//------------------------------// // Chapter 18: Penumbra // Story: Luna is a Harsh Mistress // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Penumbra’s existence was a storm. Even after her pact with Nightmare, even after all they had exchanged together, usually she was left alone. That was the way of things—Nightmare invested power in her, and that power made her a useful servant. But Nightmare’s grasp was itself a limited thing. When she wasn’t the right tool for the job, she was left to her own devices. This was true more often than not, and so the pact often felt like a worthwhile exchange. It’s what she would have told herself to sleep at night, if she needed to sleep. When Nightmare focused on her—things were different. Penumbra’s every thought faded from view of the encroaching storm, until only a single chain of actions was possible. Whatever the Nightmare wanted would bring her bliss beyond imagination, and every other decision was a step alone into the darkness, deepening her confusion until further steps were impossible. She could still feel the world around her as Aminon fought against General Gale, though the color was long gone and none of the images she saw brought any emotional weight with them. They were fighting? Curious and strange. Weren’t they on the same side? A dagger against her heart, that seemed interesting. Why was she holding it? She didn’t really want to put it anywhere else. Gale was much better at this than Aminon ever had been. The Voidseer spent his days in the frayed boundary between worlds, not fighting knee-deep in blood. Yet he had the clarity—or Nightmare did—to stick to his advantages. Why fight at all when he could just freeze Gale to death? It’s not fair! He saved this army so many times! We wouldn’t be here without him. They might all die with him. Are we really supposed to retake Equestria without an army? No, argued a tiny voice, feeble in her mind. One hoof twitched, trying to shove the knife away. But she still didn’t move. She didn’t move as Aminon finally noticed her, turning away from the limp, freezing form of Gale. He doesn’t have long. He might be dead already, or he will be soon. He stopped above her, looking down with disdain. He opened his mouth to gloat, but only gurgling emerged from within. The fluid seeping from his throat seemed frozen over now, sealing a wound that never could’ve killed him. There would be no pain, of course. The dead didn’t feel pain. Penumbra watched a pony she loved freezing to death, and the agony tore her apart. For the first time since she’d sworn to Nightmare, there was something worse than the storm. Could she really stand here until he died? Could she damn the army? Penumbra focused on Iron Quill, a pony who wasn’t real. Yet for all his identity was a lie, even the sight of him brought stability. The storm quieted in her mind, her hooves seemed more firmly planted on the lunar soil. Choose, she thought, taking the first cautious step out into the storm. Winds raged and buffeted against her mind, and it was nearly impossible to remember what she was doing, even what she wanted. She was going somewhere… no, she believed in something. “I remember when this cave was near to freezing. You could’ve obeyed the Nightmare and let us die—but you volunteered to go up to the surface. You were up there for hours. For that matter, I never ordered you to protect me.” The thought came in Quill’s voice, so clearly that she imagined he must be standing behind her. Except he wasn’t, he was dying on the ground. Because of her. Aminon turned slightly to one side, out from between them. Even unable to speak, the message was obvious. She was meant to watch the thing she loved die. Then she would learn if Nightmare valued her talents enough to welcome her back into its service. No. She focused on Gale’s face, coated with a thin patina of ice. Her limbs shook beneath her as she pushed herself into a standing position, the knife pressing up against the lunar stone. “I… I…” Aminon’s eyes widened. He moved swiftly in front of her, inches from her face. His mouth moved, but only throaty rasps emerged. He couldn’t speak. He can’t order me. The Voice of Nightmare could’ve swept in at any moment to erase whatever shred of individuality she might’ve gathered, except… with Quill there, it didn’t.  I won’t let you take this away from me. Penumbra dragged herself forward through that storm. It didn’t matter that her legs shook under the effort, it didn’t matter that she could barely string her thoughts together. Penumbra stood against Nightmare’s pressure. It was muscle memory after that. She’d fought so long—as long as Gale, in her own way. She didn’t need to think to fight. She lunged at Aminon, slashing her dark dagger deep into his chest, leg, thigh, neck. She kicked out at his spine, with a blow that would cripple his motion and end the fight before it started. They both vanished in a hiss of shadow. Suddenly they were on the surface of the moon, in the darkness of some unknown crater. Penumbra didn’t think of it as a victory that would take Aminon away from the tunnel Iron Quill had been standing in. She didn’t think of anything, because the Nightmare’s voice roared in her mind. Distance from the anomaly. Cease. But Penumbra could fight through a storm. Her eyes grew focused on her single target, the pony in front of her. He teleported again, trying to fling her away with the puff of energy. This time they floated in the darkness somewhere, somewhere so dark that she could only vaguely sense the ground beneath her.  Penumbra hung on anyway, tearing open Aminon’s rotten guts with another slash of her blade. She couldn’t talk out there in the void, but that would’ve taken thought. Only one thing mattered to her now. Another wave of shadow, and they were back on the ground, with Aminon kicking and struggling feebly against her. But even if the wounds couldn’t kill him directly, the body was still a machine. A machine that had to be physically connected to keep working. Finally they flashed again. They landed, not with a crash, but a light thump, right at the stone throne of Nightmare Moon. She reclined there eating a mushroom, something far smaller than a hoof.  Penumbra’s knife settled against Aminon’s throat. Finally she’d damaged him enough that she could get in close. Iron Quill had been right about beheading dangerous enemies. She froze, her grip suddenly faltering. Aminon was so badly damaged now that he couldn’t throw her off, even so. “Curious,” Nightmare Moon said, staring down at them both. “The Lord Commander’s bodyguard is murdering my Voidseer. Why?” No blast of magic, no pounding hooves to beat her to a pulp and rescue her advisor. The shock was so overwhelming that it didn’t just snap Penumbra free of what she was doing, but apparently Nightmare as well. The pressure on her mind was suddenly gone, replaced with astonishment.  “Tried to kill Quill,” she muttered. “Maybe already has. Froze him.” Penumbra watched her face, and in that moment she had some idea of why the pressure on her mind had lifted. All of Nightmare’s attention was focused on this alicorn. Even without any magic to do so, she could hear the demands. Nightmare Moon opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t manage even a single word. Then she nodded once, her own limbs shaking with the effort.  Penumbra no longer had anything holding her back. With the Nightmare’s focus on her gone, she turned back to Aminon. She met his eyes one final time, seeing the horror on his ruined face. Then she slashed, slicing all the way through his neck with her shadowy blade. Aminon’s head tumbled, and his body went limp. Iron Quill lived in a world of agony. A world where time became a meaningless blur, where every moment of pain came with a dozen more. Where the frozen core of his universe flaked away in slabs of ruined flesh that tore through organs and memories and left him fractured. The cold world existed mostly in gray blurs, with occasional patches of light lifting from the darkness only to fall back to the foam once again.  He was barely even aware of his own body. Whenever he did feel anything, it was always a different flavor of pain. Like the worst burns, it didn’t seem like it would ever end. Just let me go back to my family. They’re waiting for me, he thought. But no one answered. There was no Elysian Field waiting for him, only more pain. Sometimes it hurt more than others, with long stretches of his body seemingly catching on fire. For a few moments he might feel a leg, or part of his wing. But then the pain would grow too intense, and he would be swallowed. Until one day, he realized he could see. He was in his bedroom, with something metal resting beside him. Warmth radiated from it, passing through his bed and filling the whole space with a comfortable glow. Iron Quill blinked, and found his vision seemed strangely flat. He couldn’t quite focus on the blanket in front of him, and his other eye… nothing. Quill tried to move, and pain assaulted him from legs, chest, back.  But he managed to roll from his belly onto his back, screaming with the agony of it. A pony towered over him, wearing dark blue robe trimmed in silver thread. She slumped into a nearby chair, a little steam rising from her horn. There was a covered tray beside her, though Quill couldn’t see what was on it. His vision wasn’t good enough anymore. “I...” His voice sounded like a cat falling into a rock-crusher. “I am…” “Alive,” Nightmare Moon finished, her voice strained. She sounded weary, as weary as he felt. More, even. “You cannot begin to comprehend the investment in keeping you that way.” He tried to look down, though with the sheets in the way he could only get an imperfect view. There were bandages almost everywhere he looked, including around his face. They looked freshly changed, and a bin on the far side of the room suggested they were changed often. A lot of cloth to waste on one old bat. “I… can’t,” he croaked. He tried to sit up, failed, and settled for meeting her eyes. “Forgive me.” She rolled her eyes. “Forgive you for what, Iron Quill? If I wanted you dead, it would’ve been a simple task. Simply let entropy do its work. I’m afraid…” She looked away. Was that shame on her face? “My sister could repair you. But that kind of magic requires training I never received. Keeping you alive long enough to heal was the best I could give you.” “Is there a mirror in here?” he asked. The pain was so intense that Quill couldn’t be bothered to pretend to groveling respect. “I want to see.” She summoned one in her magic, holding It up for him. From the look of the intricately-worked blue metal, it was probably one of Luna’s, still with them despite everything. Iron Quill was barely alive. He soon saw the source of the pain in his back—one of his wings was missing, and bandages were still thick against his coat there. His left foreleg was just a stump now too, extending not quite halfway to the knee. One of his eyes was covered in bandages, and he could tell from the feeling alone that there was nothing under there anymore. Even his left ear was missing—the only thing on that side of his body that had survived was his back leg, and even that was wrapped with bandages and ached constantly. “I’m a… cripple,” he whispered, finally looking away. “Princess, I don’t…” It hurt too much to talk. His throat was still raw. “I can’t be… use to you… like this.” Nightmare Moon nodded gravely. “I’m afraid you’re right, Iron Quill. But with Aminon dead, and my Voidseekers fled… I am lost.” She stared off at the wall, her eyes glazed over. That explained her change in wardrobe, and how dull her mane looked.  But then she brightened, pulling away the cloth from the nearby tray and levitating over a little box. It was a tiny loaf of dark bread, round and scored on top. She tore it in half with her magic, and steam rose from inside. “Try it.” He couldn’t take more than a tiny bite before the effort was too much. He obeyed anyway—there was nothing left to Iron Quill anymore but obedience. It was a hearty potato bread, with just a hint of sour. Like something he might’ve eaten in Cloudsdale, long ago. “Do you know what this is?” “Last meal?” he suggested. “You wanted to watch the army die with… someone familiar.” She laughed. “I’m not that desperate. No Lord Commander, this is the first harvest.” She watched him for a few more seconds, then took a bite herself. “My cook never fails to impress. When I have trampled the oppressors under my hooves, I’ll put Pestle’s statue next to yours. How much taller depends on your next few years.” It’s really been that long? If this was really a harvest, then it meant whole moons had passed. Moons with no voidseekers, with his own life burning away in a corner bed. Resources he didn’t even want to think about spent to keep just one pony alive. He wept—from one eye, anyway. It burned, just like everything else. “I don’t know… what I can do for you, Princess. I can’t… fly like this. Never again.” Admitting it was worse than any frostbite he might’ve suffered. “You won’t,” she agreed. “I’m afraid there is nothing more I can do for you there. The Lord Commander does not need to fly to lead this army.” “But I need to walk,” he said, twitching his stump of a leg. “The butcher could fit me for a… a peg, but… I’m already an old stallion, Princess. I don’t know why you kept me alive this long, but you shouldn’t keep at it.” “I will not,” she said. She lifted something black from the bottom section of the tray, settling it on the bed beside him so he could get a good look. It had the hard look of metal, yet somehow it wasn’t. And the mechanism, an intricate, interlocking clip. There was only one place such incredible things could come from.  “You saved this camp,” Nightmare Moon said. “You saved Moonrise. But I am not yet finished extracting my due. You traded me a life, Quill. I will not waste what I paid handsomely to acquire.” She clicked the box open, holding it so he could see. Inside was… something strange. It looked like a severed leg, except that it was half-finished, with a skeletal sleeve at the top and a strange metal hoof on the bottom. A junction of mechanical parts of incredible complexity held the top and bottom halves together. “This was the smallest prosthetic I could find. It will require… enormous training to use. But you will walk again, and canter, and gallop, if you desire.” “Nopony… really gallops anymore, Princess,” he admitted. “We’re too light. Can’t stay on the ground…” She chuckled. “Moonrise will not lose its savior yet,” she said. “I do not know who shared the information, but… everypony knows what Aminon tried to do. They know you saved their lives. I told them the moon chose you to endure, just like it chose Moonrise to endure. You will not make me a liar.” She left. That was enough excitement for Iron Quill, for some time to come. He slept, though he never again returned to that strange haze of not-quite-living death. He slept a great deal, waking only for short periods. Just long enough to be conscious of the embarrassment of being cared for as a bedridden invalid.  It wasn’t just one or two ponies in his camp who came to care for him—there were probably over a dozen different faces. Even Cozen’s unicorn healers from outside of camp, with their heretical sun-worship.  He couldn’t obey all of his princess’s commands, but he could at least survive. But harder to see than the face of any visitor was Penumbra. He never heard her come in—she didn’t need to use the door. She didn’t care if he was bundled up against the lunar night, or lying in frustration beside the strange mechanical device that Luna had called a “prosthetic.” She could enter, and watch, and leave. All the while, he never had the heart to say a word. Long she’d joked about how he was ugly already—but now half his body was covered with scars, or outright missing.  Eventually though, he’d grown strong enough that he could move on his own, even if it was just in bed. He lifted a wing as she turned to go, clearing his throat. “Penumbra. I know you’re here.” Something moved in the gloom, pushing the cart of medical supplies to one side. The glowstone had run down to a faint red on the other side of the room, but for a bat that was more than enough to see her outline. Which was good, because outlines were just about the only thing that Quill could see anymore. Outlines and color. But he could still hear, even if one ear wasn’t nearly as sensitive as the other anymore. All those senses working together were enough, so far.  “I’m here,” she muttered. “You can always tell.” “I must be hideous,” he said. “Not just old anymore.” “Why would I care about that?” Suddenly she was beside his bed, so suddenly that she must’ve teleported there. “Quill, I’m completely dead. For a while we thought you might be too, but… you pulled through. I don’t care if you have to use a…” She bent down, lifting the strange “prosthetic” from the low table beside the bed. She turned it over in her hoof, frowning at it. “And before you say anything, the other ponies don’t either. Almost dying to save us from Aminon…” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “They think you killed him. Nopony will ever threaten your rule again after that, old stallion like you doing something like that.” “I didn’t kill him,” he said, damaged leg shifting uneasily beneath him. “I barely even hit him. He was no Permafrost. He wouldn’t let me fight him fairly.” “They don’t know that,” she whispered back, grinning mischievously. “I’m not going to tell them, are you?” There was a long silence. Finally Quill straightened, gesturing at the leg. “Help me with that. I’ve been putting this off long enough. If I’m ever going to get out of this bedroom, I need to learn.”  She extended the apparatus towards him, and it responded as his leg got close, closing firm pads around him and self-adjusting with intricate springs and reciprocating tension. It was right on the edge of pain, but spread so evenly that it didn’t hurt. He twisted his leg, and the hoof moved with it, anticipating what he wanted.  “I took a detailed look at that for you, Lord Commander,” Cozen called, standing in the doorway. He wouldn’t have noticed her arrive at all, except that she lit her horn with her. It was becoming polite practice to produce as much light as they could, for the benefit of earth ponies and pegasi all across the city.  Penumbra hadn’t puffed away. Her wraps hung off the side of her face, leaving it exposed from her conversation with Quill. Cozen froze, meeting her eyes with horror. “I… I’m sorry, I had—” She glanced over her shoulder, like she might be about to run. “Don’t,” Penumbra said, waving a covered wing. “The Voidseekers are over, if you didn’t notice. Our leader betrayed Moonrise, and his followers all fled. I’ll probably keep acting the way I always did… but out of habit, not because I think there’s a religious reason. The anonymity is part of the prestige, we could be anypony. Also… we don’t heal right, so it covers up how horrible some of my brothers and sisters can look.” “You don’t look horrible,” Quill said, without thinking. “No one ever beat me,” she said. “You have to lose to get bucked up.” Cozen took another little step towards the doorway. “I don’t mean to disturb either of you,” she said again. “I’ll just… Be careful with that leg. I think it might be the most advanced spellcraft in the world. As if they weren’t already making our artifice look foolish, their magic is the same way.” “I can… almost feel it,” he muttered, reaching down towards the ground. He settled the hoof there, and felt as secure in his footing as he ever would’ve. True, there wasn’t the same richness of sensitivity his frog had. He wouldn’t be doing any fine-motor manipulating with it.  “Before you go, Cozen… do you know if we have anypony in Moonrise who could make me a seeing glass? My eyes—eye—doesn’t work right. I need to be able to read my ledgers.” She nodded. “A few. No reason we couldn’t… heat up the old workshop. They wouldn’t even charge you, I’m sure. No bits for the Dawnbringer, they’d never hear of it.” She rolled her eyes. “You best not let it go to your head, Lord Commander. It’s hard enough to grow accustomed to the titles you already have.” I don’t deserve it. Nightmare Moon brought the dawn, and Penumbra must’ve killed Aminon. I didn’t do anything. That wasn’t quite true, but it felt better to repeat to himself. “Oh, one more thing. Sylvan refuses to go forward with our wedding until you can perform the ceremony. If you get back on your hooves enough for it before night comes, I’ll fix your eyeglass for the rest of time.” She left, snapping the door shut behind her. He almost wept. So much had changed. He’d been out for almost two moons, he knew. But Moonrise had survived. Clinging to his commands, and honoring the name of the Dawnbringer, it had survived. Now we just have to keep living. How many nightmares can the moon have left?