The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi


A Goddess's Mind

Valey sat still, trying her best not to fidget as Starlight hesitantly followed Yanavan into the stairs beneath the dusk statue. Gerardo had to place a hoof on Maple's shoulder to stop her from following the filly, and Felicity looked ready to faint. Breathing weakly from shock, the batpony leaned heavily on Valey's shoulders, eyes pinprick and unfocused.

"Uhh... Hey, you okay?" Valey nervously shook her. "Look, not a whole lot I can do to help, but if you could get yourself together..."

The Night Mother frowned, still regal despite being in Eidys' frail body. She snapped her claws, and a second later Felicity disappeared in a burst of teleportation.

Valey jumped. "Woah! Where did-?"

"To rest," the Night Mother interrupted. "She's lived a hard life, and listening to us talk will do nothing for her. She'll be well-treated and you'll see her again when we're done here."

At another flash from her eyes, the dusk statue ground against stone, sealing the staircase off again. "Now then. Your first question will be how you can trust me after what happened in the hospital. Won't it?"

Swallowing, Valey nodded. "Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty good place to start."


"It is unfortunate, what happened to you," Yanavan rasped in a voice that didn't seem it could rise above a whisper. The staircase descended steeply, four blue veins on either side, and the proximity of the magic made Starlight's fur stand on end even though she wasn't touching.

"Which part?" Starlight asked, incredibly wary despite willingly following him underground. "Getting Nightmare Modules at all? You know I have them somehow."

"All of them?" Yanavan asked. "I didn't, but we were afraid of it. I was talking about Senescey and the hospital."

"Oh." Starlight looked down.

Yanavan continued on, hoofsteps silent against the stone. "The Night Mother speaks to us in our minds, through the power of dusk statues. Dusk statues are an information-sharing network built with the same magic that allows creatures to dream. To her most blessed and privileged, she speaks in physical form, through oracles controlled with the statues like Eidys, my wife. But her true nature and location are unknown to everyone, even the council that convenes above."

Starlight frowned. "I heard she's impossible to find, but grants wishes like Garsheeva if you do."

"You heard correctly," Yanavan confirmed. "I know her great secret, but not because of my role in the council. The reason you were taken by her agent at the hospital was because she wished to meet you in person, face to true face."

"And she's in Gyre?" Starlight's eyes narrowed. "With Stanza?"

"No." Yanavan shook his head softly. "She wished to act in a roundabout way, to prevent anyone from following your trail to her. She knew Valey would follow, but underestimated your resourcefulness. You returned to your family before she could draw you fully in."

Starlight looked at the ground. "She could have just asked."

Yanavan nodded and didn't reply.

That left Starlight to think. She got captured during the tournament's second round, which was well after she gained the first Nightmare Module... That had to be why the Night Mother was interested in her. She had never turned gray before, never done anything she would be interested in, unless the windigoes and harmony extractor in Ironridge counted, but she couldn't see what the Night Mother would have to do with windigoes. But that meant the Night Mother had to know what she had, and she had used the first Nightmare Module with only Maple and Valey to watch. It had all been over in minutes... How did she know?

She continued in Yanavan's trail, step after hoofstep, pondering what she would find at the bottom.


"I suppose that brings us to the next biggest question," Gerardo said, lifting a wing and keeping the Night Mother in his gaze. "What was that metal thing?"

"Yeah, and what did it do?" Valey pressed. "Yanavan... I mean the fake dude... was all, 'I have serve the bigger cheese!' and then acted like that was it? And then it blew him up?"

The Night Mother looked on them, standing before the restored dusk statue. "That was an executor of my will, more or less. A sanctioned servant on high enough ground to consider pranking me before my council. Perynus, the stallion you returned, was one of many self-imposed exiles after Yanavan assumed the Nightmare Modules three decades ago. He lived far enough from my dusk statues that he was beyond my eye." Her gaze shifted. "It seems she thought it would be funny to swell him into a false zealot before depositing him on my doorstep like a dead mouse."

Valey slid her jaw. "Well, this dead mouse prank kinda wound up with Starlight getting a ton of Nightmare Modules. Don't tell me you're fine with that happening behind your back."

The Night Mother's piercing, slitted gaze intensified. "If I wasn't, I'd have someone much more productive to take it out on than you. And that is why Starlight is meeting with someone intimate with the burden of carrying these treasures safely."

"As Felicity said, though," Gerardo pointed out. "Prevailing myth is that Yanavan betrayed you and stole these relics as an act of desecration. Countless sarosian lives were worsened or left your presence because of it. Forgive me if I'm having trouble swallowing that you and he are allies."


"She did," Yanavan wheezed, talking as he led Starlight further into the earth. "I could hardly believe my ears when the Night Mother asked it of me. There had already been an incident years ago, an invasion by Gyre, that planted the seed in many minds. What if she wasn't the ruler we deserved for our devotion? I knew what kind of sentiment I would light aflame. And the Night Mother agreed with me. She still asked me to do it, so I did."

Starlight's ears fell. "But why?"

"Why?" Yanavan asked. "Why did I devastate our nation? It was only faith." He shook his head. "Twenty-something years before, the Night Mother had done nothing when Gyre invaded. Whatever plan she had in motion for us could not be stopped by the refusal of one mortal, and I had a better chance than most ponies in history to know her immortal mind."

"No, why would she do that?" Starlight gritted her teeth. "It sounds like it ruined everything. And you can't enjoy being gray like that."

"I couldn't know." Yanavan's cloak swayed around him, though it seemed designed to reveal the void that made up his hindquarters and legs, swirling like a portal to a dark sky. "Now I do understand, through decades of meditation on the Nightmare Modules and their contents. The Night Mother is only trying to protect us, but she is not almighty. She must mold our society so we ourselves can weather waves too big to be stopped by a mere goddess."

"Such as?" Starlight tilted her head.

Yanavan raspily chuckled. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. But you are a filly, and I am past my eightieth year. My old mind can barely touch the realities of this world after thirty years of struggle, when I started one of the wisest ponies in Mistvale. The fates of the world aren't things you need on your young shoulders. They would break you and never let you be happy."

Starlight winced inside, his speech feeling uncomfortably similar to one she had heard from a certain lookalike filly. "But they are anyway. I have the Nightmare Modules, even if they're turned off. And the world never leaves me alone."

"And that is why we're here," Yanavan said, the bottom of the stairs appearing in Starlight's vision. "So I can impart to you what I've learned about living with these, and hopefully make your path easier."

"The Night Mother wants to do that too, huh?" Starlight followed along, careful not to trip on the steep incline. "Does she care, or does she just not want me using them for anything dangerous?"

Yanavan didn't even hesitate. "Oh, both. Very much both." He paused, slowed, and glanced over his shoulder. "Did you use the one with the memory? The one related to Loyalty?"

Starlight bit her lip. "No. That's a good thing, right?"

"Perhaps." Yanavan continued onwards.

Starlight followed quietly, unsure where he had intended to go with that. "Is there any way for you to take them away? To make me normal?"

"Perhaps," Yanavan repeated. "It's good that you desire that. You understand the modules are a burden, not a privilege. As to whether anything can be done, one of the modules is used for deleting and corrupting memories. The Nightmare Modules are nothing more than information, so it could, in theory, banish them from your mind forever."

"But...?" Starlight raised a worried eyebrow.

"But it is a hammer, not a chisel, and the Nightmare Modules are stored deeply indeed." Only one last section of stairs remained, but Yanavan proceeded as slowly as ever. "Turning it on you with sufficient power could erase everything that isn't a part of your soul itself. You could lose all of your past in its entirety."

Starlight gulped. "But my friends would still remember me?"

"It is not a module I have ever tested," Yanavan whispered. "I think so. But I can make no promises."

"I'm not doing that, then," Starlight decided, firm in her stance. "I won't give up my friends."

"I don't think it was an option anyway," Yanavan chuckled. "The Night Mother does not understand you. Every sarosian and even a few others, she can learn things about merely by their proximity to her dusk statues. But you are protected by a veil she cannot pierce from afar. She does not know what you are, how you work or whether she could even affect you, and likely can't know without meeting you in person. That's a big part of why she was interested."

Starlight frowned, brain working fast. Could this have to do with how her batpony mind projection power got turned on and off? Or was it something to do with the way she interacted with moon glass? If Felicity and Glimmer were right and she was a mixed race foal with sarosian blood, the Night Mother would have to have seen that before, right?

If this was meant to help or ease her path, it felt like she was just getting drawn further in.

The end of the staircase arrived. A hexagonal room stretched before them, far smaller than she had expected, with a hexagonal pool of clear liquid in the center that seemed invested with faint motes of light. The blue lines on the walls branched and merged, spilling onto the floor and feeding into the pool, and it seemed to be the source their energies grew from. But that wasn't the room's most significant feature.

At the far wall was a chair, and in it was a filly, rising slowly to her hooves with a sigh. She closed her eyes, steadied herself, and bowed her head, purple mane dangling over the pool, looking like she wished she was anywhere else.

"Hello, Starlight," Glimmer said. "I wasn't looking forward to this, but here we are."