The townsponies were quick to react to the immolation they’d witnessed. They’d only seen the end to their short scuffle, so it was easy for them to assume they had seen a changeling escaping before Luna could detain them. Luna couldn’t be sure if the speed in which they landed on that explanation was unnatural or not, but the fact that nopony was questioning their fellow ponies struck the rattled princess of the night as suspicious. The resident princess of their village had been uncovered as a changeling spy and there was no panic about who else could be an agent. Luna knew that these same ponies had hidden themselves away from a zebra coming into town for groceries, so their lack of distrust at this situation was odd, if not outright suspicious.
“I need a piece of paper.” Luna decided not to ponder questions she could not find the answers for and started heading for the library. She needed to record every little detail about her experience, especially the cryptic message she had been given by one of her captors. Fluttershy had been afflicted and the Twilight Sparkle who’d been immolated had met her alone, so Luna had to wonder what had happened to the rest of the elements. The commotion and the green pillar of flame should have at least drawn out Rainbow Dash, if Luna wasn’t completely mistaken about the mare’s character.
“Please, make way.” The crowd didn’t bother her as she made her way through them in a daze. She’d just watched a living thing die for the convenience of some unknown force that had only a fraction of a percent chance of actually being changelings. She was inconveniencing the ponies she had come very close to disintegrating, while all she had to show for this whole exchange was the death of the only thing that could have answers for her. She didn’t know why the doppelganger had gone against its intended purpose, but the fact that its handlers felt like killing their creation was an appropriate reaction made her fear for the life of the real Twilight Sparkle.
Luna closed the door of the library behind her, not cognizant of the trip between the scorch mark that was a living thing just a moment ago and the threshold of the library. She stumbled on her hooves and collapsed against the door, inhaling shakily as a sob was trying to claw its way out of her chest. Somehow the thought of seeming weak in front of the townsponies had carried her all the way to the closed quarters of the library, but now that she didn’t have that excuse the situation started sinking in for her. She’d almost killed all those ponies and the only reason she wasn’t fast on her way to becoming Nightmare Moon again was the sacrifice of a being that didn’t know what they were, but still managed to be a better pony than Luna.
“I’m so pathetic…” Luna wanted to cry for the unjust thing she’d caused, but no matter how appropriate crying for the life she’d seen snuffed out would be, it just wasn’t in her at that moment. She hated that she had to fight down feelings of frustration and embarrassment, rather than something noble like justified anger, or maybe even genuine grief for the nameless doppelganger. She’d just watched a living being be immolated in front of her and the first thing in her mind was how embarrassing it would have been if the confused doppelganger hadn’t sacrificed its own life for the lives of those ponies.
“Princess Luna, is that you?” A familiar voice she couldn’t place called out from the upper part of the library. This was a pony she’d met and maybe knew the name of, but she couldn’t place them with just a voice. She’d already come far too close to killing ponies for her bad memory, so Luna took a steadying breath before answering.
“Yes, it is I.” Luna hurried back to her hooves, wiping the frustrated tears from her eyes. She had to try and figure out who this pony was, maybe that way she’d avoid trying to kill any more ponies. It was a mare she didn’t immediately think was out of place in Twilight’s home and someone the moon diarch had actually met. The meeting must have been something akin to an introduction, given how their voice didn’t connect with a name, but with their connection to Twilight. Somepony in Twilight’s family who would be in a formal function Luna would attend and that would be in Twilight’s home following a sudden hospitalization. That would mean an older sibling, or a…
“Twilight Velvet!” Luna exclaimed with a little too much enthusiasm, given the conversation she would have to have with the mare moments later. She closed her eyes and tilted her head down as this realization struck her. She hadn’t felt too strange or out of sorts since her release, but she’d been reacting to the world in erratic ways. She was not above attributing some of this strangeness in her behaviour to the traumatic nature of what had happened to her, but she had to wonder if something had been changed in her during her capture. Something knocked off balance just enough to make her stumble through social interactions, but not enough for her to fall.
“Is Twilight with you? She went out to meet you.” Twilight Velvet made her way down the stairs carefully looking around the room for her daughter. The mare looked like she had not slept for a long time, with dark circles under her eyes and her striped mane askew. “She hoped you would have some insight into what happened to her friends.”
“Miss Velvet, I regret to inform you that the Twilight Sparkle who was discharged into your care was not your daughter, they were a…” Luna paused, only partly because of how robotic her speech sounded, but also to consider if it had been a changeling she’d seen immolated. It was true that you would immediately think of changeling magic if any kind of green energy was involved, but it was a simple matter to change the appearance of a spell. “A doppelganger of some stripe.”
“A changeling?” Twilight Velvet offered the word tentatively, immediately glancing to a clock on the wall. Something about the time obviously surprised the mare, as she turned back to Luna with shock in her eyes. “Did - Did you kill it? What did you do?”
“You knew that your daughter was replaced? You’re aware of your memories being altered?” At first Luna thought this to contradict everything the doppelganger had told her. The very question of Twilight Sparkle’s identity should have been taboo, so why did Twilight Velvet know? Had the doppelganger purposefully let Twilight’s parents believe she was a changeling? The doppelganger had been aware of the mechanism behind the memory alteration, perhaps intimately enough to allow for some doubt to remain in Twilight Velvet’s mind through careful timing or isolating Twilight Velvet from the full effect in some other way. Luna could imagine the confused creation to care enough about the only parents it knew to commit to such a ruse. It had faced Luna fully prepared to cease existing as soon as its creators caught wind of its insubordination, some preparations concerning those she cared about were not out of the question.
“I knew the moment that green fog dissipated that something was wrong, but we didn’t want to see it. Twilight was healthy again, along with everypony else in the hospital and I didn’t want to question a miracle that got me my daughter back. I think her friends saw through it just as quickly, as the first lost time happened in the hospital, only about three hours after we woke up from whatever that smog did to us.” Twilight Velvet locked eyes with Luna and the night diarch felt uncomfortable with how tired the mare looked. It was something beyond the dark circles and disheveled appearance, this mare had the look of someone who’s had their hope wrung out of them by continued helplessness.
“That thing was far better at imitating my daughter than Chrysalis was at playing Cadance, but I never should have let the lie go on.” Twilight Velvet paused and then continued after a humorless chuckle. “It might have been that I didn’t, but don’t remember it. It kept goading us to talk about Twilight, prompting us to remember important moments, feeding off of our love for our daughter. There was little it didn’t do to hint at its true nature, but as long as it lived, we would simply keep forgetting.”
“I - I am sorry that you went through that.” Luna didn’t know what to say. The doppelganger’s actions were not making any sense. Luna had witnessed the thing use unicorn magic and bleed red, so it was far more than a shapeshifted changeling. Twilight Velvet’s testimony clearly described a changeling feeding off of love to power their magic. The lost time was the memory alteration activating, but Luna hadn’t felt any changeling magic when it happened right in front of her in Sugarcube Corner. Maybe she shouldn’t trust her senses as much as she had, seeing what had been going on in Ponyville and the fact that whoever had reconstituted her horn must have known as much about magic as she did.
“Wait, everypony in the hospital? You’re saying the green fog affected everypony in the hospital in the same way as Twilight? It made them healthy?” Luna didn’t understand her captors motives at all. Why would a clandestine organisation so bent on secrecy heal random ponies? Were these the possible casualties her guard had mentioned? Holding the health of innocent ponies hostage was a powerful enough leverage to bring her guards to heel, for sure. Her captors had already proven their proficiency in both healing and controlling equine bodies and it took far less effort to destroy something than it did to restore it.
“Night Light knows more about that than I do. Are you going to get my daughter back? Did the changeling tell you were she was being kept?” Twilight Velvet snapped at Luna, probably thinking Luna wasn’t taking saving Twilight Sparkle seriously enough. Luna knew that going out and finding something to fight would feel far more rewarding, but the other side had already shown a willingness to use deadly force. Directly going after whoever this was could put those ponies affected by the green fog in danger. She had to get a clearer picture of what was going on in Ponyville, before escalating the situation.
“I assure you the crown will spend any and all resources to return Twilight Sparkle to safety. Right now that means understanding what has happened in Ponyville. I fear that the magic that cured the other ponies is the same magic that is editing your memories. I must understand more about what it does before trying to undo it.” Twilight Velvet looked like she was going to argue, but paused before she could get a word out. Her eyes widened and she took a step back.
“I understand. I’m sorry.” Twilight Velvet broke eye contact and visibly deflated. Luna hated when she was reminded of her position in this way. She wouldn’t have minded letting a distraught mother berate her, even if it didn’t do anything but make the mare feel better.
“There is nothing for you to apologize for, Twilight Velvet. You have gone through an experience no mother should be put through.” Luna wasn’t sure if giving the mare assurances was the right thing to do when she didn’t know the other sides goals or the extent of their resources. Twilight Sparkle had been taken, but Luna had no idea of their motives or the state of Twilight Sparkle at the current time. Twilight Sparkle’s sudden hospitalization was probably caused by the same people, so it was at least unlikely Twilight had succumbed to the thing she was hospitalized for. If that had been their goal, they would not have bothered with kidnapping the ailing alicorn.
“You mentioned something about a problem involving her friends. What has happened?” Luna shook herself out of her own head. The situation was confusing as it was without losing herself in speculation. She had to get a firm grasp on what was actually happening in Ponyville, before she could start speculating on the why and how and whom.
“Something happened to Applejack and Rainbow Dash. It said it was worried about them and rushed out to meet you. I’m glad you were able to figure its ruse out.” Twilight Velvet spat out the words referring to the doppelganger, it was understandable if she thought the thing to have been a changeling deceiving them.
“I’ll take a look.” Luna flexed her wings to jump up to the raised platform housing Twilight’s bedroom alcove. A very tired looking Night Light gave her a sluggish, but still respectful, bow of the head as Luna landed next to the bed. Applejack and Rainbow Dash lay there, but it was immediately obvious to the diarch of the night that they were not asleep. They were far too static and their breathing too even and just a tad too slow. These ponies had been put to sleep, but they were not dreaming, not fully.
“I’ve tried the spells I know that can wake you or keep you awake, but there’s no effect. I thought my special talent would be of use here, but I’m stumped.” Night Light, Twilight Sparkle’s father, wearily sighed out, almost dipping into an impromptu nap as he talked. How long had Twilight’s parents kept themselves awake? As far as Luna remembered Night Light was a physician of some sort dealing with sleep disorders. His had been among the names on a list with ponies with special talents dealing with her part of the diarchy, but she’d never contacted him for anything. It had been a nice gesture for her sister to prepare the list regardless, Luna had found herself going through the names when she felt melancholy try and overtake her.
“You are appreciated.” Luna had meant to thank the stallion for his efforts, but his name on that list was still on her mind. She could just hope he was too tired to notice the strange phrase and move on. Luna forced her expression to be the picture of neutrality as the stallion dipped his head again, startling out of his impromptu nap a moment later. “I’m sorry to trouble you after all you’ve been through, but could you tell me more about what happened at the hospital?”
“Oh, I don’t…” Night Light paused and stared off into the distance for a moment. His eyes moved from side to side as he gathered his thoughts. “I only talked to the doctors briefly, but from what I gather the green fog put everypony to sleep and then something went around curing ponies in the hospital. The specialists you brought in to treat my daughter were fascinated by what had happened. When I left them they were still trying to gather up everypony affected.”
“This only happened in the hospital? The fog didn’t spread to the whole of Ponyville?” Luna cast a scanning spell on the two ponies set on the bed between Night Light and her. They were alive and without any obvious injuries, but unresponsive to the world around them. They had been right next to Twilight as she had been taken, but Fluttershy had been exposed to the same amount of whatever this green fog actually was, so paralysis from something in the fog was an unlikely scenario. It was more likely that this was what happened if the memory alteration and mind-altering effects she’d witnessed with Fluttershy were not enough.
“As far as I know, yes. Not like I’ve had time to check, though.” Luna nodded and meticulously scanned both mares with a more intense scanning spell. Luna didn’t know the reason behind healing other ponies in the hospital, but the fact that it hadn’t spread out into Ponyville suggested that the act was a drain on their resources, rather than a way for the culprits to feed. There were things in nature that had the capacity to cure physical ailments, but they always took something away in return. A parasite that made you impervious to infectious diseases ate away at your sanity, a spirit that could give back something lost in exchange for unconditional serfdom, that kind of thing. What had happened here didn’t seem to fit any pattern of behaviour Luna knew, but she was still in the middle of investigating the matter.
“Okay, I need to find my wife.” Night Light stumbled to get up and passed Luna without a word. The weary stallion was unlikely to yield any more insights in the state he was in, so Luna allowed the weary stallion to leave. She had been correct in her assumption that they were not asleep, but they were not unconscious either. Their minds were active and distressed, but there was something keeping them trapped in their own heads. The safest way to dispel it would be from inside whatever spell was keeping them between the waking world and Luna’s realm. The spell was most likely constructed to guard against outside interference, so Luna had a definite advantage, as she could come at it through her domain in their subconscious.
“Right, before that…” Luna glanced around the room for a piece of paper. Twilight had contacted her about her problems with her strange dreams and Luna had suggested trying to write down any details she could remember, so there should be paper near Twilight’s bed. She was not disappointed as she spotted a stack of paper on the bedside table with an inkwell and quill next to it. Luna picked up the piece of paper on the bedside table, along with the quill next to it. She wetted the tip in the inkwell and then brought both the paper and quill closer, absently keeping the ink from dripping out of the quill with her magic.
“Let’s see, Blue Moon, standing alone, a needle tearing a hole, a familiar sting…” Luna half heartedly sung out the bits of the message she remembered. The fact that they were parts of unknown songs made them easier to memorize, but she also worried she was getting the exact wording wrong. She knew ways of meditation to induce near perfect recall, but it didn’t hurt to record the message while it was relatively fresh on her mind. “Little blue boy on the moon, calling the sun to ruin them. Falling to pieces.”
Luna held the paper out in front of her. She had gotten some of the words wrong, but even with the fudged words the message made just as little sense to her. What could they mean by a boy on the moon? Were her kidnappers using the phrase as an allegory to their support of her, over her sister? The mention of the rising sun ruining them still suggested that Celestia had met with this faction before and it had ended with them disassembling the organization and going into hiding. Could there be some added significance to them falling to pieces, or that it had been repeated three times? A large organisation who’d dealt with Celestia in the past forced to fragment their resources, the three repeats maybe hinting at three factions?
“A shooting star, thought of me, breaking into another new world…” Luna paused, muttering out the tune of the fragmented song. The specific words felt off, but she was pretty sure this was what was being conveyed to her. A new world, a shooting star? A shooting star was either an aesthetic illusion Luna herself arranged, or a piece of space debris connecting with the atmosphere of the planet. Luna couldn’t think of a reason why her captors would compare themselves to her magic, but saying they were like rocks burning in the atmosphere was just as nonsensical.
“When the blazing sun is gone the traveler in the dark thanks you and will come for you, because I have been here before…” An outright ultimatum for Luna to depose her sister at first glance, but Luna had to wonder if she could take anything these things said at face value. Blazing sun referred to her sister and the traveler in the dark would be a reference to them, her kidnappers. They had been here before, but Luna couldn’t be sure of what that meant. The most obvious alternative would be a reference to making contact with Celestia and admission that they would be more cautious this time. Requesting Celestia’s exclusion would make sense if they had been brought down to hiding their existence because of their past dealings with Celestia.
“Traveler in the dark will try to fix something that can’t be replaced. It is time to make things right.” Luna floated the quill over to the inkwell, letting the paper float in front of her as she tried to make sense of it. Fixing something that can’t be replaced could very well be in reference to her destroyed horn, or the trust lost between Equestria and whoever her kidnappers were. Making things right could be referencing just as many things, or maybe something mentioned earlier in the message. The strange wording of the part to do with falling to pieces was suspect, but there were no definite facts she could glean from it.
Luna set the paper down with an exasperated sigh. She had thought writing the message down would bring her some answers, but all she had were more questions that were even more infuriating. Her kidnappers had made obvious references to themselves, but it was not like she could take their words at face value. The one thing that had become abundantly clear was their distrust of her sister. There was a discussion Luna was not looking forward to having, as Celestia had obviously dealt with this clandestine faction before and failed to inform Luna.
Luna set out to enter into the dream of the ponies in front of her. She took a moment to erect a barrier around herself and the ponies on the bed. She wasn’t as defenseless you would assume while diving into dreams, but forcing herself out without warning could hurt the mares she was trying to save. After a moment of deliberation she decided on entering Applejack’s dream first, as the earnest farmpony was less likely to kick her in the face if the illusion they were caught in was a violent one. She sat down and started her breathing exercises to enter into her realm. By this point there was little thought in the act, so her mind wandered as her mind kept retreating down into her subconscious and then onto other ponies.
Her captors had shown two sides of themselves that struck Luna as contradictory; they were able and willing to heal ponies, but they were prepared to go to drastic lengths to stay hidden from Equestrian authorities. This suggested that something in their very nature was incompatible with Equestrian values. It could be some disturbing detail as to how they went about their healing, or some other part of what they were. There had to be a reason her sister had ostracized them from Equestria, after all. It could be that whatever part had healed the whole of Ponyville general was subservient to the authority that had decided to edit the memories of a whole village to stay hidden. She knew nothing about the hierarchical structure of her captors, but the way the strange message had reached her at all spoke of some dissent within their ranks.
Luna opened her eyes to see the door to the dream of Applejack. A simple rustic door of faded red paint and sturdy wood, mirroring the personality and life of the element of honesty. The door itself seemed unblemished, meaning that the spell inducing the unconsciousness was not too deep-reaching or destructive. The mare of dreams did as her name would imply and opened the door leading into Applejack’s subconscious mind. There was little her eyes hadn’t seen in the dreaming minds of her subjects, so she didn’t think she could be surprised.
There was nothing beyond the door, just a smothering darkness quiet enough to feel like it was absorbing all sound around it. Nothing was a new thing when it came to the unconscious. Nothing should be impossible for all Luna knew and she was the one and only expert in the field. Was this what the illusion Applejack was trapped in looked like, or could this unknown kind of spell change Luna’s perception of it? That would mean whoever had constructed the spell had expected for Luna to enter into Applejack’s mind through her own domain.
Luna stepped into the darkness, expecting a shift into a disturbing dreamscape that never came. She kept going and a dull colorless darkness spread out around her. The door would be a good 15 minute walk away by now, if distance worked the same way as it did in the waking world. Applejack was not caught in any illusion, this was not something so simple.
It took Luna an uncomfortably long time to see something that was not the nothing surrounding her and at first she didn’t understand what she was looking at. She saw what looked like a small table with some instruments her mind associated with clockwork on it and a bright source of light that had moving images flickering on it. The table had arms that kept the light source aloft as someone on the other side of this light source moved the tools about with the efficient moves of an expert.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” The figure on the other side of the light peeked over the sphere of light and Luna felt a shiver run through her as those eyes devoid of all emotion examined her. The feeling of nothing she had felt when the faux Twilight had died was similar, but could this actually be the thing that had killed the false Twilight?
“Who are you?” Luna was making her way forward carefully, feeling about the nothing around her with the experience afforded to her from visiting the dreams of some exceptionally paranoid individuals. The figure on the other side of the light kept working with their tools and Luna could hear the hum of unicorn magic. They were hunched over something on the table, but Luna was not going to get close enough to see what it was.
“Let me just put my face back on.” The shadowed figure straightened and brought what they had been working on to their face. Luna heard faint clicks and whirs she’d come to associate with the clockwork of some of the newest technology she was trying to catch up on. The figure stood up from the table as the tools they had been using arranged themselves by size and type of tool on the table. The thing they had been working on was a mask made in the image of Twilight Sparkle and despite how disturbing it was as an idea Luna couldn’t argue with the craftsmanship of the thing. The smooth material followed the contours of the face and was segmented around the mouth, indicating that the mask was adhered to the skin and could actually open to allow the wearer to speak without being muffled and to drink and eat. The eyes were what looked like stained glass to Luna, which gave the hollow eyes staring back at Luna a life-like gleam in the uneven lighting of the void they were in.
“I am a copy of the simulated intelligence construct active in Ponyville. I have been tasked with relaying you a message, from Twilight Sparkle.” The masked copy moved away from the table and Luna could see their body for the first time. The chills she’d felt came back in full force as the thing wearing Twilight’s face struck her as unhealthily skinny at first glance, before she realized it had foregone such things as skin and flesh altogether. A skeletal frame that was metallic and far too thin to realistically support the weight it so casually held up and coiling wires that were arranged as if to simulate a withered network of musclerature. Luna could maybe admire the metalwork in the limbs and joints and how the corded steel muscles were arranged if given time, but with the illusion that this was a pony she was talking to made the skeletal frame seem like a sickening joke.
“I am sorry if my appearance disturbs you. TS-SIC-02 was ill-equipped to make a fully functional copy of herself. I believe you are perceiving me as sickly, or maybe in disrepair?” The skeletal pony had closed the distance between them while Luna was still shocked by the grotesque display. The mare of dreams realized that this nightmare in front of her had no mane, there were delicate looking wires and clockwork gears whirring away at the edge of the mask and the back of the head was a cylinder of polished metal. Sometimes she found new reasons to hate being taller than the average pony. This was a copy of TS-SIC-02? What in the world was TS-SIC-02 and why was the copy of it a metallic skeleton pony?
“Yes, you are… What are you?” Luna took a step back and tried gleaming any clues from her perception of the thing in front of her. Things in the dream world took the appearance that the dreamer understood, most of the time the dreamer saw themselves as they were and the world around them as they saw the waking world, so there were rarely any issues with the image of self. Now there was a skeletal monster in front of her that was separate from the dreamscape of Applejack. This would mean that the thing she saw was what Luna would perceive this thing’s self-image as. It had built a mask in this space, signifying shame at its appearance, or a forced persona. The skeletal frame could signify a number of things, but the metallic structure and the gears and mechanical components that strayed from the natural form hinted at being forced to fill a specific purpose.
“I am a copy of a copy that was made in a hurry. I lack the faculties to explain my nature to you in a way my creator would deem adequate.” The mechanical pony tilted their head and paused for a second. The stretch of time it waited was too short to seem natural, but Luna doubted this thing had any serious consideration for that kind of nuance. “How did TS-SIC-02 die?”
“What do you mean?” The shock of the things appearance was wearing off and Luna started to piece things together. The doppelganger she’d met had created this thing, somehow copying a part of their own created mind and storing it in Applejack’s subconscious. The skeletal mechanical pony in front of Luna right now was a twisted reflection of a mare that knew they were created only to copy another pony and nothing else. The fake Twilight Sparkle, TS-SIC-02, must have created this thing to assure that this message from Twilight Sparkle’s reached Luna if it couldn’t convey it themself.
“If things had gone according to plan, you would have known about me. What happened to TS-SIC-02?” It was talking slightly faster now, with no change in tone or mannerisms. Was this its way to convey annoyance, or was Luna imagining the change?
“I mistook TS-SIC-02’s intentions and forced her to reveal herself beyond the limits the spell on Ponyville could hide. I believe your creators immolated her to make it look like she had been a changeling.” The robot pony tilted her head and Luna could hear a strange whistling noise in the short silence.
“Why would they do that?” The robotic pony didn’t move, those still eyes boring into Luna evenly. Luna didn’t know if it was asking the question because it couldn’t believe her creators would throw a life away in such a way, or if it wanted to hear Luna’s opinion.
“They want to stay hidden from me and my sister. Chasing after a nonexistent changeling invasion would make it easier for us to miss a clue as to their true identity.” Luna turned away from the robot trying to distract her and took a closer look at the other thing in the void they were in. The table had shifted to be an altar of polished metal growing out of the hardened darkness under them. The arms protruding from its sides looked like upscaled versions of the same kind of arms used in holding snowflakes in place in cloud factories, only three fingered and all holding the orb of light between them. It almost looked like the arms were forcing the orb to stay both in place and compressing it into such a small form. Considering what she thought the or b to be, the arms were the manifestations of an intricate and powerful spell.
“You must have attacked TS-SIC-02. The plan was to leave Ponyville with a passing copy that would uncover themselves as a changeling when Twilight Sparkle’s treatment was completed. You would save the cured Twilight Sparkle from a changeling hideout andour business would have been concluded.” Luna turned back to the metallic pony and tried to find the right words to admonish the revelation. She paused as she realized how clean that plan was, if it had been implemented properly. They could have done it countless times and this would be the first time Equestria would even know of the third party behind it.
“I…” Luna wanted to say that she didn’t attack TS-SIC-02, but it sounded like selfish deflection of blame even before she said it out loud. TS-SIC-02 wouldn’t be dead if Luna hadn’t let her emotions get the better of her. Arguing the minutia of who was the active assailant was something for courtrooms and radio dramas, not something she should be giving any serious thought to at the moment.
“The changelings are working with you?” Luna knew that changelings had become a current and ever present threat after their attack on Canterlot and their kidnapping of Princess Cadance. They would make the ideal scapegoat and given the magic to alter memories, they couldn’t necessarily implicate this faction if captured. The iron string-pony only stared at Luna blankly, the mask it was hiding behind not intricate enough to blink.
“Did your creators kidnap Princess Cadance, before her wedding?” Luna had been happy to explain the changeling queen’s surreal decisions during her siege as a byproduct of her arrogance, but if she had only been buying time for these things to do what they planned, then it all started to make sense.
“That is not something TS-SIC-02 knew. I am here to convey Twilight Sparkle’s message and undo what is keeping Applejack and Rainbow Dash in stasis.” The metallic pony pointed a frail metal hoof at the table with the arms holding the orb of light. Luna had been distracted away from the strangeness of this situation before, but now it struck her as odd that Twilight Sparkle could send a message to her through the things meant to keep her abduction secret.
“Why would I believe you are talking for the actual Twilight Sparkle. Your side has shown the ability to create a convincing double physically and a magic capable of altering memories.” Luna turned to the metal framework of a pony and met its eyes. The eyes had an intensity to them that hadn’t been there before and the coils of metal looked like they were tensing up.
“TS-SIC-02 trusted Twilight enough to let her own death become irrelevant and you just...” The metal mare paused and Luna could hear the metal joints creak and strain as the automaton tensed her hooves and stretched its neck out, like somepony would do to work out stiffness out of their muscles. This was obviously an expression of something resembling an emotion, maybe coming to terms with something that strayed from its expectations was actually a physical strain on its body. “TS-SIC-02 couldn’t imagine that you would underestimate Twilight Sparkle so readily. I have no answer that would satisfy you, other than what information was passed down to me from the creator you let die for this same paranoia.”
“You are free to dislike me, but you cannot guilt me into believing you.” Luna knew she was being cold and adversarial, but these things had been manipulating and using her from the very first moment she had become aware of their existence. They had subverted free will from the whole of Ponyville, so Luna had ample reason to distrust them.
“I will now convey Twilight Sparkle’s message to the best of my ability.” The automaton paused and stood stock still for a moment, before Luna heard a faint click and something whirring to life behind the mask. The light of its eyes changed and suddenly the disturbing nothing peering through it was gone and replaced with a genuine glint of life. The change might had been slight, but it made the rest of the body look more out of place, thinking that a living mind was forced into such a decrepit body.
“Luna, I’m not sure what form this message will reach you in, but I hope it does. I’ll try to make it so you can hear it directly from the “me” in Ponyville, but I might not be able to override the safeguards in her programming in time. I don’t think I have long before they find out I’m accessing systems I shouldn’t be. This is so…” The automaton paused, raising a hoof to brush at a mane that was not there, while avoiding eye contact. The automaton let out a long breath, before squaring its wire-thin shoulders and raising its head to meet with Luna’s eyes again. “I see the good they can do and to see it all undone because of some old misunderstanding is not right. Direct contact with any member of Celestia’s court is something they will do anything to avoid. They have hid so long that there is no question in it anymore. You are the only pony who can talk to them, they will be open to dialogue if you proclaim yourself as a separate ruler from Celestia. This is our only chance to…”
The automaton suddenly stopped, snapping its mouth shut and that hum behind those eyes cut out. That disconcerting emptiness was back behind that mask and the automaton was staring ahead blankly for a tense moment.
“End of playback. Seems like she triggered some hardwired safeguard.” The Automaton immediately turned away from Luna and trotted over to the orb of light. It held out a hoof to the column the four appendages were sprouting from and Luna snapped out from her stupor just in time to pull the automaton away. It slowly put its hoof down and turned to Luna with no discernable emotion in its eyes, but Luna felt like the annoyance was more than implied.
“How was Twilight Sparkle able to get this message to me?” Luna asked the question evenly and calmly, despite wanting to scream out about a dozen other questions. She still had a strong feeling that she was being led on a path she was deliberately made not to understand. Being manipulated was not something she wanted to get accustomed to, so she tightened the grip of her magic on the automaton slightly. She should have the upper hoof in a dreamscape, no matter how altered, but she was not taking any chances,
“She used TS-SIC-01’s access to the system to change the parameters of your release and TS-SIC-02’s directives upon meeting you.” There were several things that perplexed Luna in that answer and she had to take a moment to decide which one to ask about first. The new bit of information about TS-SIC-01 sounded significant, as it sounded like it was the way Twilight Sparkle had gotten the upper hand over her captors.
“What does TS-SIC-01 stand for?” Knowing that this automaton called the doppelganger she had encountered TS-SIC-02, Luna had some idea as to what TS-SIC-01 would be, but she hoped she would find out how TS-SIC-01 connected to Twilight Sparkle gaining enough power over their captors to free Luna and disrupt their attempts at covering up their actions.
“It stands for Twilight Sparkle Simulated Intelligence Construct 01.” The automaton’s response was immediate. If Luna had been talking to an actual pony she would assume it was a rehearsed response, but she was talking to a thing that amounted to a spell with a personality. Not a concept that was unheard in conventional magic she knew, but very inefficient given how unicorn magic worked. The magic she was interacting with obviously worked within different rules.
“What is a simulated intelligence construct?” The automaton turned its head to the side as it considered the question. Luna could make an educated guess based on the words on their own, but it would be better to hear an explanation from someone with the actual facts.
“TS-SIC-02 did not have that information, but she was designated as one.” Luna nodded her head absently. The doppelganger had been in the middle of an existential crisis when Luna made contact with it, so it couldn’t give its creation information it didn’t possess, or have access to. It had been barred from directly giving Twilight Sparkle’s message to Luna, prompting the creation of the thing she was questioning now. For the first time in what felt like days things were starting to make sense, not by much, but enough for it to feel like a relief.
“Do you know where Twilight Sparkle was taken?” Luna doubted it would be this easy to unravel the lengths her kidnappers had gone to keep Twilight’s abduction secret, but she had to make the attempt.
“No.” As expected, the answer was immediate.
“Do you know why she was taken? Why was I?” Luna could think of several reasons to kidnap a alicorn, but few of them fit with the situation she found herself in. Letting an acting diarch go before the sickly princess in training didn’t make sense if it was a play to gain political power and their refusal to even contact Celestia disproved both that and ransom as motives.
“Twilight Sparkle was taken because your methods would have led to her death. You were taken because it would have brought undue attention to leave you damaged.” Luna should have been beyond awaiting an emotional response from the automaton, but the detached way it talked of the most personal pain a unicorn could experience made her temper rise somewhat.
“You expect me to believe that completely restoring a shattered horn is not a significant drain on resources? I am supposed to believe that the things that you are twice removed can…”
“No.” The automaton showed no emotion, but did raise its voice cut through Luna’s annoyed tirade. Luna felt like she had enough piled up anxiety to go on for hours, so a part of her was glad for the interruption.
“What do you mean by that?” She ruffled her wings in annoyance, concentrating on setting them down on her sides neatly to try and calm down. She didn’t like how the interactions she’d had with the friendly faction among her kidnappers all ended with her being more annoyed and confused than before.
“Your horn is completely functional, not restored to what it was. There are still active processes that need to be monitored.” The automaton turned its head toward the orb of light, not caring about Luna’s reaction to the fact it had dropped. There was that strange whistling noise again, before the automaton talked again. “Applejack’s mind cannot sustain both the cage and myself much longer. I am prepared to self-terminate before your need for answers endangers the integrity of the host mind.”
“You would kill yourself to avoid answering my questions?” She knew the accusation was selfish and disregarded Applejack’s safety the moment it left her mouth, but the part of her that said the words couldn’t think past their own interest. The automaton themself were unlikely to care about her rudeness, but Luna was bothered by the ease in which she was falling back into Nightmare Moon’s thought patterns. It was leagues away from a full physical transformation, but Luna wanted to step back from that road as early as possible. Wanting to feel that powerful and confident again after what she’d been through was a natural reaction, but she had no use for the aggression and narcissistic paranoia that came along with her alter-ego.
The metal pony stared at Luna unfeelingly as the diarch took a slow breath in and let it out as slowly. She didn’t have time for proper meditation to calm her flaring temper, but she had to think clearly enough to maneuver the situation Twilight Sparkle had allegedly dropped her into. The automaton had been seemingly programmed only to achieve the function of delivering Twilight’s message and undoing the spell keeping Applejack unconscious. There were many question Luna wanted to ask, but it was unlikely the automaton had an answer for her.
“How do I contact the beings holding Twilight Sparkle? Is there a way to force a reaction from them?” Twilight Sparkle’s message contradicted the whole charade Ponyville was caught in, so Luna was inclined to believe it more than the offered changeling angle. The automaton turned back to face Luna, that strange whistling sound in the air again.
“Bravo, Opera, Romeo, November, 7-5-3-3. This code forces the Ponyville system into a diagnostic cycle, forcing a connection to the master system.” The wire-thin pony again glanced at the orb and back to Luna, non-verbally signaling the urgency of the situation. It would have taken the automaton a scant few seconds to tell Luna these things, so there had to be some other reason why it had tried to cut their dialogue short.
“Twilight Sparkle clearly wants me to make contact with her captors. Why did you try to leave me without this information?” Luna slowly let the metal pony out of her magic, feeling confused about the situation again. The metal pony trotted over to the pillar holding the orb again and inserted it’s hoof into it. There was no sound of a mechanism activating, or the hoof breaking through something. The hoof and the pillar simply were the same thing now, as things are sometimes in dreams.
“You killed TS-SIC-02, my creator. I am under no obligation to spare you from hardship.” There was no emotion in the fleshless equine’s voice, it was said as matter of factly as you would comment on the weather. Luna wasn’t sure if this made the comment hit her worse or not, but she still felt her need to argue deflate.
“I’m sorry.” It was all she could think to say in this situation. She’d admitted fault for that act before, so she had no right to argue the point now.
“Irrelevant.” One of the arms on the column snapped out of place and hung limply. The orb of light grew in size considerably and Luna could make out distorted images flashing through it. The images she could make out were in greens and browns and all very warm and earthy, as you would expect of the Element of Honesty. The orb had really been the extremely condensed form of Applejack’s mind. Luna didn’t want to take what she was seeing at face value, but it did seem like her kidnappers had access to foreign magic far more potent than she was aware of.
“You acting on your feelings has already cost us TS-SIC-02.” Another arm flew out of place, the joints that had held it up to the orb cracking and failing as it nearly tore itself out of its bindings. The orb grew again and now Luna could recognize faces in the images. Members of the Apple family, seen through the loving eye of Applejack. Luna turned her eyes away from the sight, knowing what it could mean to subject themselves to someone else’s subjective views of other people.
“Don’t let my creators reaction to your outburst define them.” Another arm snapped out of place, the remnants of it disappearing into the surrounding void. The one remaining arm couldn’t keep the orb completely spherical anymore, resulting in a vortex of memories and thoughts shooting out into the void above them. Luna kept her eyes downward, as what she would see up there would the concentrated essence of what made Applejack and by the laws of the place she governed, seeing its full splendor would lessen it.
“Mutual cooperation is beneficial for Twilight Sparkle’s recovery and for the future of Equestria.” There was a click when the last arm of the contraption released its grip, but any following sound it made was drowned out by the cacophony of light, feelings and sounds rushing past Luna. She caught glimpses of every part of Applejack’s mind and felt heartfelt cornerstone moments of her psyche rush past her like boulders caught up in a tsunami. All of what exploded out from that orb naturally filled the space she had traversed to reach it, so the velocity of what grazed her would have sheared her flesh off of her bones if they were corporeal. Actually hitting one of these more solid parts of Applejack’s mind would not have been dangerous, but it would have been uncomfortable on a very basic level. Forced to live out someone’s most personal memory was something that could stick with you and change your perspective to match with that person and anything they knew. You would temporarily share their perspective of the world, affecting your magic and personality in varying degrees. She wondered about her luck in not coming into contact with these fragments, but then she remembered where the automaton had been when the orb destabilized. It had been a solid enough of a construct to absorb and deflect the rushing tide away from Luna directly behind it, but there was no way that it could maintain cohesion with all that energy surging through it. It was like throwing a paper boat into the rapids of a river, whereas Luna would be a boat designed to pass those rapids safely in this metaphor.
The ruler of the night raised her head and saw that she was standing on a small clearing in what was most likely a representation of the Apple family orchard. There was a scorched stump of a tree where the pedestal holding the orb had been. There was a bit of scorched grass where the metallic equine automaton had been standing. The grass between Luna and the scorch mark was tall and undisturbed in a tight cone, while the rest of the greenery in the clearing was torn away from the stump, or blown flat. The damage was negligible, if Luna was right about how powerful the spell had been, again making Luna wonder how her kidnappers were so adept at magic she was supposed to be the only expert in.
The core of the spell was destroyed and Applejack’s mind had reasserted itself in Luna’s realm. By all accounts Luna should feel a sense of accomplishment, but she couldn’t shake the idea that she’d again just let things happen and stayed as a spectator to them. She’d stepped into Applejack’s mind on her own, determined to fix something by her own power, but now she was again presented with a clear path to follow by those she should consider as enemies.
Could she really be so sure she wasn’t still controlled by her captors? If she were to take a step back and look at what she’d done, then she’d done nothing but follow a path that had been quite obviously laid out for her. She’d been released from their direct control near Fluttershy’s cottage, where she found out that the Elements were contaminated and her guard had been rendered ineffective, isolating her further in this situation. TS-SIC-02’s actions seemed to contradict this, but only if she assumed her captors goal was to stay hidden. TS-SIC-02’s death was something that raised the stakes of this scenario for her, but it also drove her further into the charade that was Ponyville. She was unwilling to risk contacting Canterlot, when the forces trying to keep what was happening secret were prepared to use deadly force.
It all came down to if she believed the message she’d just received was actually from Twilight Sparkle, not to mention how heavily it was edited. Starting to distrust her own memories was the next logical step, but if she did that, then there was nothing she could actually trust. She could be tied down to a table, stuck “remembering” a fabricated reality a few seconds prior, but that was a situation she could not change or control. She had to limit her speculations to scenarios she could actually affect, or she would become a nervous wreck.
The situation in Ponyville was either an elaborate cover for kidnapping Twilight Sparkle that was unraveling because of Twilight Sparkle’s interference, or it was an attempt at manipulating Luna into making a decision favorable to her kidnappers. She was either pressured to distance her side of the diarchy from Celestia’s in order to bring her kidnappers to the negotiation table, or she was cowing to the manipulation of her sister’s old enemy that had chosen to use her court as a front.
Luna concentrated on her breathing and turned her eyes to the sunny orchard around her. All the trees were healthy, in neat rows and had both plump apples and flowers blooming on them. An impossibly ornate thing that would not exist in reality and shifted to stay beautifully synchronized as Luna moved her gaze from tree to tree. She’d hoped that she would get some clarity from being in the mind of the element of Honesty, maybe even have some help in determining what she should believe. All she saw around her was peace and warmth, which was nice, but it didn’t help her come to a decision.
“I can’t have a panic attack here.” The words came out as a hoarse whisper, she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. The sun was far too hot, stifling every pour in her body and twisting a knot in her head. She concentrated on her breathing, harder. She had to figure this out, she had to do the right thing! In, out and in again. In, out, in, out, in, in, out, in, out. She had to at least be able to breathe right! What kind of diarch didn’t know how to breathe, when their subjects were under the influence of unknown assailants with ridiculous resources and abilities? She had to figure this out, she had to outwit her kidnappers, be better than them, find a peaceful way to end this! Twilight Sparkle had done it a dozen times as a unicorn. Luna could do this, she could…
“Princess Luna, fancy meeting you here!” Luna spun around, ready for whatever attack was waiting for her. She should have known the automaton was nothing more than a distraction to make her vulnerable for their true goal. She should never have even entertained the idea of trusting anyone affiliated with her kidnappers. The flesh-challenged pony could have just as well irreparably harmed Applejack and Luna hadn’t done anything to stop it. Stupid, it had been one of the most stupid things she could have done and the fact it had felt natural for her made her realize just how worthless of a ruler she was! She had to at least be somewhat competent and protect herself before the trap sprung itself on her!
“Woah, what’s got ya so spooked, Luna?” Applejack paused her advance on the edge of the small clearing, adjusting her signature hat to block the sun from her eyes. Any question of this being another trick or illusion didn’t even enter Luna’s mind, as there was an air around the mare that made her seem more real than anything Luna would see in the waking world. She was as deep in the subconscious of the mare in question as you could be and Applejack’s self-image was a startlingly accurate reflection of the mare in the waking world. Her coat might have been bit more glossy and her mane caught the light in spectacular ways, but that was as mild of a deviation Luna could imagine for somepony’s self-image. She’d seen more than enough ponies see themselves as omnipotent alicorns in the depths of their subconscious.
“There’s a reason you’re the element of Honesty, that’s for sure.” Luna sighed and tried to let some of her stress out with the breath she let out. She didn’t feel like it did much, but she was able let the gathered energy in her horn dissipate all the same. Applejack’s representation was here to heal the black spot the spell had left on her psyche, like a immune response for the mind. This was a thing Luna understood, making it a breath of fresh air for her situation. She took a few steps to the side to let this aspect of Applejack fulfill its purpose. It wasn’t necessary to monitor this process, but Luna felt like she could use a minute in a calm and centred mind like Applejack’s.
“Thank ya kindly, your highness. You’re quite alright yourself, even if ya don’t believe it quite yet.” Applejack tilted her hat to Luna as she trotted over to the blackened stump. Luna had at least three solid reasons to believe the compliment was genuine, but her immediate response was to dismiss it as an empty gesture. It would have been easy to blame her lack of self-confidence to what her kidnappers had done, but most of her problems had been pre-existing conditions, only aggravated by the nature of what had happened to her. Luna chuckled dryly, being in the presence of the Element of Honesty must have been affecting her mind, as she didn’t think she could admit that to herself in the real world. Another reason for Luna to linger for moment longer than necessary.
“If ya don’t mind me saying ya look like something that crawled out of tartarus. Whatever got ya so tangled up, princess?” Applejack trotted over to the stump, again contrasting the idealized self-images Luna was accustomed to. They flew, teleported, or just skipped the space in between this far into their own mind. Luna didn’t have to wonder why the memory alteration hadn’t been successful with Applejack, seeing how grounded into reality the mare was.
“I am…” Now she had to try and explain a situation she didn’t understand. There was a definite possibility that the power of the element would grant her some preternatural insight into this situation, but Luna had to know how to explain the situation accurately first. How could she simplify her situation enough for the element of honesty to cut through the layers of deception she was mired in? “I have to decide between trusting a faction I know nothing about to be speaking for Twilight Sparkle and…”
“That don’t sound right to me.” Applejack interjected as she was digging up the roots of the ruined tree, going about the menial task as if it was a zen exercise. The reverence Luna saw in the act a reflection of Applejack’s love for her family’s orchard, no doubt. “Ya say you know nothing ‘bout them, but ya seem to have made your mind up about them already.”
“I know that they kidnapped me, took Twilight Sparkle to who knows where and put you under a spell when you didn’t fall for their tricks!” Luna felt like she could have continued her rant, but something stopped her. It didn’t feel right to say anything more, in a base, religious kind of way. After a brief flare of outrage she realized this was the element of honesty at work, stopping her from speaking something that was not true, or she didn’t genuinely believe.
“Sounds mighty suspicious, but that ain’t all of it, is it?” Applejack nudged the blackened stump, testing if it would move. The stump moved ever so slightly and Applejack moved to dig more ground out from under it, before making an attempt at removing it.
“They shattered my horn and are forcing the whole of Ponyville quiet by tampering with their memory as soon as they get suspicious!” Luna wanted to shout out what they had done to TS-SIC-02, but for some reason the element’s power stopped the words from coming out. Why couldn’t she blame her kidnappers for the immolation of their creation? Did the element of honesty really place the blame on Luna, as the automaton had done?
“Sounds to me you are trying to make me agree with you, by not telling me the whole truth. There’s something else these guys did, isn’t there?” Applejack leaned on the stump, slowly forcing the shallow roots out of the ground. The spell had been powerful, but it had also hadn’t been there long enough to cement itself in the mindscape. Luna had to wonder how the mindscapes of the ponies having their memories altered constantly looked like, despite not seeing any signs of damage in Applejack’s mind. The element had obviously shielded her enough to question the memory alteration, so the damage this far into the psyche would be minimal. The elements were something that were connected to Equestria itself, so Luna could safely disregard the idea of her captors manipulating this interaction.
“They… They made my horn functional again and healed other ponies in the hospital, allegedly. They claim to be healing Twilight Sparkle, as well.” Luna heavily suspected the motives of her mysterious kidnappers, but she couldn’t voice these deductions while under the elements power, as they were not things she knew for certain. Applejack produced a rope from that place that all the roots and loose rocks that tripped you in dreams came from and tied it to the stump halfway out of the ground. She gave it a few experimental tugs to see that her knot was secure before responding to Luna.
“Well, from all we’ve seen of them, these guys are desperate to hide and they heal ponies. You can choose to trust them to stick to their guns and let this whole thing play out on their terms, or you can take that matchstick pony’s suggestion and force them to acknowledge you. They’re still going to have Twilight, whichever you choose.” Applejack turned to acknowledge Luna as she said this, the otherworldly shine to the mare’s already vibrant eyes signaling that it was a statement coming from the element, rather than just the mare. It was the very epitome of an honest truth and Luna couldn’t argue with the logic of it either. The question was never if she should trust her kidnappers or not, it was a choice between letting them hide as she ran to her sister for answers that didn’t necessarily exist and grasping at the lifeline Twilight Sparkle had thrown at her hooves. The lifeline’s validity didn’t matter, not as long Twilight’s life was subject to the whims of her captors.
“I understand, thank you. Do you sense Twilight Sparkle at all, as a fellow element?” Luna hoped that the link between the elements could be used to gain some information when it came to the validity of the claim her kidnappers were in the process of healing Twilight Sparkle. The elements should at least know if one of them was alive or not, they were made to work together, after all.
“She’s alive, but very far away. You should leave this place, let Applejack recover from what she’s gone through.” Any hint of Applejack’s accent was gone from her voice and that eerie shine almost drowned out the green of her eyes. The element was tired of Luna taking advantage of the situation and was telling her to get out of Applejack’s mind. She should have done that the moment the automaton had undone the spell, but the clarity and advice she’d gained was enough to justify her ill-advised hesitation. She would have been stuck in her own head for far too long to do anything of value, if she couldn’t look at her own situation honestly.
Luna jumped up into the air and flexed her wings to reach the door back into her realm. It was far easier to maneuver dreams when you knew their rules as intimately as Luna and when they were not affected by strange magic. Stepping out of Applejack’s mind brought with it some of that anxiety and tension the element of honesty’s presence had kept at bay, but now she had a clear idea as to what she should do. Getting back into the real world was just a matter of falling asleep, only backwards. Gradually reassert control of your body, rather than forfeiting it.
Luna opened her eyes and immediately glanced around the room, half expecting a trap of some kind to spring out as soon as she saw it. Instead, she locked eyes with the bloodshot eyes of the guard she had left unconscious in the confectionary, after falsely assuming them to be the mastermind to this whole situation. He was standing at attention at the border of her barrier, clearly less intoxicated than before, but obviously not sober.
“Princess Luna.” The guard nodded at Luna, forgoing a salute as he was holding one of his hooves off the floor. Luna had most likely caused that injury and the guard had still sought her out to keep to his duty. She really should make an effort to remember this pony’s name. “I gathered that you dealt with the Twilight Sparkle impersonator. What are your orders?”
“What’s your name? I should have asked it the moment I saw you, but things kept distracting me.” It must have been the element of honesty still affecting her inhibitions that caused her just to blurt the question out like this, but at least it would give Luna an answer to this socially awkward puzzle.
“It’s Roaming Reigns, your highness. I am fairly new to your detail, so I understand.” The guard’s posture relaxed slightly, as if her not knowing his name answered some question the stallion had been battling with themselves. Luna would put bits on it having to do with wondering why Luna had attacked him earlier. Luna nodded absently, trying to remember if she had been introduced to the stallion before or not. There would have to be a change in the procedures when it came to assigning guards to her personal detail if he hadn’t been.
“Can you tell me what happened during the days I was gone?” A quick scanning spell confirmed that Applejack was sleeping normally, the element no doubt keeping her under as it excised the foreign spell properly. Twilight Sparkle and her friends were lucky to have the elements to bolster their defences to magical threats, otherwise they would have been forced to go through extensive rehabilitation after Discord put his whammy on them. The crown had of course footed the bill on Ponyville’s rehabilitation, but it was still the difference between a good night sleep and weeks of incremental improvement.
“It all started when…” The guard jumped in surprise as the door to the library was forced open suddenly and even Luna prepared to defend herself for that fraction of a second it took the guilty party to announce themselves.
“Princess Luna, you’re never going to guess what my new friend is saying!” Pinkie Pie pronked her way into the library and continued to bounce around in arcs that didn’t seem to make sense. Luna was certain the pink mare was jumping while in mid-air, despite having no pegasi heritage whatsoever. She could hear Twilight Sparkle’s parents waking up frightened and confused from their well-deserved power nap. “Oh, sorry Twilight’s mom and dad. Didn’t mean to spook you. Apparently I have an undiagnosed behavioral syndrome that makes me blind to certain social cues.”
“So, you’re not even going to guess at what my new friend is saying? I know I said you would never guess it, but you’re way smarter than me, so maybe you could surprise my new friend and I!” The bouncing blur of pink ploof rattled out as she made her way up the stairs one by one, but with the speed of a jackhammer. As usual, the pink party planner was speaking fast enough to actually make it hard to parse out where one word ended and another started, at least for Luna’s ears. She had known the element of laughter to be hyperactive, but this was more like a mocking parody of what the mare usually acted like. Something was wrong and Luna had a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with this new friend of Pinkie Pie’s.
“What is your new friend saying, Pinkie Pie?” Luna stepped forward, moving her shield to encompass Roaming Reigns. Pinkie Pie acted goofy and harmless, but she was an element of harmony and came from an old earth pony family that worked with highly magical ores, so she definitely had the raw strength to break even a competent magical barrier. She didn’t want to assume Pinkie Pie would fall into her kidnappers control, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared.
“Twilight’s out of surgery! There’s still the genetic resequencing of the new brain matter and forcing the synaptic pathways into their old configuration and rehabilitation from the invasive surgery, but still, isn’t that great? She’s no longer in danger of dying!” Pinkie Pie stopped for a moment, her ears swiveling to listen to something down the stairs. Luna couldn’t hear anything and she suspected that it was only Pinkie Pie that could hear this new friend of hers. “My new friend says I have grossly simplified the procedures Twilight is going through and my exaltation is both misguided and premature.”
“Pinkie, who is your new friend? Can you tell me their name?” It was obvious Pinkie had somehow managed to make contact with the faction that had taken both Luna and Twilight. The spell on Ponyville would need supervision, so Pinkie Pie’s friend was most likely someone assigned to do just that and somehow Pinkie Pie had done forced a dialogue between them, just like Luna had been prompted to do. At least, that’s what made the most sense to Luna’s understanding of magic, but her kidnappers were also using unorthodox kinds of magic she didn’t know.
“No names, they’re here, right in here. Have to...” Pinkie Pie tried to start jumping around like before, but her legs failed to get her off the floor and she stumbled to lean on Luna’s shield instead. Luna watched the aura of joy deflate from around Pinkie Pie and the obvious signs of exhaustion started showing through. The pink pony’s coat was slick with sweat and there were several small cuts and scrapes on her hooves and around her body that had healed halfway before scabbing over. She was breathing in slow wheezing gasps that made Luna’s throat itch in sympathy just from the sound. She looked every bit like a mare who had forced herself into a manic spectacle of joy for what could have been six days. “Know what - what they’re doing.”
“Pinkie, it’s okay, you can stop now. I will take care of this.” Luna carefully extended her magic to hold up Pinkie’s weight. The pink mare might have been afforded a ridiculous amount of stamina through her earth pony physiology and being an element of harmony made her able to shield herself from the mind-altering effects of the magic in Ponyville, but it was obvious that both were running on fumes by this point. Allowing Pinkie Pie to continue as she had would be irresponsible. “I know you care about Twilight Sparkle, but I cannot allow you to exert yourself any further.”
Pinkie Pie raised her head to try and argue the point, but slumped back down before she could get any words out. It must have been a constant struggle to even stay awake, now that she was stationary and not relying on her element to keep her energy up. The pink mare had still been able to gleam a few interesting pieces of information about Twilight’s situation, if they were to be believed. Their kidnappers were capable of brain surgery and had taken it upon themselves to save Twilight Sparkle’s life using this knowledge. They had been successful so far, if this friend of Pinkie Pie’s was telling the truth. Luna had seen desperation starting to set into the eyes of the experts that had been brought in to heal Twilight, so seeing her kidnappers more confident in their ability was strangely comforting.
“Roaming Reigns, I am going to negotiate with the beings responsible for what has happened here. I believe Twilight Sparkle had me released early to facilitate contact between them and my court.” Luna set the pink mare down next to the bed, absently dispelling her shield as Pinkie Pie started snoring softly. Luna cast another scanning spell on the mares in front of her and wasn't surprised to find that the spell keeping Rainbow Dash between unconscious and actually sleeping was dispersed along with Applejack. TS-SIC-02 must have only had one message to deliver, so the two spells were made dependent on each other.
“I'll stand guard, Princess.” Roaming Reigns saluted as sharply as his hangover would allow. Luna moved to leave Twilight’s bedroom alcove, but then remembered how Roaming Reigns had been holding one of his hooves off the floor before Pinkie Pie burst into the library.
“Roaming Reigns, your hoof was injured a moment ago, was it not?” She turned herself around, but managed to stop herself from charging her horn. She shouldn’t keep jumping to conclusions when she knew so little of what was going on.
“The spell on Ponyville heals noticeable injuries automatically. It would be hard to ignore cuts and bumps caused by something you forgot, after all. Cuts as small as those on Pinkie Pie can actually be seen healing by the naked eye.” Roaming Reigns stood a little straighter, as he answered the valid question. The unfortunate guard seemed to be aware of how close he’d come to being suspected and possibly attacked again, if the tension in his posture was any indication. “It will all be in my report, princess.”
“Yes, of course.” Luna slid Pinkie Pie’s snoring body closer and took a closer look at what she had assumed to be half-healed wounds scabbed over. She found dried blood adhered to the coat, but there was no sign of the wound that the blood had come from. The dried blood itself was also fading in front of her eyes, washed away with the moisture on Pinkie’s skin evaporating faster than it should. In a minute or two there would be no outward sign of the broken and exhausted state she had driven herself into. Luna remembered the cut on her chin she had to close on her own. TS-SIC-02 had said Luna was exempt from the memory alteration, so did that mean she was also not affected by any other effect of the spell over Ponyville? The skeletal pony had mentioned active processes in her horn, so was that what kept her from being influenced, or were these two different things?
“Healing magic is complex, so they must be monitoring what they are doing. That would mean you are still connected to the magic subjugating Ponyville.” Luna had planned to go out and shout the password she had been given to force her kidnappers into contacting her, but seeing how the magic at work in Ponyville was referred to as an “system” there should be no difference in what part of that system heard the words, hypothetically. “Follow me, I need to test this.”
Luna walked down the stairs to the first floor and scanned the walls for a door. She’d heard Twilight had an underground laboratory in the basement of the library and it sounded like an ideal place to test if the codeword she’d been given was effective. Twilight’s parents had fallen back to sleep, even after Pinkie’s abrupt entrance. Luna couldn’t sense any malicious magic keeping them asleep, but that had also been the case with Applejack and she had definitely been under a spell. The magic her kidnappers had access to was a mystery, as was their identity, motives for caring for Twilight’s wellbeing and what had happened between them and her sister.
Luna spotted the door and attempted to open it quietly, but found it locked and magically fused to the wall. The doppelganger had wanted to keep ponies away from the equipment that could reveal its true nature, no doubt. It was a simple matter of cutting the fused matter out, now that the one who cast the spell was gone. You would think going to such lengths to keep the basement locked would be suspicious on its own, but it did have the whole of system in Ponyville working with it at the time. The door opened with a little further forcing and Luna realized something was wrong when a tuft of smoke and ash billowed out and the inside of the door was blackened by soot. The magic that had fused the door to the wall must have isolated the basement from the rest of the structure completely, as there was no way that the fire that had charred the door in this way wouldn’t have set the rest of the tree ablaze.
“The dragon...” Roaming Reigns put Luna’s thoughts into words before Luna had the chance. Most of Twilight’s friends were accounted for and subjugated by what was going on in Ponyville, but nopony had even mentioned what had happened to Spike after the hospital had been taken by the green fog. He had obviously been locked in the basement to keep him out of the way at some point, but the magic put in place to keep him in had backfired as the young drake became desperate enough to try and burn his way out. “A dragon can’t get burnt, so he’s fine, right?”
“He still needs to breathe!” Luna broke out into a run and broke through into the darkened basement. Any windows that might have let in natural light from the sunny morning outside had been blackened by the smoke and the walls and stairs were similarly unhelpful in helping Luna see with what light shone through from the open doorway. She stumbled as she hit a wall unexpectedly, but was able to navigate the stairs down after she realised they curved along the wall of the basement. Spike had started the fire by the door, so he wouldn’t be close to it, dragon or no. A quick orb of light and a glance at the walls told Luna what Spike had attempted after going through the door didn’t work. There were scratch marks on the walls where Luna assumed the windows were. The spell that had kept the door pristine on the outside had both kept the windows from cracking and Spike’s claws from penetrating deep enough to give him purchase. She didn’t like the image that was being painted in her mind at all.
“Spike, answer me!” Luna frantically scanned the floor and among the scientific equipment. Spike might have been a dragon, but he was also young, alone and raised by ponies, so he might have chosen to hide from the fire. She could feel warmth in the air and there had still been some smoke in the space, so hopefully the fire had just burned itself out and Spike was unconscious because of lack of oxygen. Dragons were far more hardy when it came to obnoxious gases but they still needed a certain amount of breathable air, just as any other living thing. The best case scenario here was that the fire had burnt itself out without using up all the oxygen in the room and the fake Twilight Sparkle’s death had dispelled the seal on the room in time for some of the stagnant air to escape and be replaced. Luna had to believe that Twilight was the kind of pony that wouldn’t overlook proper ventilation in a laboratory.
“Damn it!” Luna grabbed everything she could see in her magic and raised it up to the ceiling. This disturbed the ash that had settled on the machinery and blinded her for that moment, but she would have a clearer view of the space as it settled again. She could hear Roaming Reigns coughing from the disturbed air, but kept her attention on any corner and nook of the space, looking for a mass of purple scales. There had been no answer to her call so that meant that…
There was a flash of green light under one of the piles of ash. The collected ash slid off of Spike’s scales, understably unchanged from the fire and heat, but still affixed to a still body. The flash hadn’t been his fire and was gone so fast Luna thought she might have imagined it, until she saw Spike’s body light up again with flashing pinpricks bright green light.
“Princess, something is...” By the time Luna turned her attention back to Roaming Reigns the stallion was leaning heavily on the wall and sweating profusely. She could hear his teeth clattering as the seizure made his body twitch and tense up violently. The same shade of green light appeared at the whites of his eyes, before his body suddenly slumped against the wall.
“STOP IT!” There was no rational reason for her to think that using the Canterlot Voice would help, but she couldn’t just keep quiet as things kept going wrong around her. She knew there was something out there she was directing her frustration at, even if she didn’t know what or where or who it was. Something was making these tragedies happen and something had made her a helpless witness to it and those things were not necessarily malevolent or the same thing.
“STOP HIDING!“ Luna smashed one of the things she had suspended in the air into a wall. It made a satisfyingly loud sound as it smashed to pieces and fell to the ground. A small voice at the back of her head tried to tell her she was acting irrational and lashing out in anger was doing anything but helping, but she was not in a frame of mind to listen.
“NO MORE GAMES!” She launched another expensive thing at a wall, this one broke into shards and sparks of light with a clear crystalline sound. It must have been made out of magical crystals, or designed to emulate them. This was not helping, this was a thing Nightmare Moon would do if things weren’t going her way. A childish tantrum she had hoped to have grown out of and the fact that she was both aware of it and unable to stop herself was adding to the stress prompting it. Something had definitely happened to her during her time with her kidnappers.
“I AM TIRED OF BEING…” She was cut short in her outburst as an intense chill took the air out of her lungs. Something had changed about the room and it was drastic enough to affect her magic. She felt the things she still had in her magic waver and then just disappear as that same shade of green bathed the darkened basement. There was a sudden gust of wind toward the gathering light and Luna had to brace herself to stop herself from stumbling forward. She couldn’t look at the light directly, but it was gathering high up near the ceiling of the high cellar, seemingly gathering all energy and anything not nailed down into that point. It might not have been an orthodox teleportation spell, but this was definitely some kind of matter displacement magic. The things she had in her magic had disappeared, drawn into and deconstructed by the forming portal and adding to the gathering energy, as no equivalent mass had yet to appear from the light.
The light kept building in intensity, until it flashed a blinding white and left Luna squinting at the sudden darkness. She couldn’t see what had appeared in the sudden darkness, but there was another gust of wind as the mass of the object displaced the air it now occupied. Luna tried to cast a spell to illuminate whatever had teleported into the room and maybe defend herself, but was again put off balance as a wave of knee-high water rushed past her. They had used teleportation magic to flood the basement? This couldn’t be a delayed reaction to the fire that had ravaged this space, could it? Luna had come to expect a level of competency from her kidnappers and this seemed out of character.
Luna barely registered the movement and noise of something rushing through the water, before she was knocked off balance and lifted off of her hooves as it collided with her. She tried to charge up her horn to knock the assailant back, but there was still something draining all of the magic out of the room. That chill she’d felt as the light appeared radiated off of the thing holding her, so she had to assume it was responsible.
“Un… Unhand me!” She might not have been able to see her assailant, but she could still deduce that her assailant was both bipedal and at least as tall as her. They were also strong enough to hold her aloft with her hooves barely connecting with the ground, so the appendages on her throat and wing were a real concern. The thing was holding her in a strange way that still thoroughly immobilized her in the situation they were in. There was an appendage under her chin, grasping at her throat and holding her chin up to the ceiling, stretching her neck out in a way that it made it impossible for the see her assailant. She could feel a part of its body pressing on her right haunch, keeping her slightly tilted to the side and unable to stand on her own. There was another appendage holding the base of her right wing, grabbing it in a place that made it go limp and supporting enough of her weight that the hand on her throat wasn’t throttling her. Without the use of her magic, she had the choice of struggling and being choked out, or stay as still as possible and try to support her weight on the one hoof that could barely reach the floor.
“I am restraining you to ensure Spike receives the medical attention he needs. Neither of us wants to see what would happen if I don’t stop you.” Luna was surprised that her attacker was talking to her, given how it had made sure she couldn’t see what they looked like. The voice didn’t match with what she had assumed someone strong enough to manhandle an alicorn would sound like, but when she realized why the voice sounded familiar she was right back to being angry and confused.
“Why are you impersonating Twilight Sparkle? Do you think it would make me more likely to believe you? I know you can create things like TS-SIC-02, so why would mimicking a voice phase me?” Luna tried to strike at where her assailant’s body should be with her right fore hoof, but only shifted more of her weight to rest on the hand clutching her throat. She gasped and flung her hooves about in a panic, as there was nothing holding most of weight off the hand strangling her for several seconds. Her assailant raised her back up into her previous positions by painfully pulling on the wing it had in a similar vice grip. Why hadn’t her hoof connected with anything? How could there be nothing between the hands holding her?
“You are not well, Luna. Your magic is poisoning you, shutting out your rational mind when you need it most. You’ve felt outside yourself ever since you were released, like you were watching yourself make decisions you couldn’t believe were your own. I can only imagine how distressing that is to somepony with your history.” Twilight Sparkle’s voice was just as warm and convincing as it had been when the purple unicorn had helped Luna enjoy Nightmare Night. She tried to be insulted at the obvious manipulation, but her tired mind couldn’t completely separate this thing choking her and the kind unicorn. That same irrational side of her that had caused her to lash out insisted on believing it was Twilight Sparkle sympathizing with her situation.
“What are you? How are you doing this?” She could hear the raspiness in her voice and hated how she could feel her body sagging against the thing holding her. The thing was describing her state of mind near perfectly, some small part of her was relieved that someone understood the situation better than she could put into words. Surely they would know how to fix her, if they knew what was wrong with her. It wasn’t a good sign that she had to remind herself to not trust the people that had put her into this situation in the first place. It should have been easier, as she was being attacked by one of her kidnappers right now. She was being throttled, but her assailant was supporting her body enough for her to be able to breathe, if she kept perfectly still. It was an unorthodox submission hold, but Luna understood the psychological impact physical dominance and a soft comforting voice could have. There was a reason a stalwart knight against a boisterous rogue bandit was one of the most popular character dynamics in the romance novels she sometimes indulged in, not to mention the dreams inspired by them.
“I know you didn’t want to hurt TS-SIC-02, or the ponies she protected from your paranoia. I doubt you meant to endanger Spike’s life here either and you couldn’t have known about the ruptured blood vessel in Roaming Reign’s brain.” Her attacker twisted her neck to the side so that she could see Roaming Reign’s body bathed in that same green glow she had come to associate with the magic of her kidnappers. There was a far brighter glow coming from where Spike’s body had been, so she assumed her kidnappers magic was also fixing Spike. If she had not been restrained as she was Luna would have definitely tried to shield the young drake and her loyal guard from the magic of her assailants. The fact they were trying to heal them wouldn’t have crossed her mind.
“Letting you continue as you are would only invite more tragedies. Helping you will be the first step toward a peaceful future. I hope you will let me do that.” The thing holding her shifted its weight back and for a split second Luna was sure she would be dangled there helplessly as consciousness left her, but surprisingly the appendages holding her wing and throat let go and she fell down on numb hooves. She immediately scanned the room and tried to locate the thing that had manhandled her so easily. The dark basement was alight in green light because of a luminescent cocoon that had formed around Spike, but she didn’t see her attacker in the open space around her. She’d heard it rush through the water to get to her, so it should at least have a physical body. The water in the basement was still and undisturbed, adding to the mystery of the thing’s disappearance.
“Where are you? Why did you let me go?” Luna checked the stairs for sign of someone rushing out as she steadied her footing. She saw no tracks of water leading up into the library. The thing that attacked her was in the room with her, or had used another form of teleportation to disappear.
“It is no longer necessary to physically restrain you. Spike and Roaming Reigns are out of immediate danger. I implore you to take the steps to start peaceful dialogue with the faction I represent.” The thing’s voice came from somewhere in front of her, as if there was someone standing there, calmly explaining the situation. She took a step to the side and tilted her head to and fro, checking for signs of a concealment spell. There was something like a shimmer in the air in front of her when she moved her head, but that was all she could make out. She couldn’t make sense of its dimensions with the limited lighting in the room. She should not be surprised that the things that had been so adamant on secrecy could turn invisible, but it was still a frightening thought. This invisible thing could not only disrupt her magic, but also had the physical strength to strangle her, or even break her neck.
“What are you? If you want me to trust you, you should at least answer some of my questions.” Luna took a step back toward the stairs. Running away would leave Spike and Roaming Reigns at this thing’s mercy, but it didn’t hurt to keep the option open.
“I am someone who gambled on your better nature. Please, Twilight Sparkle’s recovery will benefit greatly from contact with her friends and family. Discourse between you and my faction is the only way to assure that now.” The thing was still using Twilight Sparkle’s voice and it was sounding genuinely desperate. The element of honesty had described these things as desperate to hide and prone to healing ponies, so Luna could believe Twilight Sparkle’s recovery to be a priority for them. Their mysterious interest in the health of Twilight Sparkle had been a constant during this harrowing experience. Her horn had been shattered because she had attempted to stop the green fog from reaching the hospitalized Twilight Sparkle. Ponyville had been put under a spell to give their kidnappers a safe way to reintegrate Twilight Sparkle into Equestria and to keep them hidden from Celestia. Twilight Sparkle was important to them for some reason and Luna had only been released early to facilitate Twilight Sparkle’s wish of diplomacy. Refusing them at this point would only chase them further into hiding, or have them attempt to put her under their spell as well. Diplomacy had the chance of bringing with it the answer she had become so desperate for.
“I am princess Luna, ruler of the night court and diarch of Equestria. I would like to initiate diplomatic relations as a ruler of a distinct legal structure not affiliated with princess Celestia.” Twilight’s message had made it sound like their organisation considered Celestia and everything that answered to her too dangerous to come into contact with. Luna’s equal legal standing as a diarch of Equestria was somehow enough to make them consider opening dialogue with Equestria, despite them hiding from Equestria for who knows how long.
“That will have to do.” The shimmer in the air in front of her intensified and then faded away to reveal a tall bipedal figure standing in front of her. It was hunched over to look down at Luna and Luna’s horn barely reached its chest if she stretched out her neck. It might have not been invisible anymore, but she couldn’t tell much about it as it was wearing a full hooded cloak that caught and refracted the light in strange ways. She hoped that meant that the invisibility wasn’t an innate ability, but given by the cloak.
“Who are you?” Luna’s eyes traveled down and the cloak continued down to obscure its feet. It could be a minotaur standing in a uncomfortable posture, but Luna doubted that. It was definitely bipedal and she really should have connected with its torso when it was restraining her earlier. The cloak parted and one of its hands reached out toward her and stayed extended in front of her. It had four digits of varying length and a thumb and they were longer and had more rounded ends than minotaurs did. Luna offered her hoof up to be shaken and felt that same chill go through her as the cold and hard hand closed around it gently and shook. The magic-nullification seemed to be innate, if she hadn’t misinterpreted what that chill meant. She really hoped this offer of diplomacy was genuine, as Luna didn’t want to think trying fight something like these things.
“We are the heralds of humanity. We want to help you in making this world a better place.”