//------------------------------// // Chapter 32: Luna's City // Story: Evening Star Also Rises // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Hayden met the princess on the castle ramparts. Princess Luna did not attempt to return to her disguise—considering the display she had just put on for every citizen in Icefalls, there probably wasn’t much of a point. She had acquired her sword, Achelois, probably through the same means Hayden had the last time she used it. I wonder what would happen if I was carrying it when she tried to summon it. Hayden landed behind her, the only pony who had dared approach her up here. There were a few guards on the keep, but none had closed within a hundred meters. They all kept standing at their posts, staring off into the void as though there might be a griffon attack at any moment. At last they weren’t cowering and bowing. “Princess,” Hayden said, approaching her as respectfully as she could. “I thought you were… I guess we all did.” “Thought I had lost my mind?” Princess Luna asked, not looking back. She didn’t sound shell-shocked—not overwhelmed by the killing she had done, as more inexperienced soldiers might be. No doubt she had killed more than Hayden could ever dream of. “Well, uh…” she trailed off. “Maybe a little.” She didn’t dare say more. It was true she’d thought Luna had gone into depression, or else been locked up by her sister. Either way, the consequences were the same. Until now, there had been no hope of rescue. Luna chuckled. Hayden could hear the bitterness on the wind. “I suppose I gave you no reason to suspect otherwise. Not to you, or anypony else. It would have been so good just to let go… forget the pain, forget how little the ponies of Equestria care about my work. Forget what might happen to the bats.” She turned, but there was no anger on her face. “I might have, if I didn’t have your dreams tormenting me. Hope is a curse, Hayden from Earth. You have cursed me.” Hayden didn’t know how to answer that. Far below, she could see the cleanup crews working. The fires hadn’t spread, though a few structures had been destroyed. A few families would have lost everything in those flames and would have to be moved somewhere else. At last count, there had been fifty casualties—most only minor injuries. One of her elites had been killed, some devastating head injury taken in close physical combat. But considering what they were up against, fifty injured or killed is pretty good for them. Shows how much work we have to do. “It might be a curse, Princess,” Hayden eventually said, “but the alternative is worse. Either we hope we can change things, or we’re crushed by the weight of an indifferent universe that doesn’t care what we do and doesn’t care what it destroys. I couldn’t just accept the consequences of my presence here in Equestria—even if it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t go home knowing what ponies here would pay.” “Well…” Luna gestured over the castle walls with one wing. “Icefalls is still here. You survived most of the winter, and you survived a single probe. Can you survive an invasion?” Evening Star straightened to military crispness. “I think you’ll be surprised what this army can do once it’s been trained and equipped, Princess. But I think our odds get better if we have you here. What you did to that airship… we aren’t building anything nearly that good.” Princess Luna turned away again. “That is not a feat I can often repeat, Hayden. Even if I had the power, such terrible destruction has consequences on the material world. Unraveling the thread of the tapestry in such a manner can do… well, look at the Crystal Empire. You can’t, because they fell through the tear they made. If they are very lucky, we will see them again. But what pony can say?” She spun sharply, advancing suddenly on Hayden. “There is one thing I didn’t learn from your tour, Hayden. At every juncture, I see the evidence that you defied the will of my sister. So much the better, or Icefalls would already be starving. She seems willing to barter the lives of everypony in the north, along with the territory we do not need, for the safety of the rest of our ponies. She never anticipated success. What will you do if you win?” “What will she do?” Hayden asked, without flinching. “I think I know what she’s afraid of now. Outsiders… she thinks that bats are infected.” Hayden lowered her voice to a whisper. “She’s right.” “What?” Princess Luna reacted with shock, recoiling from her. “Even you? The originator of the race… surely you wouldn’t accept her propaganda.” “I don’t think it reached up here,” Hayden said flatly. “But I didn’t learn from her. I went to Avalon for help, Princess.” She nodded towards the gun on her shoulder. “I wanted him to make these for all the ponies of Icefalls. With an army like that, I might’ve marched on the griffons… but he couldn’t. Because he’s too busy trying to find a cure for what he found. He’s been bringing in thestral ponies, and every single one of them carries an outsider. He was able to remove them all without hurting the ponies, apparently, but the transformation is still permanent. I know, because he put me through it. I… was infected too.” Luna turned slightly away, muttering something to herself. Hayden couldn’t catch most of the words, though she could hear the intention obvious enough. Luna was wondering if she had made the right choice in coming up here. She seemed to be considering whether to allow her sister’s plan to go through after all. Maybe even to stop Hayden and force Icefalls to be destroyed. “He cured us,” Hayden said, interrupting her. “He thinks he can figure something out for the race as a whole. We just need to give him time. Nopony cares about the night more than bats do, Luna. They don’t know they’re infected… it’s not like they’re some insidious army trying to undermine Equestria. They’re just ponies who are looking to you for help.” “To you,” Luna said. “Not me. Equestria barely even knows my name anymore.” Hayden removed her jacket, turning it slightly to the side so the princess would see the patches. With Luna’s cutie mark, not Celestia’s. “Anywhere my army goes… anywhere we protect. Ponies will know who kept them safe. When another winter comes, and Icefalls is still here, ponies will know you are the reason why. It would be better if we had you with us. You’d… probably be better at all this commanding stuff than I am. Honestly, I’d be helpless without Lodestone. He was wasted commanding one base.” Luna’s expression was a mask. For a few minutes, they stood together in silence, watching the city come alive with nightfall. Icefalls was thoroughly a nocturnal city now, lit with the steady glow of crystal and the orange flicker of oil. “I do not know why so many ponies have decided to… change. The number is much less than half of all pegasus ponies, yet there are still so many. I see their nightmares every moment, Hayden. Equestria’s cities banishing them, their friends disowning them. It would not seem so likely, except for my sister’s work. I suppose I have less reason to resent her now, if she is right about the danger you present.” “Avalon cured me,” Hayden said. “And a few others. I was hoping he would have time to treat my officers, but… he’s so busy with the machine he’s working on, he doesn’t have a spare moment. Point is, he’ll figure it out. We just have to keep going from here, knowing that it will get solved. We can’t fix everything, so we focus on what we can fix.” Princess Luna straightened, flexing each of her wings in turn. “I am the ruler of Icefalls. The north is my territory. I won’t let it fall to the griffons… not if I can still fight. There are others to deal with the Outsiders, yes?” “Yeah,” Hayden agreed, beaming. “Somepony else can worry about that.” “And somepony will have to go and retrieve the refugees from the south. They wander from city to city, helpless and starving. Those who have not made it here are in terrible shape. Will you care for those I bring?” “Yes,” Hayden promised, without pausing to think. “We are prepared to take refugees. Our industry can easily accept new workers, and the hospital system I’m working on can care for those who have been hurt in their flight.” “Good.” Princess Luna took to the air. “You gave me good reason to doubt you, Hayden. Now I am seeing there were more reasons not to.” There was a crack, a flash of light, and Princess Luna’s glowing form vanished from the air in front of her. A few seconds later, Nightbreeze emerged from the keep below her. She sat down beside Hayden on the edge of the ramparts. “I can’t believe you did it,” she eventually said. “All that spin you’ve been whispering to ponies about Luna’s trust and the secret mission from the crown, and… you get her to come out of hiding. Did you know it was her?” Hayden shook her head. “She felt… familiar. I am her familiar.” She waited a few seconds, but Nightbreeze didn’t laugh. So she went on, looking away awkwardly. “We could have taken that last airship without her. But… I think this was better for the men. Now word will spread about how the princess showed up during the scariest part of our battle to protect the city. Ponies will think the princess is coming to save them, so they’ll fight harder.” “Is she?” “I… think so,” Hayden said. “She went to bring in refugees from the south. Ponies who didn’t know about us or couldn’t make it. Might be a lot more bats in the next few weeks.” “Just in time for us to get attacked,” Nightbreeze said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I hope we win this, General. You’ve made bold promises to the ponies of Equestria. First to me, then to that fort of yours, now here. Sooner or later, you’ll have to deliver.” She left, slipping back into the fort. Hayden sat in the chill and watched the stars for a few minutes, until it got too cold. There was no wisdom for her up there—she would have to bring that. Over the next few weeks, Icefalls would become as prepared as it was going to get. She would not learn if her little fiction with the birds had come true, but they had brought all the bodies to a nearby mountain peak, where they would hopefully remain unburied by snow. Hayden’s soldiers kept training, her factories kept building, and winter never came for the farms. Of course, not everything worked perfectly. Upending the social order and expecting almost everypony to work as much as they could wasn’t something Hayden thought they could sustain. But she didn’t really need ponies to keep it going. A few more proposals for scouting missions crossed her desk, but Lodestone shot them all down, and she agreed. They needed airships if they were going to venture into griffon territory, and they had only the one suited to that purpose. The Excellus would work best for Icefalls if it did remain a surprise—the last ace she could pull from her sleeve if the battle went badly. It still waited, hidden in a secret hanger in the mountain that was really just a thin ice shell poured by pegasi to cover it, ready to be shattered by the engines if it needed to be used. But if that happens, I’ll already be dead. Who knows what that will do to Equestria. Meeting a human hadn’t exactly done good things for Hayden’s ideas of her own reality. On the one hand, Avalon was certainly human, and certainly real. But on the other, his world was far in the future of her own. Hayden would not even have lived to see the founding of the Avalon colony, whatever that was. So how could she know if any of what Avalon said was true? Her own artifacts from home were only so much of an anchor, when everything about them was wrong. She wasn’t a biped, wasn’t an architect, wasn’t even male anymore. All those months ago, Hayden had been convinced the world of Earth she remembered was real. But now… maybe Earth existed, but was she really from it? Could all of her artifacts have come from Avalon’s world, and she be no more real than Luna’s soul? Star Swirl didn’t return to Harmony, but he wasn’t very helpful about such questions. “If I send you back, you can find out,” was all he said. Hayden didn’t dwell on her worries about herself. There was a city to keep running, troops to train, a mythology to build. When the griffons finally arrived, they would find Icefalls as prepared as they could hope to make it. That would have to be enough.