As it turned out, the keep had survived. Whole sections of its eastern walls had caved in and the glass windows had been reduced to splinters, but other than that the building was intact, with Hayden’s own soldiers waiting outside. They stared out on the desolation of Icefalls with bleak, empty eyes. Demographics had shifted too—there wasn’t a single bat here.
I shouldn’t have tried to keep you, Nightbreeze, Hayden thought to herself as she strode out of the ruins. Instead of saluting her, one of the guards fell onto the ground at her hooves, weeping. “High Marshal… the city… we failed. The garrison has fallen. The city is lost.”
Hayden reached him. She picked up the spear where it had fallen, shoved it back towards the unicorn’s grip. “I know, soldier. We’re going home.”
“Where?” he asked, his voice even more hopeless than it had been moments earlier. “We’re bucked. The north is a wasteland, Equestria would hang us all…”
“Not anymore.” Princess Celestia stood beside her then, along with a half-dozen of the Solar Guard. The airship didn’t hover the keep, however, but remained firmly parked in the air above the lunar temple. Even as they spoke, the Solar Guard would be breaking their way into the shelter, trying to help the civilians inside out of the mine and up onto the surface. “You have made Equestria proud. Now your war is over.” She raised her voice a little, so that all the guards around them could hear. Plenty of nearby ponies just dropped into a bow at her presence, visibly shaking.
“Let it be known, ponies of Icefalls. You have triumphed over the Stonebeaks—their tribe is broken. You will not be left up here to starve when next winter comes. Gather your families, gather enough supplies for a long march. Tomorrow morning you will leave this place. Equestria will receive you.”
She turned to Hayden. “Let us see what has become of your command structure. We will delegate.”
The inside of the keep wasn’t in much better shape than the city all around it. Dozens of the dead had been piled in respectful rows in the courtyard, waiting for the time when they could be buried.
It seemed as though an enemy had breached every hall, every room. Hayden found a soldier—a young, female pegasus, probably one of her messengers. “Please, soldier. What happened last night? After the ritual failed…”
The pony took a long time to answer. She looked between the two of them, seemed to start and stop a bow several times. “They all left,” she said, voice hoarse. “The bats, High Marshal. They all… when we tried to stop them, they fought. Honed Edge eventually ordered everyone to get out of their way. They flew away—not just the soldiers, but everypony else too. Scholars, doctors, messengers… all gone.”
Hayden nodded. “It wasn’t their fault. The ritual to purify them was incomplete.” And all the ones I used it on are gone. Princess Celestia apparently hadn’t noticed the massive chasm in the ice above them, or if she had she didn’t care. Hayden was in no hurry to tell her.
As it turned out, the one holding things together in the command tower wasn’t even a soldier. It was Synthesis, grandson of the original Icefalls steward. Granted, he hadn’t done much. Just sent search parties out into the ruins looking for survivors, and dig a grave for the dead. But something approximating a chain of command was still here.
Ponies fell silent as the two of them entered the tower, mostly fear on pony faces as they saw Celestia. But Hayden’s presence with her stopped them from doing anything stupid.
“What happened to Avalon?” Hayden asked, almost tripping over a length of scorched cable on the floor. From the look of things, all of Avalon’s machines down here had melted into slag when the ritual failed. They hadn’t been cleaned up yet.
“He said he was… flying south to protect his home,” Synthesis said, never looking up at Celestia. “He left something for you. I didn’t know what to do with it, but he said you would.”
Hayden extended a hoof, and Synthesis settled a little tablet computer down from a shelf.
Princess Celestia eyed it, and the machines all around, with obvious skepticism. When she spoke, it was in a hushed voice that only Hayden could hear. “The Sleeping Masters. You have their machines.”
“That’s the sixth or seventh name for them I’ve heard. We’re humans.” Though she no longer believed that remark quite so much as her memory suggested. A real human would have won this war. Real humans don’t give up. They don’t permit failures. Real humans kill with impunity and destroy all that they touch.
“No,” Celestia said, though she didn’t sound argumentative. “Humans are their predecessors. Humans are like ponies, except that they build more than we do.”
She knows about them too. This whole time. Maybe my memories of humanity really are false. If we’ve been in contact with an alien world this whole time and I never knew about it, I just must be remembering things that aren’t true.
The screen of the little tablet flashed once. “Message waiting.” There was a button to begin playback. Hayden settled it down onto the table in front of them, and pressed play. Maybe she should’ve waited to let the ragged survivors get out and run off to start gathering their families, but she was too curious.
Avalon’s figure appeared on the screen, fully costumed again. He looked just as pained as Hayden felt. “We have failed, my friend. I watched Princess Luna take the corruption into herself. The containment procedure we attempted here will not work on an Alicorn—she is solid and material, and so we can’t just send her to Avalon station.”
His image was replaced with images of the moon, taken from low orbit. Hayden could see the massive pillars rising from the lunar surface, and bundles of wire thicker than a whale stretching from one to another. Occasionally there was a little arc of energy between them—this was the containment cell they had wanted for the forces Hayden had tried to extract.
“I will send Star Swirl all the information on the void syphon I have been using to purify the individuals you sent to me. I am certain he will be able to design a magical equivalent with available Equestrian components. But that will not matter if you cannot contain the princess.
“Find Celestia—she may know a way. She survived worse Outsiders than this. If you can’t do that… we need to bring Luna to Avalon containment. If we fail, all life on this planet will be corrupted and consumed.” He leaned close to the camera, his voice low. “She is already flying south. I believe her army is targeting the agricultural centers of the empire. I will not allow her to kill those precious to me. Die well, friend.”
The screen went dark, “message end” flashing rhythmically across its surface.
Celestia held out a wing. “May I see the device?”
Hayden nodded, and Celestia levitated it up into the air in front of her. The princess knew exactly what she was doing, opening up hardware-level menus Hayden hadn’t seen before. Images flashed briefly over its surface, along with dense English writing and plenty of numbers. She can read it.
Princess Luna hadn’t known about humanity, not like this. She’d met someone. But Celestia…
Hayden turned away, walking over to Synthesis. “Gather the survivors from the shelter,” she commanded. “Along with as much food as they can carry. Whatever soldiers remain will protect them on the journey south.”
Synthesis nodded. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Everypony wants to know what will happen to the bats. Most of Icefalls was bats, War Marshal. Will we get them back?”
“I don’t know,” Hayden answered honestly. “I hope so. Right now they are… they’re being controlled, by powers outside of their reach. Princess Celestia and I are going to try and stop them.”
“You don’t have to protect us from the truth,” Synthesis replied, his voice distant and sad. “Everypony heard. We know who did it. We know why Princess Luna is gone.” His eyes narrowed, staring at her. “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t go like them. Why didn’t you fly away with her army? Why aren’t you covered in dark magic?”
“Not for lack of trying on Luna’s part,” Hayden replied, trying to force a smile. But she couldn’t, it all hurt too much. “Will you carry out my orders, Synthesis? Or do I need to replace you?”
“I’ll obey. You’re asking for what everypony wants, anyway. Surrounded by the rubble of our city, betrayed by our princess, attacked by our friends… we just want to go home.”
“Evening Star,” Celestia called, gesturing for her. Hayden obeyed, listening as Synthesis began passing her orders to her remaining soldiers. Honed Edge appeared to represent the military now, and he met her eyes with as much pain as Hayden felt. He didn’t speak, and she didn’t call to him.
Celestia had opened a map on the tablet, which Hayden recognized from the pattern to be the same lunar facility. Only much more detailed, with its many systems visible. The tunnels went at least ten kilometers down into the lunar soil, with lots of little dots of activity rolling around inside. “Your Sleeping Masters built that?”
“No,” Celestia answered, voice distant. “The Builders did. Watching us, all this time.” She tapped the large crater at the center of the facility. “Avalon was correct. If we can get my sister here, it should be able to contain her until the antimatter reserve has been drained.”
“Until the…” Hayden swayed on her hooves. “You have… you have…”
“No, and neither did the ones who built this place. Whatever method their civilization used to produce it is not present in Equestria. Once gone, containment will fail and Lu—and the thing that took over my sister will be released. But it will give me time. Time to prepare a way to… to help her.”
“What are we waiting for, then? I’ve got a friend with a rocket. All we have to do is hitch a ride, right? After… catching her, I mean.”
“Not quite.” Celestia rested one hoof on her shoulder. “Even if you aren’t an Outsider, Evening Star, you are still my sister’s familiar, her daemon. I do not know what will happen to you once the seal is in place. It might destroy you.”
Hayden shrugged. “The life I left behind has already ended. My world has forgotten me by now… if it ever knew me in the first place. Besides, you can’t use the Elements of Harmony without me. If it’s my life or the life of everyone in Equestria, I don’t really need help solving that math problem. I already asked the lives of so many of my men. I will join them.”
For the first time, Celestia no longer watched her with suspicion. A tear trailed down her face, and she cleared her throat. “Apologies. I haven’t forgotten what you are. You’re her. Her reflection. You’re just higher fidelity than I imagined.” She held up the tablet. “I hope you don’t mind if I hold onto this for the time being. I will need to make preparations if we want this plan to work, and the technical details seem to be beyond you.”
“They are,” Hayden said. “I’ll catch up with you in a moment. I’d like to have a few words with one of my generals before we depart.”
She left Celestia behind, finding where Honed Edge stood over the model of the city. Its many buildings and walls were all wrong now—reflections of history instead of the ruins outside.
“We were so close,” he said, when Hayden had stopped beside him. “I can’t believe you made a convert of me too. I believed you could do it.”
“We were close,” Hayden said. “But Icefalls is just a city, it’s just walls. If the ponies get to walk away, that’s more hope than they had.”
Honed Edge remained silent for a long time. Then he reached out, flicking over one of the cannon models. “Why was it you sent civilians on your secret trips south instead of your generals? Why not Lodestone? Why not Nightbreeze, even? The city lord attacked us on her way out… but you are sane. When none of our soldiers were.”
“You won’t like the answer.”
Honed Edge snapped one hoof down, snapping the model tower in half. “I think we’re past that point, War Marshal. Why?”
“Because their corruption had become too severe. The bats who volunteered at an age as advanced as theirs… did not return. Avalon and I hoped that the ritual used to purify everypony at once would be gentler.”
“Oh, it was gentle,” Honed Edge repeated, bitter. “Gentle enough that it didn’t do bucking shit. They’re all slaves to a monster. She’s going to throw their lives away fighting for… fighting against Equestria.”
Hayden shook her head. “No. We’re going to stop her.” She leaned in close, whispering into his ear. “Protect the survivors, Honed Edge. Get them home. That’s my final command.”