Iron Quill wandered through a field of the dead. His legs faltered under him, and more than once he nearly lost his grip completely and had to spread his wings to keep himself moving forward. But he had to keep moving—if he wasn’t here to give these ponies final mercy, who would?
The Solar Legion—fifty thousand stallions and mares, along with uncountable numbers of sellswords, mercenaries, and other hangers-on—lay on a battlefield as vast as a city. Nightmare Moon hadn’t burned them with Alicorn magic, as he’d seen done many times before. Flames were dramatic, but even for such powerful beings, they were costly. These ponies had been frozen.
He passed through marshaled ranks of the Legion, still standing with their shield walls ready and their spears lifted high. Nightmare Moon’s magic had frozen them in place, their dead eyes staring. With the battle over, some had started to thaw, slumping limply to the ground where they stood and knocking each other over. As the morning sun broke over the trees, Quill felt waves of stink wash over the battlefield.
Celestia preserve us. Many nightmares will be born here when these dead start to rot. There would be nopony to bury them, not with the army’s frail remains in terrified retreat and no friendly settlements nearby. This terrible necropolis would last a generation.
The bodies weren’t the worst part, though. Whatever Nightmare Moon’s terrible spell had been, it had not killed equally. For reasons he couldn’t easily see, some of the creatures were still alive. Some ponies had only been exposed in a single leg, or maybe a wing, which poked through with frozen spikes of blood. They screamed in terrible agony, begging for death.
Quill’s inventory battalion passed through the battle lines. Whenever he heard the screams, he pointed, and one of his officers would move forward to deliver a merciful death to the pony. He had no illusions about their chances of surviving the infection.
“Sir!” a voice called from just beside him, one of his soldiers. “Sir, you should see this.”
Iron Quill turned, adjusting his thin brown robe and hurrying in the indicated direction. Past a hundred frozen crossbowmen, he found an overturned cart of supplies, and several soldiers waiting beside it. Huge pots of oil had exploded here, overturning the cart and spreading black flames over the otherwise frozen ground.
His stallions watched the underside of the cart warily, pointing their weapons down. A figure crouched there, a pegasus wearing a blue Cloudsdale uniform with officer bars on his shoulders. He was bloody and his face was burned, but not severely.
The cart preserved you. But you’ll probably wish it hadn’t.
Quill waved his soldiers back, advancing towards the opening. A crossbow pointed out at him, shaking slightly in the grip of the one holding it. “Stay back! I’ll kill every last one of you traitors!”
Quill winced. “Put down that thing, Chain Mail. You aren’t going to kill me.”
His eyes widened, and the crossbow did start to droop. “Gale? What in Celestia’s name are you doing with the Usurper’s army of traitors and cowards?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t… say that so loudly,” he said, as sensitively as he could. “The army of traitors and cowards are the only reason you’re still breathing. They’re very loyal to my orders, but don’t make their job any harder.”
Chain Mail looked back, nearly dropping the crossbow completely. “Is that why the Usurper is winning, Gale? Are you leading her army? What about your oaths?”
Iron Quill rolled his eyes. “Do I look like I’m dressed for war, son? I’m not leading anything. I thought I was here to remind the princess of what she was fighting for… but clearly I was wrong about that.” He trailed off, glancing behind him at the devastation. Probably the largest loss of pony life in history, not sparing messenger-colts or field healers or anypony else who had been too close to the front. “That isn’t why I’m here now. Right now I’m here to keep fools like you alive.”
He turned, glancing over his shoulder. “Fetch a uniform from the stores, Bowline. Something to fit this pegasus here.”
“Sir?” Bowline raised an eyebrow, but Quill didn’t look away. After another intense glare, he hurried off.
“You’re wasting your time, Gale. If you think I’m going to tell you anything about o-our current strength, after seeing you on her side—”
Quill snapped forward suddenly, so fast that Chain Mail couldn’t react. He tried to fire the crossbow, but Quill brought his knee up against it, tilting it harmlessly out of the way. The bolt flew wide, and meanwhile he wrapped one leg around the stallion and heaved him bodily from the opening onto the dirt. Air billowed about him, carrying every stroke with blurring speed as only a pegasus could.
“Look around, Chain. Keep your bucking mouth shut and look. Do you think the princess cares what you know?”
He waited, watching Chain Mail’s expression. His eyes darted around, getting his first clear view. No stallion or mare standing in the open had survived, and now he would see it. “Stars above,” he swore, slumping forward onto the ground. “She killed…”
“Everypony,” Quill agreed. “Now listen to me. I’m not one of her captains. I manage her supplies. I’m permitted my own guards, to protect the stores from thieves in and out of the army. It’s time for you to choose.”
Bowline returned at that moment, landing beside them and tossing the bundle of cloth and metal there. “Take that Legion stuff off, before too many ponies see you. Put this on.”
“I won’t serve her,” he spat. “How can you?”
“Look at it this way.” Quill nudged the bundle closer to him. “You can stand up straight, and when anypony else from the army finds you here still alive they’ll just cut your throat. Or you can shut your damn mouth, pretend you saw the moonlight’s truth, and joined her cause. Nopony looks twice at my stallions. You’ll be safe.”
“It ain’t so clean, sir,” Bowline corrected. His voice was low, disgusted. “I saw Permafrost’s troops on the eastern flank. They’re, uh… it ain’t right what they’re doin’. Kinder to kill him ourselves.”
“Right.” Quill turned back. “Choose, Chain Mail. I’m not fighting for her, and you won’t have to either. Maybe… maybe we can help temper her. Either that, or stand in her way, and get destroyed by her.” Before today, he could’ve made that argument easily. He had, to several of his guards. He’d taken them from fallen cities before, passing them off exactly as he hoped to do to Chain Mail now.
“This is… I almost think I should die here. With the others.” He spun around, toward the slaughtered archers. “But I’m a coward, Gale, always was. I could’ve come out from under the cart and fought with the others. I watched my stallions die, while I was safe.”
Probably. But Quill was in no place to judge anymore. His price was already paid. “There’s been enough blood here, Chain Mail. I can use you.”
The stallion finally looked down, then shrugged out of his jacket. He hurried to the gear, pulling it on.
“I don’t think we can trust him,” Bowline whispered, while Chain Mail changed. “None of us had to see so many friends die.”
“I trust him,” Quill answered. “He’s one of mine. But if anything happens, you can tell the princess I forced you, threatened you into it. Get reassigned to somepony else’s company.”
That silenced Bowline’s objections—along with the motion behind him. A pony landed with a weighty thump, shaking the ground around her. “Iron Quill,” Nightmare Moon said. “The time has come for those ponies loyal to me to prove their loyalty by oath.”
He turned to face her, expression neutral. She didn’t seem to have noticed Chain Mail, now fully (if sloppily) dressed in the padded armor of his inventory guard. Her mane blasted behind her like the aurora, stretching for hundreds of feet before it was lost in the sun. The ground under her hooves began to freeze, with white fingers of winter creeping from the blood-soaked grass.
“Or at least it would be,” she went on. “If this wasn’t a dream. But you know you aren’t really here, Quill.”
There were a few seconds of terrible disorientation, then the world came crashing back into focus. He was still standing on the battlefield, surrounded by thousands of dead. “I wasn’t aware your judgement of me had been so harsh,” Nightmare Moon went on, circling him like a predator. “Rich, coming from you. I killed soldiers. How many civilians died at Rockroost?”
He tensed but didn’t lash out. It might be a dream, but this was just as real to the princess as it was to him. Even before, Luna had mastery of dreams. But neither one had ever used that power against him before. “I don’t know,” he answered. “At least… five thousand.”
“Five thousand,” Nightmare Moon said, stopping directly in front of him. She yanked on his neck with her magic, forcing him to meet her eyes. “And don’t you forget any one of them. In their screams, remember that you know the same lessons as I do. Those in power must sometimes make terrible choices for the greater good.”
He nodded in submission. “Apologies, Princess. The pony you see in this memory was… on the edge of sanity, shocked and horrified. Don’t take his foolishness as an indictment of your sovereignty.”
“You do love to apologize.” Nightmare Moon turned away, down at the cowering, submissive Chain Mail. “Are you going to apologize for this too? Say how you quake before me and you’ll hasten to correct this error in judgement with an immediate execution?”
Quill swallowed, then straightened, facing the princess openly for the first time. This wasn’t how she really looked, but the terrible visage she’d still worn after her contract with Nightmare, and the touch of demons was still strong on her. Her features twisted and distorted, her eyes red pits, her horn wickedly sharp. “No, Princess. I only apologize for my mistakes.”
“I could command it,” Nightmare Moon said—but not angrily. Her tone was almost amused. “Demand you kill this wolf hiding covertly among my peaceful sheep, or face my eternal torture.”
“You could,” he agreed. “And you could force me to watch Chain Mail die in agony, before you kill me too. But I don’t think you will. Half the soldiers in your army once fought for the other side. I think you know what enforcing purity by the sword would do to this army. They’re already at the point of breaking, trapped in this freezing cave with no hope of escape. If you set that example, or force me to set it—you won’t have any army anymore.”
There was a long, tense silence. The princess didn’t look away from him, her eyes furious and intense. The seconds passed, and maybe she expected him to turn away, to bow to her. He didn’t.
Finally she nodded to him. “Do you know what they say about a bold vizier?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “He best get results. Your boldness is amusing now, Quill. But you may find it less so on the day you no longer give me what I ask.”
He shrugged. “We want the same thing, Princess. Safety for this army, and a swift return to Equestria. Nopony else on this moon could grant you what I have.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “That may be, Gale. For now.” She turned, eyes scanning the vast battlefield around them. “Next time I will show you my nightmares. We will see if you judge so harshly then.”
There was a crack of magic, and the dream dissolved.
Iron Quill shivered, pulling his cloak closer about his shoulders. Not the threadbare monk’s robe that he’d kept with him since the early days of his time with Nightmare Moon—he’d burned it, just as he promised he would. His new one was a padded vest and cape that might’ve been worn under metal armor.
It helped, so much as being a child of the sky didn’t already give him some resistance to the chill. He emerged from his royal tent, breath puffing out from in front of him in a thin cloud. Wherever moisture had condensed, patches of ice lingered on the ground
Affairs in camp were bleak to say the least—well, camps. His new soldiers, inherited from the death of Permafrost, no longer spent all their days digging fortifications in the stone, but they weren’t sitting idle either.
Quill’s position as Lord Commander was no longer questioned. In the last few days, his authority had redirected pointless effort towards something more important. Instead of digging trenches, ponies now excavated stone to build permanent structures. Camp stores, latrines, the outline of where fields might be someday. If we can discover a way to light them.
Penumbra joined him as he passed out of his camp and towards the princess’s quarters, just as she did every morning. At least she didn’t bring the constant air of resentment with her like a caul that hovered over everything he did. She’d backed the right horse.
“I trust you already know,” she began, her voice muted beneath her face-wraps. Unlike everypony else in the faint glowstone light, her breath didn’t puff out around her, and she didn’t shiver with the cold.
“About the dead in Motherlode Company?” He nodded. “The third in as many days. Ignoring my communal sleeping order, and they suffer the consequences. Why is anypony surprised?”
This time it was only the Voidseekers waiting outside the throne-tent. They parted without objection, though he could see the resentment on their faces. Aminon wasn’t here, thankfully. At least that pony was too important for Quill to be worth his time.
“Princess,” he said, bowing his head. “I was wondering if you had considered my proposal.”
She looked up from her throne, eyes reflecting a little of the amusement he’d seen from her in the dream. And the threat of what she would do the next time. “I have,” she said. “And it’s a waste of my time. For once I am confident your proposed solution will not yield fruit. The surface of the moon is a wasteland beyond fathoming. The sun will not return for eleven days. We must somehow survive that time, until the soil above us warms again. Backward and forward we will go, until our grain runs out and you all starve. Or perhaps our supply of stored lightning will deplete first.”
They’d burned through a lightning shell every three days so far. That did not reflect optimistically upon the time left to them.
“It’s a good thing we have stores of food to supply the army before we were decimated,” Quill muttered. “But Princess, please. You’re the only pony in this army who can allow us to travel to the surface. We cannot ignore any solution, no matter how remote it may seem.”
“Perhaps you can’t,” Nightmare Moon muttered, meeting his eyes. “But I am not so quick to forget insults. Instead…” She levitated something from a large chest, holding it before him. A tightly rolled parchment. “Here is the spell I used, scaled down two orders of magnitude. A skilled unicorn should be able to cast this, and maintain it for several hours. Be warned, however, that less air brought means a shorter trip. Likewise—dress not for the cold, but extreme heat. Insulated in a sealed vessel, your own heat will quickly become the dominant force.”
“And we…” He took the scroll, tucking it away under one wing. “We can’t use a spell like this to warm the army? Enchanted upon the stones themselves, perhaps.”
Nightmare Moon leaned back, laughing energetically. “You’re… yes, I suppose you are that ignorant. Cast your mind back a few short weeks, and remember the effort it cost for me to insulate such an area. There is no power short of that to cast such a spell. I could cast it—but doing so would occupy every aspect of my attention, and over time drain the power from me until I was a withered husk.
“To survive, this army must find its own method. And quickly—the sun will not return for eleven days.”
He left, feeling defeated. He had expected retaliation, beyond mere threats. But over her own army? Luna wouldn’t have done this.
Luna’s dead, Quill. Pining for her won’t bring her back.
He hurried from the tent, and was so lost in thought he barely even heard Penumbra’s voice from behind him. “I know what you’ll say…” she began.
“Yes, you do,” he countered. “I won’t, not for anything.”
“Not you, then.” She yanked on him with one leg, stopping him cold. They were in the no-man’s-land between camps, standing in the gloom outside of every fire and glowstone. Other ponies would’ve been uncomfortable there, but not either of them. Bats never feared the dark. “Whatever it is you’re looking for on the surface, there’s another way.”
“I wouldn’t need air,” he said. “I wouldn’t freeze. But I won’t—”
She smacked him lightly with a hoof, right in the shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt or anything, but enough to express her annoyance clearly. “I’m not asking you to do anything. Listen, stupid. I could go up there. If you let the alchemists explain to me what they’re looking for, I could see if it’s there.”
Quill froze, turning over the idea in his mind. “Are you… are you sure that’s safe? I know the Voidseekers are immune to many things that would kill common ponies. But what’s waiting up there—”
“I’m positive,” she said. “Look, I can’t tell you what the others do. But I know, okay? We don’t need this… shield thing, not during the lunar night. I can’t tell you how I know, but I know.”
He met her eyes, nodding weakly. “Alright. Maybe you can help. We can tell them, come on.”
He hurried back to camp. Past the over-attended burrows of ground stone filled with water, where poison was still drawn from the air. The stone was no longer changed nearly as often, and the process had slowed enough that they hadn’t yet needed to return to the surface to replenish it a second time. But they would.
His command tent was now a command building, or at least four walls. No ceiling yet, since they were still discussing exactly how and if those would be built. But four walls and a cloth door, anyway.
Inside he found Cozen and Sylvan sitting side-by-side in intense conversation, bending down over several large scrolls.
“Ploidies interdiction states that the source of energy must be external,” Sylvan argued. “Explain the source for—” He blinked, turning slightly, then rising in his seat. “Quill! Did you bring, uh…”
“No,” he said, cutting him off. “No princess. I did bring another plan, though. And a copy of her spell.” He lifted his wing, tossing it to the table in front of Cozen. “Study this, please. Come to me at once as soon as you have a unicorn who can perform it successfully. It should be safe to test here, perhaps with more of the solid ice from the downward cavern to trace its seal with smoke.”
“We don’t need to be told how to perform our duty,” Cozen snapped, taking the spell in her magic and unrolling it. “But I admit, that does sound sensible. I’ll consider that methodology.”
“What other plan could there be?” Sylvan asked, once Cozen had buried her head completely in the complex spell-diagram. “Is the princess helping us directly for once? All those things she knows that she won’t tell us… maybe we’d be better at this if she would be more generous with information.”
“It is not for us to decide how the princess shares what she knows,” Penumbra said, voice clear and glowering at him. “Or to decide to what extent she should intervene. She has preserved this army through her choices, and she will continue to do so for those who love her will. The Moon protects her own.”
“The Moon protects her own,” Sylvan repeated, defeated.
“It wasn’t her idea, it was mine,” she went on, after a few seconds of meaningful silence from the earth pony. “I don’t need a shield. You can tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll shadow-step up to get it. The surface above us is bathed in total darkness on all sides—there is nowhere I can’t go.”
“O-oh.” Sylvan looked up, back to Quill. “I’ve never seen the, uh… never seen them help with things like this before.”
“I think Penumbra believes in us,” Quill said, meeting the Voidseeker’s eyes. “In spite of the evidence to the contrary. Be thankful for her help, don’t second-guess her.”
“R-right. Of course.” He lowered his head. “Sorry.” He nudged Cozen with a hoof. “We’re sending a one pony team to the surface. We need to tell her what we’re looking for.”
Cozen looked up from her reading, muttering something arcane under her breath. Her horn now glowed periodically, light enough in the dying glowstones that Quill could see it directly. But with a few more seconds of attention, even that faded, and she met their eyes. “Sending somepony… right, Voidseeker. Well, uh… you explain, Sylvan. I’m reading.”
Sylvan Shade rolled his eyes, then pulled over another scroll. He unrolled it, displaying a sketch of the surface. It was remarkably detailed, complete with the strange holes in the ground, the distant reflection of ice in the single largest one that was so frighteningly close. The burned and broken carts of the many dead.
Whoever had drawn this was a remarkably skilled artist. “Do you remember these?” He pointed at one of the largest holes on the illustration—mostly for Penumbra’s benefit, clearly.
She nodded. “I have been back to the surface more than once since our arrival here. They are a constant nuisance. And a boon I suppose, since some are so deep that the shadows are eternal.”
Sylvan shivered once, avoiding her eyes. “Well, Cozen and I believe these holes are not generated spontaneously. After her work extracting olivine salt for poison removal, she’s convinced that each one contains an object—a stone, probably—that struck the moon to make it. Many of the largest of these openings have very obvious objects at their bottom. Smaller ones, less so, though it may just have failed to survive the crash.”
“I don’t see how this helps mortal ponies not to freeze,” Penumbra said, pushing the drawing aside. “I’ve been in those craters, and they’re very cold. Colder than death itself.”
“Some.” Sylvan was undeterred. “Look at this chart of the primary elements. See how earth and fire are neighbors? We believe the impacts that made these craters would have converted some of the earth in the rocks into fire instead. If we brought them back, we could use them to keep the army warm.”
Penumbra rose from her cushion, backing up a few steps. “You’re asking me to bring something with the element of fire. Did you… see what happened to Permafrost? Voidseekers and fire do not get along.”
“It wouldn’t be actual flames, would it?” Quill asked. If Penumbra couldn’t read, then she probably wouldn’t know enough alchemy to know these things. “Just a conversion of some of the earth in the rock to fire. It would make them warmer, not actually producing flame.”
“Crude, but… yes,” Sylvan agreed. “And if you did see flame, you could mark it on a map for others to collect, rather than putting yourself in danger. Perhaps you could bring something flammable to test it with?”
“No.” Penumbra scanned the room, removing Quill’s empty saddlebags from a hook on one wall. “Flames do not burn out there. I probably wouldn’t burn until I brought it back. But I’ll be safe and touch none of it, just to be sure.” She settled the saddlebags over her armor, turning towards Quill. “Tighten these for me?”
He approached, bending in close to pull them with his mouth. Penumbra held perfectly still, letting him approach. Even though he felt no heat rising from her, he imagined he could feel another sort of tension there, waiting for him. He ignored it, tightening the straps.
She almost sounded disappointed when she spoke next, though the emotion was far too subtle for any of the younger ponies to pick up on. “How will I identify this stone when I find it? There are uncountable millions of rocks up there.”
“Feel their heat,” Sylvan answered. “And if any are warm, bring them back.”
She nodded, to Quill. “My turn to help you keep ponies alive. When your scholars write a book about this, I better be in it.” She stepped back, into the gloomy corner of the room beside a stone bookshelf. As soon as she was obscured in shadow, there was a brief surge of darkness, and Penumbra vanished, taking all their hopes with her.