The sharp crack of thunder dredged Vermilion from the depths of some immemorable dream. Hazy imaginations of snow and the unsettled sensation of a ship at sea fled, lost in moments, until only the dim recollection of once having remembered those feelings remained. An echo of memory drowned out by the rumble of the storm. Rose hadn’t woken, and he climbed up from the bed as gently as possible. Outside, rain hissed on the cobblestone streets of the Osage District. The scent of wet rocks and trees overwhelmed the fishy stink of the nearby river. He stared out at the storm until stray drops began to wet the curtains, and he closed the window. The faint sound of rain on the glazed panes was like chimes.
Canopy was on the bed when he turned back to it. She had her journal open on the sheets between her forelegs, and something on its dry, rain-stained pages made her smile.
“What’s so funny?” Vermilion asked. He climbed up onto the mattress carefully and settled down at Rose’s side. She mumbled something in her sleep, and her eye cracked open a hair. Just enough for the faintest glimmer of emeralds to show through. But the yoke of sleep was still too heavy on her, like a millstone carried by a drowning swimmer, and she fell back beneath the waves without complaint.
“Myself. My pretensions.” Canopy nosed the journal shut and pushed it a few inches away. “I can’t believe Luna’s having you read this silly thing.”
“It’s not silly.” A bit of heat entered Vermilion’s voice. “There’s wisdom in there! Not just about being a warrior but about being a good pony. A brave pony who did her duty even when she knew it would lead to her death.”
“It’s a journal, Vermilion. Nothing more. Little reminders to myself. A way to organize my thoughts, or write down confusing ideas so I could think about them later. If you’re looking for wisdom in here, you’re going to have to do a lot of searching.”
He looked down at the cover. In the darkness, the green canvas was black against the white blankets. Not so different from any of the books his father, Daucus, kept on the bookshelf in the main room of the old farmhouse. That old walnut shelf, with room for only a dozen books, was one of the family’s treasures – of all the farmsteads in Briarlight Valley, only theirs held a bookshelf. The only books as well, for all Vermilion knew. Literacy was as rare among the earth ponies as flight or magic, and distrusted just as much.
But Daucus, though he was an earth pony through and through, had seen a bit of the world before inheriting the farm from Vermilion’s grandmother. In addition to his voyage at sea, he’d been to the big unicorn cities, visited the museums and markets and libraries, and something in them must have stuck, because when he was still a young stallion he spent most of a month’s wages earned cleaning cinders and ashes out of the city’s firepits on a book. And the next month he spent all he’d earned again on an antique brass writing kit filled with a dozen different pen nibs of different widths. And he bought ink and paper and more books on how to write and soon he was filling page after page with huge, clumsy strokes of every letter of the Equish alphabet, just like unicorn foals did in their schools. And after enough months and enough pages, Daucus’s mouthwriting got smaller and neater until nopony could tell it apart from the copperplate cursive used by unicorn merchants to record sales and debts.
When Vermilion was younger, before he had so many brothers and sisters, his family was sometimes visited by more distant relatives. Earth ponies who hadn’t moved to the dominions around Everfree after the triumph of the alicorn sisters and the signing of the Pact. They were even more hidebound than the farmers Vermilion knew – more like the ponies of Hollow Shades, so consumed by seductive appeal of tradition that they drowned in it.
During these visits, Daucus would pull out his writing set, fit the holly stylus with one of the brass nibs, fill the ink pot with lampblack and water, and lay out a sheet of mulberry paper on his writing desk. And then he would carefully write the names of his guests, along with a few words about them: their coat, their occupations, perhaps even a few insights into their characters. To the visiting ponies it was like magic. An earth pony, writing like a unicorn. And when he was done half their guests would carefully roll up the paper and carry it home like treasure. The other half tossed it in the fire, and spat in the flames for good measure.
Daucus believed in the old ways. He was traditional. But he parted with his fellow farmers when it came to books. Yes, they were like magic, he agreed. They were a magic that earth ponies could learn.
Vermilion leaned over to brush the journal’s cover with his muzzle. The scent of glue and paper and canvas stole him back through the years, and for a moment he was a foal again, resting against his father’s side during one of the valley’s long winter nights, stumbling through some twisted sentence in a torn, second-hoof copy of The Dawn is Burning. He tried to remember how that story ended, and found he couldn’t. It was lost in the mist.
He closed his eyes and pushed the memory back into the past. “Luna wants me to rewrite it. Organize it. Make it something all ponies can read.”
“Oh, stars.” Canopy shook her head. “That mare. Still trying to make me into a hero.”
“You are one, though.” He reached out a hoof to touch her shoulder, but some trick of the night or darkness intervened; no matter how close to her he tried to move, she remained as far away as ever. His tiny bed, with barely room for two ponies, much less three, was infinitely vast.
He gave up trying to reach her. “You are a hero. Ponies just need to know your story.”
“Well, I won’t try to dissuade you.” She pushed the journal across the covers toward him. “But I will add a charge for you: when you write it out for Luna, put your own wisdom into it as well.”
He looked down at the little book. “I don’t think I have much of that.”
“You’ve already shown plenty.” Her eyes darted to Rose’s sleeping form, and the corner of her mouth turned up. “Your companions are loyal to you. You have good friends. You must know something.”
Friends. His thoughts drifted back to Luna, and the sad rumors that surrounded her. That she had lovers but no friends. He wondered, for a moment, what Cloudy thought he was to the princess.
“Did you have friends, ma’am?”
“Just Canopy, please,” she corrected him. “If I’m haunting your dreams, we ought to be on a first-name basis.”
“Sorry. Canopy.” It felt odd, using the major’s name in her presence. But he’d gotten used to calling Luna by her name, and a princess outranked any officer. “Did you, though?”
“I did. Ponies are social creatures, Vermilion. It is our nature to form bonds, to have friends and lovers. And in that I was as troubled and frustrated as any pony who has ever lived. You’ll find more than one entry in that book about unsatisfied nights.”
He blushed. Rose chose that moment to stir in her sleep, rubbing her side against his. “Do you want me to stop? If it’s private…”
“It is private, but I am dead. My cares are over, Vermilion.” She reached out to brush away the bit of coral forelock covering the vicious scar on Rose’s face, and she spent a moment inspecting the wound in silence. “It doesn’t matter much to me, anymore.”
Vermilion tried to imagine his own secrets, exposed after his death. Would ponies mourn for him less if they knew the foolish thoughts that spun around his head? Would they mourn him at all?
He swallowed. “You asked Celestia about the afterlife, once. She said she didn’t know what it was, or if it even existed.”
Canopy shook her wings and let them settle at her side. “I recall that, yes.”
He leaned forward. “And?”
“And?” She smiled at him. It was a small thing, but Canopy was a small mare. “Don’t look for any special insight from me there, Vermilion. I am just a memory relived in your dreams, pieced together from what you knew of me in life and what you’ve read of me in that journal. Perhaps that is the afterlife.”
A dream. The wind pushed at the window, rattling it with rain. “I never dreamed like this before. Before Hollow Shades, I mean.”
“You serve the master of dreams now. You should probably get used to it.”
A disquieting thought. He looked between the dead mare and the live mare sharing his bed and asked the question that had crouched in the back of his mind for as long as he had known them both.
“Are you happy, Canopy?”
Her smile grew. Something lurked in her eyes, like a secret she wanted to share. “That’s the wrong question, Vermilion. First, know what happiness is.”
Oh. Um. “Okay, what is—
But she was already melting. Her body dissolved into shadows that drifted away like snow. Her voice came to him out of the darkness.
“Find my ashes. Ask them.”
The sharp crack of thunder dredged Vermilion from the depths of the dream. He shook himself and searched the room for any sign of Canopy, but of course there was none. There never had been. Beside him, Rose mumbled something in her sleep.
Verisimilitude. The name came to him out of nowhere, and he froze, struck by the sensation that something important hid in the darkness, just beyond the edges of his perception. But, like a dream itself, the feeling faded, and in moments he forgot even the name. The currents of sleep swelled up and tried to drag him back.
He climbed from the bed and closed the window before the rain could get in.
* * *
Zephyr was downstairs when he woke the next morning. She’d tried to make toast, judging by the disaster on the counter and the charred pebbles of bread on the stove. Orange marmalade was everywhere. She jumped in surprise, wings flaring, as he entered the kitchen. Her muzzle and hooves were sticky and covered with crumbs. Syrupy hoofprints covered the table.
He blinked. “Hey, uh, I thought you were staying out?”
She tried to wipe her hooves clean, but that only got her fetlocks involved in the mess. She licked at them, then licked at her muzzle. It didn’t seem to help matters. “I did. Chi-chi’s unit had some early morning training, though. I had to bail so she could get ready.”
“Ah.” He fetched a towel from closet beside the pantry, dipped one corner into the cistern by the stove, and offered it to Zephyr. While she cleaned up he did his best to sort out the shambles on the counter. “I could’ve made breakfast.”
She shrugged. “Didn’t want to wake you. I mean, how often am I up earlier than you, you know?”
Just once now, apparently. Pegasi were late sleepers. “How was Chinook?”
An easy grin spread across Zephyr’s face. She made a show of stretching her wings. “Good. Real good. She was happy to see me back too.”
“That’s good.” He cut a few slides out of the maimed loaf of bread and set them on the stove to heat. Had she torn her toast off?
“Real happy, if you know what I mean.”
“I think I do.”
“No, I mean, real happy, like—” A sudden creak of wood from the stairs cut her off, and they both turned to see Rose, sans eyepatch. She froze at the entrance, taking in the two of them, then casually walked to the table and sat.
Zephyr stared at the unicorn. Her ears flapped like flags. She glanced at Vermilion, then back at Rose, then at Vermilion again, and a silly, stupid grin began to stretch out her muzzle.
Rose ignored it all. “Good morning, Zephyr. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m great.” The grin somehow widened. “But more important, how are you? Sleep well?”
Vermilion dropped a pair of plates on the table. The loud clatter snapped Zephyr’s attention back. “Rose stayed late to help me with Canopy’s journal. After that, we were so exhausted we both went straight to bed.”
“Uh huh.” Zephyr eyed the unicorn from horn to tail, then scooched around the table to Vermilion’s side. She shoved her muzzle against his shoulder and inhaled deeply, as though drinking for secrets. “And were your studies… fruitful?”
The pink aura of Rose’s magic appeared around Zephyr’s ear and twisted, dragging her away with a yelp. “Don’t badger the stallion while he’s eating breakfast,” Rose said. She took a nibble from her toast, then lowered her voice. “We’ll talk later.”
Zephyr rubbed her ear. “Fine. I want all the goods, though.”
Rose shrugged. “You’ll be disappointed, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” She leaned over to give Vermilion a final sniff, then shrugged and stood. “Anyway, I’m going to take a nap. Didn’t get much sleep myself, you know? Heh, maybe you two’ll need one later too, huh?” She gave Rose a wink, then hopped out of the room, wing’s spread to soar just above the floor.
Rose rolled her eye. “I’ll talk to her later. Make sure she understands.” She paused, then added, “That nothing happened between us, I mean.”
“Of course.” The words tumbled out effortlessly, thoughtlessly. He thought he might add a little joke, something about how silly the very idea was. That a unicorn mare might deign to lie with an earth pony stallion. It was the subject of ribald jokes. But before Vermilion could string the thoughts together his imagination struck, filling his head with images, sounds and even scents of what Zephyr thought might have happened last night. What some not-so-deep-or-hidden part of every stallion hoped might happen.
Rose, moaning beneath him. Her coat slick with sweat. The sparks from her horn reflect in her eye. Strands of coral pink mane painted on her face. The burning heat of her body pressing against—
“I can’t blame her, I suppose.” Rose said. It snapped him out of his lurid thoughts and back into the kitchen, brightly lit with the morning rays. “After the night she had, her thoughts are probably… inclined in that direction.”
Right. Now it was a struggle not to imagine Zephyr and that huge pegasus marefriend of hers. Chinook, whose grass-green plumage dazzled with colored tips stolen from a parrot. How odd that would look, mixed with the muted, sparrow-brown hues of Zephyr’s wings.
He forced his mind away from those thoughts. Leaders shouldn’t picture their troops that way, and neither should friends. He took a bite from the dry toast and focused on chewing.
“I should’ve let you know she was down here,” he said after swallowing. “Sorry.”
She shrugged. “It’s no worry. Just a silly misunderstanding. We’ll laugh about it later.”
Zephyr might laugh. Zephyr laughed about everything. So would Cloudy and Quicklime, if they found out. But he couldn’t imagine Rose laughing about it. And looking at her now, it didn’t seem like she found it very funny at all. In fact, he couldn’t quite read the look she slipped him before turning back to her toast. It was something subtle and thoughtful and reminded him for a moment of the way she’d looked when he first saw her in the hospital, half her head wrapped in bandages, forced to share a room with an undeserving hero.
Mares were complicated, he decided. Canopy should’ve written a guide for dealing with them.
* * *
Days passed, then weeks. In the burning heat of the Everfree summer, memories of Hazelnight began to fade. They lost their sharp edges in Vermilion’s mind, and they no longer cut him so easily. When he thought of Graymoor and the windigo queen and the nightmare in the skies over the valley, it was as though he was remembering times and places from another life.
One image remained, though. It was as clear as ever – the shrine in Cirrane and the monster it honored. Not Luna, but some warped image of her, with a midnight coat and dragon’s eyes.
Who could have built such an obscenity? What foul voice whispered in their ears as the mason laid brick upon brick, and the painter traced the delicate curves of the goddess on his canvas? And where, oh where had the sapphire come from? An ocean sapphire, one of only three in the world. Why did a shrine in a tiny village at the edge of the world hold such a treasure?
The only ponies who might know those answers were dead. And if Luna had her suspicions, she wasn’t sharing them with Vermilion.
It was two months past midsummer when Luna found him again. He dreamed their apartment was filled with cats, so many they covered the floor like the tide. White cats, black cats, calico cats, creme cats, ginger cats, short and long and fluffy haired cats, cats with scars and cats with scarves and cats whose voices sang with roars. And among these thousands of cats was one whose coat was indigo, a blue so deep and pure that surely no cat in Equestria had ever borne such royal fur. And when she jumped up on Vermilion’s back it felt like an avalanche had fallen upon him. Her claws were needles of ice, and her breath was the first frost of winter. She smelled of primrose and moonflower.
“Come to me, my loyal Vermilion,” the cat whispered. “It is time we talked.”
Vermilion wondered, sometimes, how Celestia came to her servants. Not in dreams, surely. Perhaps she just wrote them letters.
Later that day, when the sun began its slow descent from the vault of heaven, Vermilion found his way to the Palace of the Sisters. He had a feeling Luna would not be in her wing of the palace so early, and he went to the Grand Hall of the Sun, where the twin thrones sat upon a dais overlooking a vast marble-clad courtyard. It was jammed with unicorns, so many their horns were like the stamens of a field of pastel flowers, swaying and bobbing in time with the wind. Their voices melted together in an aristocratic rush that numbed his mind. Most of them ignored him completely – just another earth pony soldier on an errand for his master, perhaps lost and bewildered by the sight of so many nobles. The few who saw him turned up their muzzles.
At the head of the hall, atop the dais and seated on her throne, Celestia looked out at her ponies. She wore the same subtle smile as always, and her perfect white coat shone with its own light, like a fragment of the sun burned inside her soul. Even as far away as he was, Vermilion felt her heat against his coat. She was the warmth of a spring day after a long winter. The comfort of a fire on a dark night. He closed his eyes for a moment and forgot the stifling crowd and its babble.
A cool breeze touched his shoulder. He turned and looked up. On a balustrade above the hall Luna sat in the shadows. Her ethereal mane flowed in an unfelt wind. Otherwise, she was motionless, eyes closed, not even breathing. But still Vermilion knew she saw him. He went looking for the stairs.
When he reached her minutes later she hadn’t moved an inch. He sat down at her side, close enough to feel the chill radiating from her coat. The marble flagstones beneath his rump felt like ice.
She bent over to nuzzle him. “Thank you for coming, my loyal Vermilion. I hope the crowd below did not offend you.”
He resisted the urge to bury his face against her shoulder until he froze. “I can never be offended, so long as I serve you. Did you call the others as well?”
Luna shook her head. “I did not wish to trouble them yet. I promised you and your friends all the time you needed to recover, and it pains me to summon you now. But events are moving and we must keep up with them.”
“Events?” He looked over the spindle railing at the court below. Across the hall, Celestia held forth on some topic. The ponies nearest to her, at the base of the dais, leaned forward, their expressions enraptured. They stomped their hooves in thunderous applause when she finished.
“Looked at her,” Luna grumbled. “She drinks their adoration. She’ll spend hours in this hall with her precious throne, pretending to hear petitions or resolve complaints. Anypony who wants can come meet her! As long as they worship her, too.”
“Ah…” Vermilion glanced down at the crowd, then back at Luna. Memories of the last time she’d been upset with her sister began to gnaw at him. “Perhaps—”
“And meanwhile, who runs the kingdom? Who labors through the hours tending to the minutia and administrative trivia that holds off chaos for another day? Her ugly, unheralded, worthless sister, of course! The one they fear. The one they beg for help at the first sign of danger but oh, as soon as that danger passes, whom they toss aside like yesterday’s rubbish, so they can go back to reveling in Celestia’s light. Does that seem fair to you, my Vermilion? Does that seem passing fair?”
He swallowed. “I don’t think it’s my place to wonder such things.”
Luna grunted. Her shoulders heaved, and she let out a great sigh. “Of course. I am sorry. I did not summon you here to listen to my complaints.”
“I would listen to your complaints for hours, if that was your task to me.”
“Ah, I named you well, my loyal Vermilion.” She leaned down to nuzzle the top of his head again, and a small smile graced her lips. It was such a rare expression on her face that he almost jumped in surprise. “But I would be a poor princess if I used my servants in such a petty way.” Her eyes shifted to Celestia again, and the glower returned.
He stepped around in front of her. Between her and the rail and the sun princess beyond. “You said there were events happening?”
“There are.” She straightened up and frowned. “Celestia is mobilizing the company. They are preparing to move west.”
He blinked. That the company still existed was no surprise – Electrum had even tried to recruit him for it, after Hollow Shades. But he hadn’t realized it had been rebuilt enough to mobilize. That line of thought was quickly driven out by a more pressing question. “Why west?”
“There are reports inside our borders of… disruptions is perhaps the best term. Convoys vanishing for days, only to reappear without any awareness that time has passed. Changes in the local geography – rivers altering their courses, mountains moving across the land like glaciers. Canyons appearing overnight. Even the weather patterns have changed, and the pegasi don’t understand why.”
Huh. “And monsters?”
She shook her head. “None that anypony has seen. But ponies are nervous, Vermilion. They require some show of the kingdom’s might. So Celestia has tasked her general with leading an expedition west. They will camp in the shadow of Simoom and investigate these disturbances.”
Vermilion didn’t know much about Simoom. It was a pegasus city, and therefore impossible for him to ever visit. Like most earth ponies, he went about his life without ever thinking about the pegasus cities unless they did something impolite like block out the sun. And Simoom was out west, on the border of the plains and the deserts, where blocking out the sun was a favor. He wondered if Luna loved the city for that.
“This is inside Equestria.” A sliver of fear drew a line down his spine. “It’s not outside our borders anymore.”
Luna nodded. “You grasp my concern. Normally I would leave the matter of defending ponies inside our borders to your old company, but if this disturbance springs from the same source as Hollow Shades or Haselnacht, then we must become involved as well.”
“You want us to go with them?”
“I’ve discussed it with my sister.” Luna frowned down at the hall below. “For once, she and I are in accordance. You will accompany Brigadier Electrum and the company. So long as you remain inside Equestria’s borders, you will defer to his guidance. If events should take you outside Equestria, you will direct the crowns’ efforts.”
“You think we will have to? Go outside Equestria, you mean.”
“I do. Let me show you why.” Luna stood, and her shadow expanded like a bottle of spilled ink. It swept across the marble, around his hooves, up the rail, and soon only darkness remained.
When sight returned, they were in Luna’s office. Her chambers beneath the city, or wherever it was she hid this enormous cavern that stretched away in all directions. It was dim as ever, but his new eyes pierced the darkness, resolving shapes that had been only vague suggestions before. The acres of history extended for miles before being lost. Off to his right, an enormous gate, stolen from an ancient castle wall, stood bereft of any support. Thick oak beams enameled with red and gold waited for some giant to come along and open them once more. And here, he suspected, they would wait forever. Past them a spindly petrified tree draped its stony branches over a pile of shattered wagons and carriages and palanquins, all tossed together in a heap with no apparent rhyme or reason. Rotting banners hung from some of them – trophies, then, of some past conquest.
Luna led him through the extravagant mess, and in time they reached her secluded throne and the table with its map. It was already alight, Vermilion saw, and his cutie mark floated above a flickering spot on Equestria’s western border. His friends’ marks floated alongside – Zephyr’s cloud, Rose’s crystal, Cloudy’s flame and Quicklime’s spyglass. They danced around the light like moths circling a candle’s flame.
“You see Simoom,” Luna said. She gestured at a billowing mass of clouds floating above the plains, just inside the border. “But your destination lies just beyond it, at this little town here. Teawater.”
“I’ve never heard of that place.”
“There is no reason you should have.” Luna leaned down to inspect the map. Her breath stirred the floating images. “It is small enough, and modest. It has never aspired to be anything great. But the ponies there have long lived in peace with our kingdom. And it is close; from Teawater, one can see Equestria’s border.”
He swallowed. “If it’s the nightmare…”
“Then it is drawing ever closer to us. It may feel… empowered to tread upon our very doorstep.” Luna shook her head. “We cannot allow that. You will go with Electrum and his force to Simoom. He will defend the cloud city – you will take your friends to Teawater and discover what threatens our ponies. Uncover the darkness, and if the nightmare is there, drive it away. Destroy our enemies.”
The company again. He thought he’d left that life behind, but it seemed his service to Luna was driving him back. He wondered if Electrum would recognize them.
Probably not, he decided. Sometimes he barely recognized himself.