Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky
Part IV - Chapter 4: A Flurry Of Questions
* * *
The wind howled bitterly throughout the night, and combined with the compacted ice and her threadbare sleeping bag Starlit found it considerably difficult to get to sleep. Finally roused by a particularly nasty squall Starlit extracted herself from her sleeping bag and walked out onto the flat. Whether it was night or early morning she couldn't tell, but the moon still shine brightly regardless.
Illuminated in the darkness by the shining moonlight reflecting off of the fresh powder was Rainbow Dash, seated on a small rock and keeping a vigil out into the night.
"Shouldn't you be sleeping?" Starlit asked as she pulled her goggles down.
"Somepony's got to keep watch," Rainbow replied without turning, "and I was just about to wake up one of you fresh flakes."
"Another clever insult?" Starlit asked.
"Nah, its just what we call the new recruits. They're like fresh snow before it gets stepped on, compacted, and turned into hard ice."
Starlit made her way beside Rainbow and sat next to her rock, taking a moment to look up at the sky. In the endless white, the void pock-marked with stars above her was the most interesting thing to look at.
"It is a beautiful night out, if it is windy," Starlit commented.
"Sometimes the deadliest things are the most attractive," Rainbow answered back. "Back when I was still a raw recruit I saw a stallion slip on a patch of ice on his roof because he was too busy admiring the sun. It was the first bit of sun we'd gotten in months, and this idiot falls off his roof and snaps his front legs from the fall. He still walks with a limp."
"Was it worth it for the view?" Starlit's asked back.
Rainbow whipped her head around, a look of incredulity on her face as though Starlit had just asked her to pull her wings off.
"Of course it wasn't! He was laid up for months and had to be reassigned from the guard. Nothing would be worth that!"
"Did you ever ask him? It seems that it was important enough to him to have been on that roof in the first place."
Rainbow opened her mouth to retort, but stopped short. Slowly her brow furrowed as she clenched her jaw shut and stared back out at the expanse of white.
The two sat in awkward silence for a moment, Rainbow's gaze focused to the horizon while Starlit stared up at the sky. Her neck began to ache from the cold and the angle, but the stars and the moon were to beautiful not to look at.
"Is it true what you told us, back when we arrested you?" Rainbow asked, breaking the silence. "About there not being magic and pegasi not being able to fly?"
"As true as everything else I've told you," Starlit answered, flicking her eyes over to Rainbow Dash. If Starlit didn't know better she'd swear that her young companion was curious, but she didn't want to insult Rainbow's pride by bringing it up.
"Do you know if… Are there any cures for it?" Rainbow continued.
"Why do you care?" Starlit asked, turning her head to face her. "You've got your wings, isn't that enough for you?"
A flash of raw anger went across Rainbow Dash's face, bitter and indignant, before she wordlessly got off of the rock and glided back to the tents. If she could've, Starlit thought that Rainbow would've slammed the flap as she disappeared inside.
Starlit quickly moved to the top of the rock, thankful that Rainbow had warmed it slightly from sitting there. With a deep sigh and a twinge of guilt in the back of her head, she assumed her vigil. The stars would wait.
* * *
Starlit stayed out on watch until the sun rose. She found it oddly soothing to be on guard, and the hours passed without her really noticing it. Thankfully the weather had also seen fit to hold out, so that when the sun finally came up she could see its light twinkling out on the fresh powder from the previous day's blizzard.
What roused her from her post was the sound of Rainbow Dash barking orders to Sun as she broke down the camp. Sun, for his efforts, was doing well in getting his things together, although he'd certainly looked better. The cold wasn't doing him any favors, that was readily apparent.
Cautiously Starlit approached Rainbow Dash, who was in the process of stuffing her bedroll onto her pack and tying it down.
"Rainbow Dash, I'm sorry if I touched a nerv—"
"Shut up, pack your shit, and let's get moving, we're burning daylight," Rainbow interjected without turning around.
The suddenness of Rainbow's hostility hit like a slap to the face, and Starlit Sky found herself returning the insult in kind before she could stop herself.
"Well, excuse you, but I was just trying to apologize! Are you really going to be that much of a pissant about this?"
Before she could dodge or put up a ward Rainbow's back hoof slammed straight into Starlit's chest. Fortunately her cold weather gear took most of the impact but the suddenness still set her sprawling. As Starlit scrambled to right herself she found Rainbow looming over her, face contorted in barely contained rage.
"Pack. Your. Shit. And. Get. Moving."
Rainbow stalked off, grabbed her bag up in her teeth, and slung it across her back. She then set herself down atop the flat rock, waiting for Starlit and Sun.
"What crawled down her throat and died?" Sun asked as he helped Starlit to her hooves. "Are you alright?"
"I'll be fine," Starlit answered as she shook the snow off. "I think I touched a nerve when we were switching out for the watch last night, but she won't tell me what it's about."
"It's probably personal. Do you need any help packing up, 'cause I've gotten all of my things together."
"Thanks Sun," Starlit answered, just loud enough to where she thought Rainbow would hear it, "it's nice to know that some ponies can be helpful."
If Rainbow heard her, she didn't show it. Starlit and Sun working together got the rest of the camp broken down within five minutes, and as soon as they made their way to the rock Rainbow hopped down and started trudging, doing her best to keep well ahead of them.
The first hour or so was spent in abject silence, all the more silent because of the snow absorbing any ambient sound around them. Every so often they would encounter a snow hare or the odd arctic fox, but other than that nothing seemed to live this far north. The near-complete lack of any wildlife added to the desolate atmosphere even on a bright, blue-skied day.
"Hey, Starlit," Sun asked, falling back and trying not to poke her with the staff lain across his back, "I need to tell you something."
"Whenever my little filly would start conversations like that, it typically meant that I wouldn't be happy by the end of it," Starlit warned. "Are you sure I need to hear this now?"
"I'm pretty sure, since we're both trying to be more open with each other and all of that. Plus all of our mutual survival might depend on it."
With a deep sigh, Starlit gestured for Sun to continue. Honesty could be quite the hassle, she was finding.
"I had another conversation with Silence last night, and… she said she's going to be leaving me."
"What? Why?" Starlit's snapped back.
"She said that the magic dead zone we're walking into is going to sever the connection between us, and by proxy I'm going to lose access to her reincarnation magic."
"Well, this is just a fine how-do-you-do!" Starlit retorted. "First you have a brain-ghost that I can barely comprehend, and now that she's just starting to prove useful she has to say goodbye. Figures, with our luck."
"That's not all," Sun continued.
"Of course it isn't," Starlit groused.
"She gave me all the magic she could muster before she left, so I'll at least have that knocking around for an emergency, and she told me three things about the Empire for when we get there."
"First," Sun continued, lowering his voice just in case Rainbow was listening in, "there's creatures roaming the streets that she says are more feral than the thestrals we've encountered thus far. They don't even hold back from attacking each other, which may honestly work in our favor if we can get them to just focus on themselves rather than us."
A shiver unrelated to the cold ran down Starlit's spine at the thought.
"Second, Cadance herself is in a really bad way mentally, to the point that we may very well have to forcibly take her to Twilight to be healed. She may not even think we're real when we get to her."
"If we get to her," Starlit interjected.
"We'll get to her," Sun retorted.
"Given the first thing you told me about, I'd put our chances at roughly one-to-one-hundred, especially if you're going to be losing your ability to resurrect. What's the last thing Silence told you, and here's hoping that it's a way to bypass all the monsters and get to Cadance directly."
"She said that we should seek out the Astral Conservatory, whatever that is. She said that there's something you have that you have questions about, and you can find the answers for it there."
Starlit felt her heart drop into her hooves and about a mile beyond them, her mind immediately drawn to Spike's pilfered necklace in her saddlebags.
"Do you know what she meant by that?" Sun asked, only further adding to the mounting pile of guilt. Starlit felt her heart hammer away in her chest, a thin trickle of sweat beading up under her goggles.
"Not now," she quickly blurted out, "not until Rainbow Dash falls asleep tonight. You offer to take first watch tonight, I can explain then."
"O…kay," Sun said in confusion. "Are you sure?"
"Absolutely," Starlit replied. "Rainbow can't know about this."
With a quick shake of the head, presumably to clear his head, Sun nodded and moved a bit further up the line.
Starlit breathed out a heavy breath, both of relief and nerves. That Silence had known what she did was bad enough, but now she would have to contend with telling Sun that she had stolen Spike's necklace in a way that wouldn't make her seem like she was distrusting Twilight and potentially jeopardizing the mission.
"I swear when this is all done, I'm never going to mess around with magic ever again," Starlit groused to no one.
* * *
The scant few hours of daylight passed far faster than Sun would've cared for, and even worse was that a squall of wind was starting to kick up as the three of them were trying to build camp. The inclement weather made the already arduous process of assembling the tents on such uneven ground all the harder, and by the time it was done Sun's muscles all burned from the effort.
"Finally!" Rainbow exclaimed as she finally got her tent assembled and her pack off of her back. "Damn wind."
"I'll take first watch if you need me to," Sun said, "seeing as I didn't do a round last night."
"Much obliged. Just make sure that your friend does her fair share too, I had to take most of the night because she wouldn't wake up."
"Did you try to get her up?" Sun asked back.
Rainbow Dash didn't reply, simply shooting Sun a nasty glare before entering her tent and clasping the flaps shut. Assuming his post near a small pile of stones that he could place his back against, Sun's mind started to run with what Starlit could possibly have to say that she wouldn't want Rainbow Dash to hear.
"And what could she have said to Rainbow Dash that would set her off like this?" Sun thought as his mind went further down the path of recent events. "She's definitely not the friendliest pony that we've ever met, but whatever Starlit said to her must've cut pretty deep."
Like a bird in flight Sun's consciousness flitted from one topic to another as he stared out into the endless unknown before the crunch of snow under boots alerted him. Peeking up over the rocks that made up his post he saw Starlit approaching, holding her guidestick in the crook of one of her forelegs to provide some meager illumination.
In response Sun pulled up his guidestick and waved it back and forth, to which Starlit responded with a similar display as she made her way behind the rocks.
"Handy little thing, isn't it?" Sun quipped, looking up at the crystal glowing with a healthy red light atop his guidestick.
Starlit didn't return the attempt at pleasantries, instead plopping down onto the snow with a heavy thud. Though her face was hidden behind all of her head gear, the slump of her shoulders and refusal to meet Sun's gaze said all it needed to.
"Starlit, are you alright?" Sun asked. "Did Rainbow do something aga—"
"Sun, you have to promise me that what I'm about to show you stays between us," Starlit interjected. "Rainbow Dash can't know, Twilight Sparkle can't, nopony. Do you understand me?"
Sun was slightly taken aback by her insistence, but nodded a yes all the same. They'd gone through too much together by this point for him to doubt her judgement now.
With a short illumination of her horn Starlit flipped open the flap of her saddlebags and pulled out a small necklace. In the dim light provided by the guidestick it looked like her black stone, but as he brought the stick down and she moved it closer the reality of the situation became readily apparent; the stone was smooth, tied to a gold chain, and shone like water filtered through a rainbow.
"Starlit, you didn't…" Sun breathed out, barely able to find his voice.
Starlit didn't turn to face Sun, only letting her magic fade from around her stolen prize. Spike's necklace fell into the fresh snow between them, glittering like hardened blood in the light of the guidestick.
"I need answers, and I don't think Twilight will be able to give them to me," Starlit finally said, turning to face Sun. He could barely see her eyes from behind her goggles, but they were set in an expression of regret.
"Answers about what?" Sun followed up, scooping the necklace up in his hoof. "Starlit, we've been gone for days! Twilight has to have noticed this missing by now! What happened to us trusting her?!"
"This is all about trust, Sun," Starlit countered, "and I think there are things about Twilight that she doesn't want us to know."
Sun looked between the necklace and Starlit, mulling over her deception and her reasoning. As much as it pained him to do so, he had resolved to trust her, and trust her he would.
"Alright, explain yourself, but you had better make it good or so help me…"
"Do you remember the day we got back from New Selene? When Spike and I had made that vegetable stew?"
"Yes, and I still want that recipe," Sun answered, doing what he could to keep his mind from going into full-blown panic.
"Well, when Spike and I were making that stew, I thought I'd ask him a few questions about where he came from and how he got to know Twilight and the other Princesses. Shooting the breeze to make the work go faster, you know how it goes."
"Eventually," Starlit continued, "I asked him if Twilight is any different now compared to back when she was a ruler of Equestria and he just… didn't answer me."
"He didn't answer?" Sun asked. "And this is cause for concern why? Maybe Twilight never really changed all that much, or he's just forgotten over the years."
"It wasn't just that he didn't answer, it's specifically how he didn't answer," Starlit replied.
"That's an odd semantic distinction to make."
"It seemed like he wanted to tell me," Starlit continued, "but something was preventing him from doing so. I'd ask, he'd look like he was about to answer, and then he'd just freeze up for a few seconds and then go on chopping vegetables as if I'd never asked him anything. When I pressed him on it he acted like I hadn't said anything at all."
Sun didn't answer immediately, instead looking down at the necklace in his hooves and thinking about what he knew about Spike for a few moments. The gears of his brain cranked away, but nothing could come out of it but one of two options.
"Hmm… the way I see it," Sun finally said, "the problem here is that either he's so old that parts of his conscience just aren't working any more, or…"
"Or there are parts of Twilight's past that she doesn't want us knowing about, and she removed those periods of time from Spike when she preserved his mind in this necklace," Starlit finished.
Another period of silence hung between them, punctuated only by the howling of the wind past the rocks as the squall picked up.
"Starlit, whatever the reason for Spike's problem, you still shouldn't have taken this necklace," Sun said. "You could've just asked Twilight about it, maybe it's just a routine hiccup with the spell."
"But why on that specific piece of information?" Starlit countered. "I'm not stupid, Sun, and this problem occurring when I asked that specific question in relation to our mysterious benefactor is just too convenient to be coincidence."
"But she's our benefactor," Sun shot back. "She's trying to fix the world and keep Equestria from falling apart at the seams, what does it matter what she used to be like?"
"Because she's one of the ponies responsible for the world being on the brink of collapse in the first place! Or did you forget that she was one of the root causes of that war even happening?"
"And she's trying to make it right!" Sun countered.
"And what better way to make yourself seem like the injured party in this whole mess than to get rid of any source that runs contrary to the narrative you're trying to create?" Starlit answered back.
Sun made to protest, but the words caught in his throat as the gears in his brain started to turn again. Slowly he let the necklace fall from around his hoof, again landing with a soft thud in the snow.
"Whatever is going on here, Spike knows it," Starlit continued, "and we need to know what he knows to make a judgement call. That is why I swiped his necklace, and that is why I need your help both in trying to fix Spike and getting me into the Empire so we can both get some answers."
"Starlit, this feels wrong; we're going behind Twilight's back, and when she finds out—"
"If she finds out," Starlit interjected.
"When she finds out," Sun replied, "and she will find out because she has enough power to probably vaporize us if we don't tell her the truth, she's going to need an explanation about why we didn't trust her enough to ask her."
Sun placed a hoof onto Starlit's shoulder, letting the weight really sink into her to try and get his point across.
"Are you prepared to give her that explanation?"
Starlit placed her hoof atop Sun's, the pair of them staring into each other's goggles and at the eyes behind them. They were sparring with nothing more than eyes and hooves, and Sun could feel that they were evenly matched.
"I will be, once we get our answers in the Empire," Starlit answered. "For now I'll keep the necklace in my bags, at least through the dead zone. I put some of my new skill at warding to good use and placed a buffer around them that should protect Spike from the field of anti-magic that we'll be walking into."
"At least you thought that far ahead," Sun ruefully replied, pulling his hoof back and taking up his guidestick. "Go get some sleep, I'll get you up in a few hours. I need time to process all of this."
With a resolute nod Starlit put the necklace back into her bags, which he now noticed had small magic runes embossed into the leather. As the flap clasped shut they glowed with a dim blue light, activating the magic that Starlit had put into them.
As Starlit trudged back through the snow Sun was left alone with his thoughts. He now wished more than ever that Silence were still with him, if only so he could have a partner to bounce his worries off of.
* * *