//------------------------------// // Chapter 53: Within Reach // Story: Evening Star Also Rises // by Starscribe //------------------------------// It was just a dream, it was just a dream… Hayden found herself returning to consciousness in the burned-out wreckage of a fortification, surrounded by the dead. There were hundreds of them—ponies, birds, a few other creatures. All dead around the place where she and Luna had fought for their lives. She was herself again, no longer some strange hybrid of pony and human. The sky was still dark, though there was something missing. The cage of light, the creature it had contained, both were gone. There was another figure here, fighting off griffons with Achelois beside her. She could see Luna’s sparkling mane, flecked with bits of red as Luna cut her way through dozens of the enemy. The same griffon force that they had barely survived before she now turned into bits of meat in a few quick seconds. “Princess? Are you alright? I dreamed…” Luna turned around, and Hayden gasped. Luna’s coat was darkening by the second, even as she seemed to be getting taller. Her horn got longer and sharper, her eyes pale slits that trailed glowing smoke. It wasn’t a dream. “We will now come into the power we deserve, my familiar. For thousands of years my sister has permitted our enemies to live—you see the consequence of this all around you.” She strode through the broken wreckage, over the bodies of the dead, and there was no pain on her face, only anger. “You’re going to… wipe out the Stonebeaks?” Hayden looked up, but she couldn’t see the battle in the distance. This fortification had been near ground level, so whatever the fleets were doing was blocked by Icefalls’s wrecked buildings. And wrecked they were. Hayden had been so occupied with simple survival that she hadn’t seen the damage of her contingency until now. But now it was clear—anything that wasn’t built of stone had been swept away by the storm, with great sections of stone walls caved in and roofs collapsed. At least the fires had been put out. Even so, Icefalls was destroyed. Between the fleet and their own defense, there was nothing left. Except the people. The citizens are still alive in the shelters. Stone and gold don’t matter. “The griffons, yes. I will start with them. Then will come our true enemies. The dragons with their endless threats, the yaks with their blustering, the hippogriffs who refused to submit to our rule… my sister has permitted chaos for too long.” There was nothing of Luna’s purple left. Her coat was black now, and even her cutie mark seemed to shine the wrong way. Where before Hayden had felt almost equal to the princess, Luna towered over her. “But those threats will come second, familiar. The outsiders have never posed as much danger to Equestria as its own failures. We would not be here, surrounded by these dead, were it not for the traitors in our own ranks. Were it not for my sister’s pettiness. The ponies of Equestria were so afraid of night that they hunted and feared those who even resembled it. We will end this as well, together.” “We…” Hayden gulped. She could feel the darkness around the princess now. It wasn’t just her looks. But seeing her was like looking back into her nightmares. The creature was still there, buried deep in Luna’s soul. And there’s no way to get it out. “We lost almost everything, Princess. My army was incapacitated, most of my fortifications were destroyed.” She gestured around them at the ruined bodies. “So many who loved you are dead, Luna. The two of us can’t fight the whole world.” “No,” the princess agreed. “And not Luna, anymore. That name reflects my weakness back at me. The ponies of Equestria will call me by something stronger. The weak and the traitors will soon have nightmares of my moon—perhaps that is what they’ll call me. Before I purge them, anyway. But… you are correct. We cannot fight this war on our own, and it would be wrong for these ponies who gave their lives for my kingdom to go unrewarded.” Her horn started to glow, a sickly green that made Hayden’s stomach turn in knots. She didn’t know much about Equestrian magic—Star Swirl hadn’t taught her. But she didn’t need lessons to know that she was seeing something wrong. Then the corpses started to stand back up. It didn’t matter what condition the soldiers were in. Guts hanging out, missing limbs, craters instead of faces. They got up, green light burning behind their eyes. It wasn’t even just the ponies—the bodies of dead birds rose up with just as much furor, and each lifted whatever weapon was nearest. Arquebuses, crossbows, swords, whatever they could reach. “N-no,” Hayden squeaked. She could see the strange light wasn’t localized to just around her. Green shone out from all over the city, lighting up the distant streets. From the wrecked walls, crashed airships, it was all lighting up. “You can’t, Luna. This is… it’s wrong. We don’t have to fight this way.” “Not Luna.” The pony ground her teeth together. “It would be wrong of us to do nothing, familiar. It would be wrong for us to accept the world as it is, and not to use the power given to us to bring order.” The dead ambled forward, limping and hopping and sometimes flying their way over to the courtyard. And they weren’t the only ones. It wasn’t just the dead who had heard the nightmare princess’s call, but bats as well. Soldiers from the ruined city flew and marched, darkness swirling about their coats like lesser versions of the creature before her. That’s way less than there should be. Well over half Icefalls’s population had been bats, yet there looked to be about a thousand of them. Not all of them had weapons, either. Hayden had distributed those to her soldiers who could still fight. “Only one thing remains.” The princess turned on her, looming taller and taller as she approached. “You will fight beside me, won’t you Hayden? You’ve suffered more injustice at the hooves of the weak and corrupt of Equestria. You deserve as much revenge as I do.” Until then, Luna hadn’t really used the connection between them. But now she felt it, like she was holding a tether that led down into a swirling vortex. Something larger and mightier than her was trying to destroy her. There was power on the other side of that connection. “You can be a proper Alicorn,” whispered the voice. “You can have the power to put the world right. You can bring justice to all those who wronged you.” Hayden retreated from that voice, ignoring the sweet promises it made. She shook her head. “N-no. I can’t. I never wanted revenge. I just wanted to keep Icefalls alive.” Rot surrounded her, ponies dripping their vital fluids. Ponies of honor, who had fought for her and were desecrated as their reward. “Stop!” she shouted, straightening. “Princess, no! All of this is wrong. I don’t know how much of you is still in there, but this isn’t what you really wanted. It’s a… demon. You have to fight it!” Not just one. There were so many corpses, and so many other things. She recognized many of the armored bats as her own Blackwings, loyalty apparently broken at last. Slipstream stood at attention with his troops before the princess. Not-Luna lifted Achelois a little higher in her magic, glowering at Hayden. “That’s it, then. After all I’ve done for you, after a year of fighting against Equestria… you betray me now?” Hayden shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking of, Luna. I won’t do it, and neither would you if you were still yourself.” “Then I have no more use for you.” She lifted the sword over her head, holding it high in her magic. Though there was something… not quite right about the way it looked. What was Hayden seeing? “All those who will not recognize the true regent of all Equestria will be destroyed. Nopony is exempt from order.” Hayden stood a little straighter. She didn’t fight—she knew she didn’t have a prayer against the thing that Luna had become. She spread her wings, meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry I failed you, Princess. I hope one day there’s someone stronger than me.” Not-Luna screamed in frustration, bringing Achelois down straight for Hayden’s neck. Then her magic fizzled out. The sword pivoted in the air, but it didn’t fall. It came to rest inches beside Hayden. The voice of Achelois returned to her mind. I will not serve the voice of corruption. After all these years, she was consumed as so many others before her. We will take away her pain. The princess screamed in agony, smoke rising from her horn as she backed away, eyes wide. “Traitor! You can’t even die with respect!” She took off, and at once all those who had assembled that still had working wings leapt into the air to join her. “The rest of you, destroy her! I no longer desire a daemon or a familiar.” A cloud of dark ponies rose up from the city, growing thicker and thicker as bats from all over Icefalls joined it. Then a griffon without its beak surged at Hayden with rotting claws. She didn’t think—Achelois moved, and she cut through the creature’s rotting head. Green lights went out from behind its eyes. All over the ruins, not-Luna’s army began to growl. There were thousands of them—mostly brutalized griffons, but plenty of dead unicorns and earth ponies from Hayden’s own army. In your hands I will give them peace, said the sword into her mind, as Hayden fought her way through the horde. Achelois did not merely slice through undead flesh, it seared it. Hayden knew nothing about what she was doing, yet she got the sense that no other weapon would serve her so well. Hayden didn’t want to keep fighting, not after coming so close to victory and seeing all her hopes crushed before her eyes. But she couldn’t stop. Achelois wanted her to fly into the night and attack the nightmare creature. But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t kill Luna any more than she could stab herself in the chest. Assuming she had wanted to. She did this for us. She had a plan. Hayden wondered if her plan had included the terrible damage Luna might do to the world before someone finally ended the threat she had brought. How many ponies would die to these creatures? We can’t stop fighting. Look at the way they suffer. See the agony in their eyes to be used this way. You must succeed where your predecessor failed. You must take away their pain. She tried. The undead were not alert fighters, nor did they seem terribly motivated to kill her. Even the griffons, which lashed out and squawked in unintelligible gurgles, did nothing remotely tactical in the way they attacked. It didn’t help that the only griffons were the ones too damaged to fly. Eventually, Hayden could fight no more. She collapsed in the ruined field, surrounded by the charred bodies of newly-dead zombies. All that had come before her had been returned to the grave. Not-Luna was gone into the night—Hayden’s city had been mostly reduced to rubble, the Stonebeak fleet was nowhere in sight. It had all come undone around her. What more could I have done? I tried so hard. Hayden gripped the sword close to her, hoping its strange steel would give her comfort. But she could feel none. Only hear Nightbreeze’s voice in the wind of memory. You can’t save them all. And she hadn’t. She’d barely saved any of them. Sun broke over the horizon, over a scene of bloody red clouds. Hayden looked up, and found herself smiling for the first time. The icy shell over the mountain’s secret dock was shattered, and the space inside was empty. The Excellus was gone. And there were still all the civilians in the converted mine bunker. Maybe I didn’t fail them all. She saw something else silhouetted against the early morning sky. Not the dark princess and her own suborned bat pony army, but a single golden ship flying a bright sun banner. Flying straight for her.