By Luna’s Light: Aftermath
A little way from New Ponyville, in the hills just north-east of town, there was a cave. It was not a huge cave, although it led sufficiently far in that the back could not be seen from the entrance, and the light of the sun did not penetrate far enough even on the brightest day to illuminate the recesses. If you were to go into this cave, and walk past the stalagmites and stalactites that grew from the floor and ceiling, then at the very rear of the cave, hidden amongst the shadows, you would find what looked like a statue. A rough-hewn and inelegantly carved statue of two unicorns, the mare with a sword at her hip and the stallion dressed in rags, both of their knees and locked in embrace. Their foreheads are touching, and their hands are upon each others shoulders. They looked affectionate, but there was also something sad about them too, something about their pose speaks of grief and tragedy.
And if you were to go into that cave on the day that Princess Luna died and watch, you would see cracks start to appear on the statue of the two ponies, and a faint blue light shine out from within.
Because it is not a statue.
The cracks spread across the two, rippling upwards from the ground like tremors rumbling through the earth, each crack glowing with a light that increased in intensity until at last, with a great burst of light, the stone shattered outwards completely, revealing the two ponies who had been encased within.
For a moment they were as still as if they had been a statue in truth instead of mere appearance, and then the stallion opened his eyes. "Faye?"
The unicorn blinked. "Royce, you...we're out? The spell has been broken."
"It was always supposed to," Royce said, as a smile spread slowly across his features. "When it was safe."
"Safe," Faye, who had been known as Phaedra when she fought in the service of King Sombra, murmured as if the word were somehow unfamiliar to her. "Safe...but then that means..."
Royce's smile broadened until it was illuminating his whole face. "We're free, Faye."
"Free," Faye said, slowly and softly. And then she was smiling too, as bright as Royce. "Free!" she cried, as Royce took her in his arms and held her close.
"Yes, free," he said. "Free of all of them."
"I wonder when it is," Faye said. "I wonder how long it's been."
"It doesn't matter," Royce declared. "So long as we have each other nothing else matters. We're finally together, just as we were always meant to be."
Faye kissed him, on the lips and on the nose and anywhere else that she could reach. She had loved him since was a girl, working in her father's flower shop. She had given her heart to him, and received his heart in return. But his parents, wealthy and snobbish and disapproving, had contrived to keep the two of them apart and, in so doing, had convinced her that his love had only ever been a lie. Despair had made her flee from home, and loneliness had made her mad; madness had made her an easy mark for Sombra as he recruited servants amongst the discontented and the broken. He had given her power and she had fought his battles, even after she had learned that Royce had never betrayed her, but rather been as betrayed as she.
She just hadn't been able to see any way back from what she'd done.
It had been Pinkie Pie, and Princess Twilight, who had shown her differently. They had shown her mercy when she was at her most vulnerable, convinced her that she didn't have to be alone and hurting any more because there was someone who was still willing to love her after all that she had become.
But they had bigger problems than his parents by then. To protect her from Starfleet, to be with her at last, Royce had cast a spell upon them both encasing them in stone until it was safe, until they could be together. Until they could be free.
That time, it seemed, was now.
The two of them left the cave, hand in hand, and blinked at the harsh light of the sun that had become so unfamiliar to them in their stony confinement.
"So," Royce said. "Where do we go from here?"
Faye stared southwards towards New Ponyville.
"Faye?" Royce asked. "Is something wrong?"
"I don't know," Faye murmured. "But I have...I suppose that you could call it a feeling."
"What kind of a feeling?"
Faye smiled at him. "I want you to stay here for just a little while. I'm going to head into town, see if I can speak to Twilight or Pinkie, maybe one of their friends and see what's going on."
"You don't know how many years we've been trapped, they might all be old or passed away by now," Royce said.
"Then I'll find that out when I'm there," Faye said.
"I don't want to wait," Royce said. "I lost you once; I don't want to risk losing you again."
"You won't," Faye insisted. She kept on smiling as she stroked his face. "But we both know that you can't protect yourself the way that I can. Wait here, please, I'll be back soon."
Royce hesitated, but though he still looked unhappy about it he nodded. "Okay. But don't be long, okay."
"Don't worry," Faye said, as she turned her face towards New Ponyville. "I'll be back soon."
Big Macintosh stared up at the big screen that Starfleet had put up in the centre of town and watched Princess Luna die.
He hadn't expected much when he'd trooped into town with Apple Bloom and her friends to watch the funeral of Rhymey. Starfleet said that everyone had to come along and here the Grand Ruler's big speech, and so Big Mac had come along like he was told to. He wasn't the kind of fellow to cause trouble, especially with Applejack away and the whole burden of running the farm falling on his shoulders. He could do the work, but he couldn't really afford to be wasting time explaining to this new Starfleet colonel why he hadn't come along when he was supposed to.
He'd left Granny Smith at home, and hoped that she wouldn't be noticed or if it would be excused on account of her age and such. It was a long way to drag her for something that she wouldn't care about.
Speaking plainly and honestly he didn't think a lot of folks would care too much about ol' Rhymey dying. It was a hard thing to say of anyone, but that guy hadn't exactly done a lot to endear himself to folks around here. None of his friends had either. That was why no one had been particularly sorry to see them all go, although Big Mac had shaken hands with Buddy and tried to act like he wanted to see him again.
Little Daphne Dill had gone too. Some Starfleet fellows had come along in one of their dropships to pick her up, take her to some warship. Apparently she'd be meeting her cousin there eventually. She'd seemed happy enough to go alone with them, so Big Mac hadn't done anything about it. Most likely they'd been telling the truth; there didn't seem much reason for them to lie about something like that.
And so he'd gone along into town to see the big funeral. Everyone was there, staring up at the big screen that Starfleet had put up. Meanwhile the new Starfleet commander, the one who'd moved into town after Lightning Dawn and all his folks moved out, watched them like she had a list in her head and was making sure everyone was there.
It had been a mite more interesting than anyone had been expecting.
First the Grand Ruler told everyone that Twilight was alive, and always had been. Big Mac wasn't sure how much he believed that. He hadn't known the princess like his sister did, but she'd seemed like good people to him, always willing to help out when there was a problem; and besides, Applejack was a good judge of ponies, and she wouldn't be tight friends with anypony who wasn't good people deep down. But letting everyone think that you were dead for three years? That wasn't what good people did. It had near broken Big Mac's heart, watching his sister trying to hold in just how much she was hurting, watching her try and carry on and be the strong one like she always did. It had near broken his heart that there was nothing he could do to help her through all this.
A good person wouldn't have made Applejack suffer that way, a good person wouldn't lie to her like that. Which either meant that Applejack had been made a fool of by a lyin' little snake for all those years or else the big old Grand Ruler was full of it.
Big Mac knew which one his bits were on; this smelled worse than a compost heap.
And the smell only got more and more ripe when he went on to accuse Applejack and all the rest of Twilight's friends of being in on some big old conspiracy of some kind. From the way that murmurs started running around the crowd Big Mac knew he wasn't the only one to think that this stunk.
But under the eyes of Starfleet nobody did anything more than murmur. Nobody dared, especially when the new Colonel started yelling for silence for His Majesty or some such. Even though they were the ones making all the noise a few moments later as they started waving their fists in the air and shouting 'Sieg Starfleet' at the top of their lungs.
And then Princess Luna began to talk, and talk a lot of sense too as the Starfleet began to panic and try to turn her off and then start to really panic when they found they couldn't.
The ponies of Ponyville had watched spellbound as Princess Luna talked, and fought, and died.
And die bad, too. Big Mac had never seen anything like. Even as he placed his body in between Apple Bloom and her friends and the screen, so that they wouldn't have to watch what they shouldn't have to see at their age, he himself had been unable to take his eyes off the grim and gory spectacle.
It was horrific. He'd never seen anyone butcher another pony like that in all his years.
A lot of folks were feeling the same way, he could tell. They were angry. He could feel the anger in the crowd like electricity. Folks were angry, but with Starfleet all around none of them really knew what to do with all that anger.
It was like they were waiting for someone to take the first step.
"Thank you all for your attendance," declared Colonel Sparks. She was a young orange mare with a reddish-brown mane cut short around her head. She wore daisy hairclips in her hair, which didn't make her look any older, and she had a slightly screechy voice when she yelled like she was doing now. "Now disperse at once and return to your homes. This event is over! Disperse and return to your homes! An immediate curfew is in effect!"
Someone has to take the first step.
Big Mac caught the eye of Cheerilee. "Miss Cheerilee, can I ask you to walk Apple Bloom and make sure she gets there safe? I've got some business to take care of here."
Cheerilee stared at him for a moment. "Of course, I'll make sure she gets there. Come along, girls."
"You're not coming back with us?" Apple Bloom asked.
"Nope."
Apple Bloom frowned. "Do you...is everything gonna be okay."
"Eeyup," Big Mac said. "Go on now. I'll be home soon."
He watched out of the corner of his eye as Miss Cheerilee led Apple Bloom and her friends away. He didn't want them to be caught up in this.
It might be as well if Miss Cheerilee wasn't invovled either.
Big Mac began to walk towards the nearest Starfleet guard standing around the town square. As big as he was, other ponies soon made way for him, and as they got out of the way Big Mac quickened his pace until he was running.
The guard barely had time to register what was happening before Big Mac burst out of the crowd like a bull and body-slammed him with all the force of a runaway train.
The two of them went down in a heap, but Big Mac was on top and it was his fist that rose and fell to punch the other fellow's lights out. Behind him he could hear a whole lot of yelling and hollering, and maybe-
Big Mac's whole body jerked as he felt a shock from his back run up and down his whole body, making him twitch without wanting too. He let out a gasp of pain as someone hit him on the side of the head, knocking him off the guy he'd run down. Big Mac looked up into the face of another soldier, holding some kind of baton with electric sparks shooting off from the tip as he stared down at Big Mac like he was the scariest and most infuriating thing he'd ever seen.
He lunged at Big Mac with the baton, but before it could connect Daisy had jumped on him from behind with her arms around his neck. He staggered backwards, arms flailing, until Rose and Lily collided with him and bore him to the ground.
As Big Mac picked himself up he saw it was much the same all over. Everyone was fighting, all of his friends and neighbours who'd been pushed too far. There were a lot of them, and not many of Starfleet, and so it didn't much matter how much better than regular folks they were when they were just getting dogpiled left, right and centre. Just about the only one left was-
There was a crackling, electrical sound, followed by an explosion and a cry of pain as Ditzy Doo was hurled backwards, bouncing along the ground before she rolled to a stop in a heap. She was still alive, Big Mac heard a faint groan coming from her, but she was bleeding from the head too; it was starting to mingle with her mane.
Colonel Spark had one hand outstretched, a silver coin clutched between her fingers and a smug snarl upon her face.
"Do you any of you backwards hicks know what railgun is?" she demanded. She chuckled. "Of course not. How could you? Railgun is the application of electromagnetic principles to launch high velocity projectiles. At the speed that these projectiles can reach, it doesn't matter what is being fired, the very velocity that it can reach renders it lethal. And I, with my mastery of electromagnetic force, am a living railgun! What you've just witnessed is the smallest foretaste of my power. If you do not disperse at once, if you continue to offer any resistance to Starfleet, then I promise you, my next shot will be lethal."
There was a moment of silence, and stillness, before both were broken by the groans of Ditzy Doo as she forced herself back up onto her feet. Wall-eyed or not she still managed to stare defiantly at the colonel, even as blood from her forehead poured down her face.
Colonel Spark's lips curled into a sneer. "So be it."
Her fingers crackled with electricity as the coin disappeared from sight.
There was a blur in front of Ditzy as a dark grey pony all dressed in black appeared between her and Colonel Spark. The grey unicorn's sword moved like blur, and the two halves of Spark's coin fell limply to the ground on either side of her.
Colonel Spark retreated back a step. "Who in the galaxy are you?"
"My name is..." the grey pony paused for a moment, smiling as she tossed her dark blue mane. "My name is Faye, and though this town has far better protection than I could offer...yet it is under mine too, nonetheless."
Spark shook her head. "I...this is impossible! Nobody can move faster than my railgun?"
"If you're so sure," Faye said. "Then you won't mind putting it to the test, will you? Fair and square."
Spark stared at her a moment, before she bared her teeth in a snarl. "Have it your own way!" she yelled, as a pair of shining coins appeared, one in each hand.
Sparks flew from her fingertips. Faye sped forward. The coins surged out. Faye's first two strokes cut them in half.
Her third stroke, as she appeared over Colonel Spark, shattered her Starfleet insignia and cause the colonel's armour to vanish.
Faye placed her sword at Spark's throat. "Now go from here, and take your goons with you. Or my next stroke will be lethal."
Spark gulped.
Once Starfleet had fled, taking their wounded with them, Faye sheathed her sword.
"Thanks for your help, Miss! You probably saved my life back there!"
Faye turned, to see the light grey pegasus with the golden mane that she had saved.
"You're...welcome?" she said. Was that what you were supposed to say at times like this? She couldn't really remember. Being a servant of darkness had done a lot to rob her of her social graces, and they'd never been especially polished to begin with. "You should probably get that head looked at."
The grey pegasus touched her bleeding forehead. "Yeah, probably. My name's Ditzy, by the way. Ditzy Doo."
"Faye," Faye murmured. "Honestly, I was a little surprised that I had to step in the way that I did. I wouldn't have thought that Twilight would let things get like that."
"Twilight?" asked a big red earth pony as he wandered over. "You mean Princess Twilight?"
"Yeah, that's her," Faye said. "Do you know where she is? I'd like to talk to her."
Ditzy and the big stallion looked at one another.
"Where have you been, Faye?" Ditzy asked.
"Well, I spent a little while calling myself Phaedra and being a gigantic class-A jerk to everyone until Twilight and Pinkie showed me a better way by reminding me that I was still capable of love and worthy of being loved but then my boyfriend had to turn us both into stone in order to keep us safe but then the spell wore off so I guess we are safe in spite of what I just saw and I'm really hoping that Twilight or Pinkie is around to explain what's going on," Faye said. "So do you know where I can find them? I haven't seen them around, so are they on a trip? Do you know when they'll be back?"
Ditzy and the stallion looked at one another again.
"Okay, out with it," Faye demanded. "What did I miss?"
"I…honestly don't know where to start," Ditzy replied.
In an empire of millions of souls, stretching out across the stars, it might seem odd that the most back-end of nowhere posting should be found on the homeworld, but that was how Outpost 37-B was perceived by those ponies unlucky enough to be stationed there. A place so small, so out of the way, and stuck in such a desolate and unimportant place that it was not even worthy of a real name, the outpost consisted of a couple of towers, a barracks and a metal wall surrounding both, all of which nestled upon the edge of the jagged and forbidding Mountains of the Moon. There, hidden within the mountain peaks, lurked the Moon Clans of the Night, otherwise known as Nightponies, savages with fangs and wings like bats who had resisted all calls to join the civilised community beyond their mountain homes. They would not even convert into the superior form, retaining their typical quadrupedal state as a sign of their backwards savagery. There were rumours that the Grand Ruler had tired of their primitive intransigence, and meant to drag them kicking and screaming into the modern age - by force - if need be; but for the two hundred and so officers and men out Outpost 37-B it was difficult to see why His Majesty would want to waste his time on such as them, or hazard the dignity of Starfleet chasing primitives up and down the mountains. They were few in number, an insignificant fly in the great and glorious ointment that was His Majesty's empire, and they were in the grand scheme of things utterly irrelevant.
So irrelevant that it took only this small outpost to keep them in line. Let them rot in their mountains, chewing on the decaying bones of their past, dwindling in number with every generation. What matter it?
Such was the attitude among the ponies whose assigned task it was to hold the Moon Clans in submission, to remind them of the power and majesty of Starfleet and, in so reminding them, hold them in fee.
But that was a task that required little to no actual effort, and so if standards of discipline or readiness had ever been high on the base that time was long ago. Certainly they were not so now. Although Luna, Princess of the Moon, had died a traitor's death that very day, come dusk there was no panic or alarm within the outpost. No especial guard had been stood to, and the sentries on the wall paid more attention to their daydreams of a furlough than to what might be going on without. The towers were unmanned, and most of the ponies were huddled inside the warmth of the main barracks building: playing cards, drinking, singing (badly), moping over pictures of loved ones they hadn't seen in too long or cursing their 'dear John' letters. Uniforms were worn halfway open to the waist, or else were stained with spills of food and cheap wine. The idea that the base might soon become a battlefield did not seem to have crossed a single mind.
On a bluff high above, Catseye and Silvermane looked down upon the unready outpost.
"They do not fear us," Silvermane murmured, sounding insulted by Starfleet's lack of readiness.
"We have shown them nothing worth fearing," Catseye replied.
"We will do so now," Silvermane growled.
The two were brothers, although their appearances would not have given the fact away. Catseye stood upon two legs, having accepted the 'gift' of Starfleet's improvement as the price for setting out into the world to serve his princess in New Canterlot. Now his princess was dead and he had returned, to stand once beside his brother, who stood upon four legs having remained at home to tend the fires of their traditions.
Catseye wore the black and silver metal armour of the Moon Guard; Silvermane wore the skull of a hydra for a helmet and armour fashioned from the bones of an adolescent dragon, bleached yellow in the sun.
Yet, for all their differences, devotion to Luna united them; and if they could not save their princess then at least they would honour her memory and dying wishes.
Tonight, and all the nights until the so-called Grand Ruler was torn from his throne and made to answer for his crimes, Starfleet would feel the wrath of the Moon Clans.
Down in the outpost below, the sentries were roused from their careless stupor by the sound of a horn in the mountains. The note echoed long and low, reverberating off the high and fang-like peaks. It was joined by another horn, and another, and another, horns in the sky for which no horn blower could be seen. Horns, horns, horns wildly blowing, each call echoing from the mountains down to make them seem like there were many more horns than there were.
Soldiers began to stagger out of the barracks, staring upwards into the darkening sky as the sun set and the air was filled with the sounds of horns blowing in some place invisible.
And then the horns were joined by drums, drums beating in the mountain, drums pounding out their rapid rhythm to the world, drums driving up a great cloud of night ponies up into the sky. Like geysers the night ponies rose, one, two, three, four, five, six columns, more, so many columns of nightponies rising up out of the mountains that the Starfleet soldiers down in their outposts below soon lost count. And each column...it was impossible, but each rising column contained hundreds, maybe even thousands of nightponies, each of them shrieking like monsters out of nightmare as they rose into the sky and converged in one great, enormous mass of hostile ponies.
They blocked out the setting sun as they descended on the outpost.