave. By the time Sunset noticed this, she found the space next to her empty; Moondancer was already marching to the square entrance as though determined not to be caught last. Scurrying, Sunset caught up with her at the peak of the stone steps.
Moondancer stopped. She turned to Sunset, who almost skid past attempting to stop too.
“You wanted some help, you said?” Again, the deceptive calm.
All the same, hope sparked inside Sunset’s chest. She beamed at Moondancer through the thinning veneer of ice encasing her mind.
“Yes! Yes, please! Absolutely! Thank you!”
Moondancer was cold as the colossus they’d left behind them; only in her eyes did the fire burn. “Never get close to anyone. Not even your God. It’ll only hurt you in the end.”
And as though nothing had passed between them, Moondancer walked down to the mist, into the first few flakes of descending snow.