//------------------------------// // Chapter 12: City // Story: Luna is a Harsh Mistress // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Iron Quill watched from the front of his camp as the army passed. They marched in tight order, with many of the soldiers looking eager to be moving. Don’t worry, I’ll have you all working soon enough. But ultimately it wasn’t these soldiers or their captains that he feared. These troops were demoralized, but he hardly needed to force them into doing something whose only intention was warming them up. Their captains were now suitably frightened into submission… though he would’ve preferred they think for themselves instead. But far more critical than either, the princess herself. The pony who had watched as her captains nearly killed the pony who’d saved their lives twice over. The only one with the skills to manage their supplies. The one who didn’t order the troops to dig ditches and burn torches for light. Penumbra joined him in the air as he crossed the cavern towards the throne tent, so quiet that he didn’t even notice she was with him until he glanced behind and saw the little trail of dust she was leaving. That seemed like her sign to speak, moving in closer so he would be able to hear her even in flight. “You’re really going to ask her to… build that thing?” she asked, nodding towards the long blueprint emerging from one saddlebag. “The princess herself, using her power as bidden by one of her servants, instead of at her own pleasure?” He shrugged. “I’m sure it’s at her pleasure to save all our lives, isn’t it? If she wants an army to take back Equestria and get her revenge, they need to survive. This is the way. She said so herself, over and over—she doesn’t know how to save these ponies.” “And yet she knows so much,” Penumbra said solemnly. “She knew to make a bubble of air for you, she knew about the things that make up the air. Things nopony on Equestria have any reason to know. Why do you suppose that is?” Quill slowed in his flight, though hovering in the icy cave was no longer a terribly comfortable thing. He had to remove his wings from his robe to fly, and they did not like the cold anymore than he did. Up near the ceiling, he could see ice condensing on almost every surface, an even coating that dribbled down to stalagmites on certain rock-formations. “Nopony knows where the princesses came from,” he finally said, stopping in the air. This wasn’t the kind of conversation he wanted to have outside the princess’s tent, where it would be overheard by the Voidseekers and repeated to her. But he trusted Penumbra more than that. “Presumably the secret is there.” “What do you know?” Penumbra asked, turning on him in the air. Better question, what are you trying to tell me? But he had no reason not to answer. “I know they arrived after the Allwinter, in the first century of Equestria’s unification. That was… long ago. They took over the role of the Council of Seasons. They’re ageless, nearly unkillable…” “None of that answers the important question,” Penumbra said. She hovered closer, flying so close that she pressed her face up against Quill’s ear, whispering into it over the sound of his flapping wings. “Ever since we got here, the Voidseekers have been looking for something, everypony but me. Several of us were killed trying to find it—you know first hoof how hard that is.” If Permafrost didn’t think I was a shriveled old stallion who had never lifted a sword, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. “What is she looking for?” Penumbra pulled away, her eyes suddenly pained. “Ask her.” Quill turned back, and angled into a gentle dive. Moving his wings in the cold was getting harder, despite how much easier flying had been at first. He glided back towards the throne tent, watching for any sign of change.  He found it—several Voidseekers were there, each wearing thick traveling clothes or armor, dented and scorched. Dust covered several of them, along with frost on a few. They’ve just come from outside. Why bring all of them back, unless… He ignored that thought, shoving through the crowd and into the tent. The door was open, so there was no reason to fear Nightmare’s reaction. She stood over a massive map, showing what Quill could only assume was the lunar surface itself, plotted in immense detail. Only instead of the one he had of their first bubble, this map continued for what he guessed was… That can’t be right. There’s not that much moon. Aminon was the only one here, though like the other Voidseekers he seemed to be dressing more for the desert than a blizzard. His robes were thin, and obviously would have covered his whole body. Now his face was exposed—safe in the presence of the princess and other bats. “Surely we can send him away, Princess? We don’t have further need of him anymore.” Nightmare Moon ignored him, raising a wing to silence him. “Iron Quill only enters my presence when he requires something of me. I heard you’ve been making changes, Lord Commander. Again.” He nodded, stepping up beside the map and glancing covertly down once. It was centered on their current location, though the cavern they were in was but a single dot. And somewhere far away, hundreds of leagues at least if he was reading the map right, were sketched… ruins? That couldn’t be right. “Guilty, Princess. I believe my team and I have discovered a solution to our temperature problem, and our drinking water supply problem as well.” “An empty accomplishment. You’re the reason the army still needs them. They wouldn’t have chosen death over a promise.” Quill’s expression hardened. But he didn’t want to get into an argument with Aminon here, not in front of the princess. They all needed her help. “Explain your solution as quickly as you can,” Nightmare Moon said, settling back on her cushion. “And before you open your mouth to say it—there is no coal here, and no oil either. The volcanic activity that created this cavern-system is unfathomably ancient, and the crust does not warm meaningfully at the depths we can reach. We cannot use unicorn magic or build a structure large enough to harvest angular momentum.” Quill stared, feeling even more confused than he had when Cozen did this. Nightmare Moon had thought about this, she hadn’t just turned over the solution to him. A pony with far more power and experience than me already tried to come up with a solution and failed. Quill removed the blueprint from his saddlebags, stretching and unrolling it atop the lunar map. “We cannot continue surviving here if we treat the moon like some Equestrian field. This is where we will live now—every creature in your army, and all the others we brought. The design can be expanded as needed if the population increases, or sections closed off if we no longer need them.” Nightmare Moon stopped looking imperiously out at nothing and levitated the blueprint up to her face, inspecting it. Quill had ensured it was printed perfectly, with clearly-labeled sections, and diagrams for the mechanical parts where possible. Finally she set it down, expression utterly baffled. “How did you conceive of this? Did you find… no, absolutely not. I refuse to entertain the thought that my entirely mortal Lord Commander… monk and recluse of dirt farming primitives located my home before I did.” Quill shook his head. “I have…” He didn’t want to lie. “I knew you were searching for something, but I wasn’t. I don’t even know if I have unicorns who can travel to the surface yet, Princess. Please, consider the plan we’ve constructed. It will require significant assistance from you.” He explained the plan swiftly, the large lump of metal that would channel heat down into a vast cistern of water, which would melt their ice and heat water they could send into individual sections of the structure as needed. “The mechanism is fed by water’s natural flow, which we have observed even here—at a reduced rate, but that will still suffice. Please, Princess. Gathering enough metal to cover enough surface for this project is beyond anything that could be conceived up without an Alicorn’s power. And since the metal must pierce the ceiling overhead—I would trust no other to that, even if it were possible for my workers to complete that labor.” “Ever wasting time,” Aminon whispered, as soon as he had finished. At least he hadn’t interrupted during the process, just glared daggers and waited for him to shut up. “Princess, we have Vanaheimr. We require nothing further.” “Aminon, you never fail to impress. Consider your efforts rewarded as we agreed. But Nightmare’s drive can be overwhelming for a single mind, even one as sharp as yours.” She held up the blueprint in her magic again, before rolling it and offering it back to Quill. “This is why I have always had a mortal Lord Commander. Outsiders do not build.” Nightmare Moon turned her back on him then, her horn glowing faintly blue. “I promised I would show you my nightmares, Quill. Come with me and see.” He tucked the blueprints away, sparing one glance over his shoulder for Penumbra. She wilted under Aminon’s gaze, though no words had been exchanged. I hope you’re okay, Penumbra. “Princess!” The Lord of the Voidseekers rose, following her quicker than Quill could. “Shouldn’t I be with you? That shriveled old… pony… will not be any help to you.” Nightmare Moon turned, fixing him with an intense glare. “It would destroy you,” she said. “Do you wish to die today, Aminon?” He retreated, ears flattening. He made no further objections. What about me? You praise our work, but does that mean you’ll help, or… Quill had no choice but to follow. “Will it kill me, Princess?” “I don’t know,” she said, voice flat. “But we will find out.” Her horn flashed; whatever spell she’d been building finally complete. A doorway appeared on the tent wall, outlined in glowing blue. It swung open, into a smooth stone hallway. They stepped through together. Quill followed his princess through strange corridors of stone, perfectly black and lit only with a flicker from Nightmare Moon’s horn. “You must remain beside me at all times,” she said. “There is no atmosphere here, and there are magical dangers beyond your comprehension. Your only hope of survival is to remain at my side.”  They crossed from one twisting corridor into another that was much wider, with bits of rubble and collapsed ceiling fallen at random. It wasn’t much further before they reached their first body. Where he could see skin and fur, it looked a little like a mummy, shriveled and frozen. A stumpy horn poked from its head, though the bulges in its clothes also suggested it might have other things. Probably just the way it rotted. The pony stared forward with empty sockets; its face twisted in death. Even its clothing was unlike anything he’d ever seen before, impossibly fine-stitched, with a slightly reflective cast where Luna’s horn struck it. A broken object had fallen onto the ground beside it, made of something dull with a pane of glass fixed inside. A mare then, and this was her makeup mirror. Nightmare Moon stopped, staring down at the dead. For once he could see no rage on her face. Even in the gloom, her eyes didn’t look slitted anymore. “Do the dead bother you, Quill?” He shook his head. “I assisted with many burials with the Ordo Celestial. And before that, I put many ponies in their graves in other ways.” She rose, dropping the strange object. Quill caught it, slipping it into his saddlebags before hurrying to catch up. The princess didn’t react, and apparently didn’t care. “My sister and I… we swore we’d never talk about this place again,” she said, voice faltering. “But now the Tyrant banished me here, any oaths I made to her are broken. Look upon our home, Quill. See what no mortal pony has witnessed.” They passed through another doorway—and back in time. Some distant part of his mind recognized the dream-magic working. The Nightmare Princess had overlapped the real world with a dream so real that he could walk through it, hear it, smell it.  They emerged from a stone hallway into a massive atrium, so tall that the ceiling was lost over his head. A spectacular fountain dominated the center of the room, with paths that led under waterfalls and between lush trees and well-manicured flowers. The ponies living here were Alicorns. They flew in small groups overhead, between the structures that lined the strange vertical space. He heard their voices, their happy conversations in a language he did not speak. Nightmare Moon strode forward towards the fountain, taking each step nervously. Quill soon saw why—there were two figures playing in the edge of the water. Fillies, with their strange clothes left hanging on a branch. Celestia and Luna. “She doesn’t think I remember…” Nightmare Moon whispered. “But how could I forget?” The atrium around them transformed. A spectacular glass dome far overhead was now open to the sky, caked over with dust in places. The sun showed through the dome through various openings--the sun his own ponies desperately needed. But so far away. Dust had rained down on everything here—the dry fountain, a few skeletal remains of trees. And many bodies. They were all arranged on one side of the room, wearing bulky, oversized armor unlike anything he’d seen before. And unlike the corpse he’d seen in the hallway, these had clearly rotted in their armor before they froze. But they were frozen now, mares and stallions, adults and foals. “How many died here?” “All of us.” Nightmare Moon turned her back on the dead, crossing a bridge over a dry water-feature and towards one of the other large hallways leading away. “Some of the old magic is still working. We must disable it if the Voidseekers are to be able to penetrate this place.” Quill hurried to catch up with her, before the thin veil of air she brought for them could leave him behind. “This is how you know… the things you know,” Quill said, as soon as he’d caught up with her. “This place has been… above us all this time? How has nopony discovered it?” Nightmare Moon laughed. “We’re on the moon’s ‘dark’ side—facing away from Equus below. You would need to send a probe over our heads, and even then it’s a little metal speck on the scale of planets and moons.” They passed through a series of metal doors, each one thicker than any vault he’d ever seen. Each one broken and shattered, with little pieces of metal all over the ground. There were bodies, but more of the things he saw looked like broken… clockwork? He couldn’t place them. “Only the betrayer knows this is here,” Nightmare Moon continued. “I wonder if it is where she meant to send us. I think she believed there were survivors. Do you know why it took my Voidseekers so long to find this place? We’re exactly reverse to camp right now, as far from Vanaheimr as it is possible to be. For the best, perhaps.” She lowered her head. “Nothing and no one survived. No reactor, feel it? No, you don’t. There’s nothing here but corpses.” Quill followed as they entered another large space, this one packed with more unplaceable metal… cabinets? Many had glass faces shattered, with long strings of metal spilling out like their guts. He followed his princess between them, as she searched for—who knew what. “Why are we here, Princess?” he asked, quietly. “Unless you feel that educating me is reason enough. Of course I respect that. But shouldn’t we save the army first?” “We will,” she said, without apparent insult. “We are here for the metal, as you suggest. But we are also here for something else.” They emerged from the aisles of metal cabinets, into an open space. Thick pipes ran from several different directions to a pedestal, with a single object resting on top. It looked like a diamond, larger than his hoof and with a brilliant glow, as even as the sun.  Quill felt his eyes watering as he saw it, and for a moment he could almost imagine he was back in Equestria, walking through Golden Gate’s gardens.  Just behind it was another metal door, larger than all the others by far. It was angled slightly down and shut with jaws of interlocking teeth thicker than his whole body. “What is that?” He turned and realized suddenly that Nightmare Moon hadn’t stepped into the light. She crouched in the shadow of a broken cabinet, staring ahead. “This is the Polestar. When my parents’ parents fled here across the universe, it lit their way. It protects the armory even now. Three of my Voidseekers were destroyed trying to open it.” She raised her voice, though it was hard to be intimidated when she cowered in the shadows like that. There’s something so powerful that even Nightmare Moon is afraid of it? “It does not permit me any further. Go, Quill. Take it and open the armory. With the weapons inside, my sister’s spell will shatter. Equestria will kneel.” Quill turned away from the strange stone, walking back to the princess. Surrounded by unnatural sunlight, he felt braver than he ever had. “If I can’t, or I die…” He lifted the blueprints out of his pack, passing them to her. “We don’t give up on them, even if we’re stuck here. Agreed?” “Agreed,” she said. “And if you die—at least open the door in the process. However many we can save on this dead rock; we can save more below. We can save all that we brought, and all those who suffer under my sister’s rule. Release us from this prison.” Quill turned away, back towards the strange stone. Was it his imagination, or was it watching him? As he walked, he subconsciously removed his hood, then unwound the scarf from his neck. He started to sweat in the heat of the warmest Skyforge summer. He stopped beside the pedestal, which was slightly too high to comfortably reach. It had been built for Alicorns, like everything else in this strange place. That meant the gemstone was right in front of him, almost at eye level.  Through the brilliant glow, he saw something black, a perfect sphere with a single line traced around it. How can the darkness light everything so bright? He wiped the sweat from his brow, circling the stone. He could see nothing holding it in, no spells so far as he knew how to recognize them. But then—he could feel the heat, and an even white light so bright that he felt like it should be making him transparent. If that wasn’t magic, he wasn’t sure what was. Iron Quill reached forward cautiously with one hoof, touching the stone. He fell—through space and time and places that had neither. His mind stretched through places as bright as the Hvergelmir had been dark, places of impossible curves and numberless angles and a million unblinking eyes. A figure appeared, a patch where light wasn’t so pale. It was so indistinct he couldn’t tell what it was meant to be. It was too tall to be an ordinary pony, certainly.  Then it spoke. Not with words—but directly in his mind. “Present uniformity seeks Eigenstate Switch? Why?” He screamed, dropping to the floor as blood dribbled from his eyes, his nose, his mouth. His own memories dragged in front of him—battlefields filled with the dead, cold nights, watching Rockroost burn. He hacked and coughed, vomiting what was left of his breakfast out onto the icy floor. “Uniformity presents contact with low-energy state,” the voice said, forcing him to see another memory. An ancient stone archway somewhere lost in the Everfree forest, with steps that floated through the void and led to a tower of black onyx. “Sacrosanct? Purify?” “Had… to…” he croaked; voice feeble. “No… choice…” Thousands of soldiers—all of Luna’s officers, and many others besides. Less than half of them would return. “Purify?” the voice asked again, tone completely unchanged, utterly disinterested. “Odium of disillusion insufficient. Eigenstate Switch consecrated.” If I say yes… Nightmare Moon gets a weapon like this. “No…” he stammered. His whole body shook with pain, anguish that was now as mental as it was physical. How many more Rockroosts would there be if Nightmare Moon took a weapon so powerful that a city of Alicorns had to lock it away? “Kill me… first…” “Entropic scarring repaired. Input request—protect. Compromised agent: Nightmare Moon. Observing.” Something lifted Quill off his hooves, towing him across the room like a doll, trailing smoke. He spread his wings desperately, catching himself before he could smash into the metal furniture. He wobbled, then flopped to one side, breathing heavily. It felt like he was someone’s pastry that had spent a few days too long in the oven. Maybe the cold isn’t so bad after all. Next thing he knew, Nightmare Moon towered over him. He looked up, and nearly screamed at what he saw—the princess had a shadow, stretching forward towards the Polestar’s light instead of away from it. She stared down at him, a mixture of disappointment and awe on her face. “It didn’t kill you.” He rolled weakly onto his hooves or tried. He barely had the strength to stand anymore. “I think I… might wish it had. I think I’ve gone from rare to well-done.” Nightmare Moon laughed. “My sister said that a thousand ponies came to this place at the end, to take its weapons and defend Vanaheimr. It burned Alicorns to cinders, and you… you’re only lightly scorched.” “Maybe it likes bats,” he grunted, struggling to his hooves. The light had felt so welcoming before—and it still did. But he wouldn’t try to remove it again. His legs shook as he crossed the room to where the blueprints had fallen, scooping them up again and sliding them into his saddlebags.  “I don’t… know.” Nightmare Moon looked away from the light, and didn’t watch him until he returned to the alley with her. “Did it tell you anything? There’s an intelligence in there—a powerful one, older than you can imagine.” He nodded faintly. “It said… words I don’t understand. Uniformity, low-energy state… purify. A few others.” Nightmare Moon shrugged, glancing down at the blueprint he carried one last time. “A terrible shame. The weapons in there would certainly get us back to Equestria. It was a distant hope, however. My sister must’ve known we would fail, or else we wouldn’t have been banished here in the first place.” “You could try,” Iron Quill said, wiping a little of the slime and sweat away from his face. He probably should’ve kept his damn mouth closed. All of the Alicorn’s sympathy vanished from her face, eyes narrowing to slits. “Even for a Lord Commander, you grow too bold.” There were two voices speaking then, though the effect was far subtler than when Nightmare simply took control of one of its lesser creatures. “If you ever speak of this again, I will scatter your ashes to the solar wind.” “I won’t,” he promised, unable to meet her eyes. He could only guess why she didn’t accompany the threat with violence—but nothing came. Maybe it was the strange light.  “Humblest apologies, Princess. I would rather narrow my focus to our true purpose. Building that.” Nightmare Moon glowered down at him for a moment more, before she turned away. Was that confusion on her face? “You’ve proven yourself a… faithful servant today, if anything. I know a place where we can find enough metal for your purpose. Come with me. The trip was not long, but it also wasn’t pleasant. They passed through thousands of the dead, both wearing the strange armor, and not. The latter were easier, since the cold and the void had done nothing worse than embalm them. He did his best to see them as little as possible. They returned to the lunar surface, protected by Nightmare’s powerful magic. It was Quill’s first look at the city called Vanaheimr. At first, he was a little disappointed.  There were humps under the soil in places, and a vast field where the rocks had been cleared and the soil itself was tilled in little rows whose purpose he couldn’t imagine. Only the massive atrium tower seemed to stretch above the soil. It was even stranger from the outside, looking like something even larger with huge sections missing. Tunnels ran into its base and spread out from it, all below the surface. Except for a flat stretch of land, not far from a tunnel exit. The ground was a single strange rock, flat and gray like nothing he’d ever seen before. It stretched as large as a castle’s footprint, maybe larger. Objects lay broken and smashed on it, along with thousands more bodies. As they approached, the field changed. The expanse was airless and silent, yet he could still hear the agonized screams. Ponies fled from the tunnel, towards a set of towering metal objects that emerged nose-first from the ground. They didn’t make it. Lumps of metal rained down on them from above, so fast that they caught the air on fire and melted anyone standing too close. Some of the Alicorns tried to defend themselves—their magic wasn’t strong enough. A flash of silver came hurtling for Quill—and suddenly they were standing at the base of an ancient metal hulk. There were six like it, though no two had broken in exactly the same way. Roughly cylindrical objects, each like a crushed barrel caved in. “She was wrong,” Nightmare Moon said, settling down on her haunches and staring out at the field. “All six ships are still here. We really… we really were the last.” “What was that?” Quill asked, voice still shocked. “What killed you?” Nightmare turned to glower at him. “Do you wish for an answer, or for my help?” “Help,” he said instantly, pausing to hack and cough. He could barely stay on his hooves anymore—the Polestar had left little of him behind. “This is the metal you mean to use?” There was so much, polished perfectly silver, with the strange writing all over it. He could read it now. “Evacuation Shuttle 1” said the first. The ground at their hooves read “Main Launch Platform—keep clear at all times.” “We never should’ve died here,” Nightmare Moon whispered. “But at least some of what we built will serve in death. Rather like the Voidseekers.” She took to the air, spreading her wings. She didn’t actually flap them though, holding herself there with magic alone. “This is my moon, sister. It was a mistake sending me to the place of my greatest strength.” The ground began to shake under Quill’s hooves, and he took off as well. He could barely fly, though at least the cold wasn’t bothering him right now. The first of the massive “evacuation shuttles” lifted up into the air, glowing blue along its edges. It tore free of the remains of metal scaffolds on either side, shedding strange mechanical devices and corpses that had been fleeing up the ramp. For all her connection to this place, Nightmare Moon didn’t seem to care much what happened to the dead. “If you won’t… fly us home… then you will serve us another way.” Nightmare Moon roared, her dark shadow stretching longer and longer in front of her. Quill hardly noticed it in the dead city, but in the light of her own magic it was impossible to miss. The shadow stretched opposite from her mane, its red eyes seeming to watch him from the soil below. The massive metal object began to deflate, turning bright red and warping. Quill had seen this shape before, though he hadn’t expected to see it all at once. Nightmare Moon was crafting in a single instant what he had thought would take many weeks to forge and hammer and nail together. The flat metal sunshade, tapered downward to a hollow rod that would pierce the moon’s surface, and descend to the camp. The air before them tore open in a single gigantic line, just barely wide enough for the sunshade’s top. “With me, Iron Quill! Let us leave this city of desolation.” He glanced back at the single exposed tower of Vanaheimr, then followed Nightmare Moon through the portal. I guess we might not freeze after all.