//------------------------------// // Chapter 29: Clarity of Mind // Story: Luna is a Harsh Mistress // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Nightmare Moon did not take them to the stocks for public punishment—or do anything else to hurt them, for that matter. As the icy darkness of teleportation faded from around her, the princess wasn’t even there.  She also hadn’t sent them to a secret lab, but right before her own throne, in the ritual chamber where those creatures who sought to honor the princess would visit. There were dozens of them here now, bowing in silent supplication to her shrine. At least they had been, until the two of them appeared in a roar of air and bits of shattering ice. Some creatures screamed, and others just pointed. Faith didn’t need to make any noise of her own to see with such a commotion. “Explain yourselves,” demanded a voice. The oracle, one of Faith’s least favorite ponies. “Unicorn, explain why you’ve disrespected the princess’s sacred shrine! The two of you are too young for worship here.” Already the ponies were beginning to surround them.  Faith spun, glaring around at the pious worshipers. “We were sent,” Arclight said. “The princess herself returned us here, after a sacred mission. I don’t think she’d like it if you interfered with us.” This caught the oracle by surprise. He muttered something rude, which he probably hadn’t expected them to hear. Of course it would be about her, and how unlikely he thought that someone as deformed as her would serve any use to the princess. But Arclight’s conviction wasn’t pretended, and the results were immediate. Ponies backed away, bowing and scraping and muttering little prayers to the princess as they cleared the way around them. “Where?” the oracle demanded. “Why would the princess send a deformed foal and an unlearned sorcerer child to do what her loyal servants could do better?” “Ask her,” Faith said flatly, before Arclight could speak. After surviving Nightmare Moon’s wrath, she wasn’t much afraid of jerks like this anymore. Not that she’d ever been afraid. Creatures might disrespect her, but they wouldn’t hurt the child of Iron Quill. Her mother was the second most dangerous creature on the moon. “We were obedient to her word. We’ve been instructed to return home.” She strode forward, right at where the oracle had previously been blocking the way. He moved at the last moment, making another disapproving sound in the back of his throat. “We will speak to her,” he said. “It isn’t like our princess, steward of the moon and all upon it, holy and beautiful though she is, to choose such weak servants.” Faith didn’t stick around to listen to him anymore. Maybe the princess would have awkward questions to answer—but she had sent them here, so that was her problem. They made it out into the familiar halls of Moonrise, crossing into one of the tunnels between the royal building and the housing block. They walked together in silence, with Faith using Arclight’s hoofsteps to guide her way through an otherwise unfamiliar section of the city. It wasn’t often she made trips like this. Occasionally they passed open doorways, into rooms filled with celebrating ponies. They’d been given an entire lunar day to celebrate their coming of age, before their lives of service would resume. They’d spent several of those days now, sacrificed to her vain mission.  “I can’t…” she began, as soon as they reached a stairwell with nopony else inside it. “I can’t thank you enough for doing that for me, Arclight. You didn’t have to do it. Without you…” “Without you,” he corrected, resting a hoof on her shoulder. “Moonrise would be a different place. Stars above, Faith. You told the princess what to do.” His voice was distant, awed. “I never thought… I’ve never seen a creature as brave as you. It might’ve been the most incredible thing that’s ever been done.” She turned her head slightly to the side. “Whenever my father thought I wasn’t listening, I would hear him talking about Moonrise’s problems. He had to carry all of them, I’m not sure if you know that. Everything that went wrong in the city was his fault. Lots of things he could fix, but… sometimes there was no way to fix it. He would talk to my mom about it sometimes, and they’d argue about something he was supposed to do. He never did it, whatever it was.” “It’s up to us to continue their work,” Arclight said, his voice solemn. “That’s always how this is. We inherit the world the last generation left for us. We have to make the city great.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, though she still couldn’t hear anypony in the stairwell with them. With her hearing as strong as it was and the stairwells always so enclosed, she was fairly certain of her assessment. They were alone. “It’s the only city we’ll ever get,” Arclight continued. “So fixing whatever those problems are… What are they, anyway? I’ve never heard my parents talk about things nopony could fix. They’re always… busy coming up with some new idea.” “Later,” she said. “Maybe we’ll come up with things… but you more than me. I’m more of an explorer than a thinker. And I guess that’s the way things will be now. Leading trips to Vanaheimr, for ponies to learn things. We’ll learn all the secrets, bury all the dead.” She made to leave, but Arclight stopped her, yanking on her foreleg. “Faith, what… what happened to you up there? Why did you go into the light?” “Because it was friendly,” she answered, settling down beside him. “I’m not sure how much you heard when the princess and I were talking. Polestar is a…” Without knowing the answer, she settled on the princess’s own word. “A machine the Alicorns left. It’s guarding something, like a… the biggest sword ever made. Something more powerful than anypony.” More powerful than the princess. It protected me when she wanted to kill me. “When I touched it, it showed me things. Shapes, colors… I saw. I couldn’t even describe it before, but now… now I know what it’s like for normal ponies.” Her expression darkened, and she ground one hoof against the stone floor. “I asked it to fix my eyes, and it didn’t. The Polestar is the reason I’m blind. It… I don’t know how, really. But I think it’s using me to watch the city. Everypony knew I was weird somehow… my mom’s not alive, I shouldn’t be possible. This must be how it happened. And the price I pay for being born is… blindness.” “I don’t know if it makes a difference,” Arclight said, touching her shoulder again briefly. “But it seems like what a coltfriend should say. I don’t like it when ponies say that you’re deformed. I think you’re pretty, and it… it doesn’t bother me that you can’t see.” And she couldn’t, but she didn’t need to see to hear the embarrassment in his face, to smell his embarrassment thick on the air.  And for once, she returned it. “You’re right,” she said, before she could get too afraid to do anything. She rested her head up against his chest, if only for a few seconds. “It is what a coltfriend should say.” They stayed like that for a good long while, until she heard a pony coming down the stairs towards them, and they hurried along as though they’d never been there in the first place. Faith didn’t spend much longer with Arclight though, not today. They were both exhausted from their trip, and the confrontation with the princess. He needed to sleep, and she could use a little time alone herself. Faith headed to her own home, not wanting Cozen or Sylvan to lecture her along with Arclight about the trip. She’d get that next time she went there—it would be only fair that she took the blame from them too. Just not right now. She was so tired from the trip, so completely overwhelmed that she didn’t notice there was already a pony inside until she shut the door, and realized she could see her mother standing in the next room. She waited just inside, one hoof tapping impatiently. “Why don’t you come in, Faithful Gale? I’ve been missing you.” She shrugged out of her saddlebags, hanging them from a hook in the hall and making her way into the kitchen. She was probably trailing surface-dust with every step, and smelling awful from her trek, but she didn’t much care. Her mom probably couldn’t even smell. “I don’t know why you would,” she said. “You’re never here anyway. Why do you care?” Penumbra tensed reflexively as she said it, though she made no attempt to hide it. Thinking she was with a pony who couldn’t see her probably made it feel like she didn’t have to worry about that. But Faith watched her as she made her way in, into the kitchen where she was already waiting at the table. There was no food—Penumbra never made food for her, the way Arclight’s parents took care of him. She just didn’t have the instincts for much mothering. “I know what you did,” Penumbra said. “I can’t imagine anything as monumentally stupid as intruding on Nightmare Moon’s sacred city. She’s more possessive of the dead there than she is of the living in Moonrise.” Faith hopped up into one of the chairs, imitating a glare back at her mother. “I knew that might happen. Knew it might… go badly. But I didn’t care. Either I would serve Moonrise and be a Dustwalker, or… we’d die. I didn’t know which it would be.” “Brave,” Penumbra said. “Incredibly stupid, but… committed. There’s something admirable about that, I suppose. At least I haven’t spawned a coward. Just a fool who doesn’t know her limits.” She ground her teeth together, and wanted to scream at her right there. But she wasn’t going to act like a foal anymore. She’d already proven herself today. If she could survive the princess, she could live through anything. “I don’t care about the limits other ponies say I have. I did it. I went to the Polestar and came back. Other things happened that the… that the princess forbid me to talk about. But the important thing is that Moonrise is gonna change. Nightmare Moon is going to let me lead trips there. I’m not sure when… probably she’ll want me to be a little older. But soon.” “What?” Penumbra twitched in her seat, momentarily overcome. Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. “You’re saying… no. Nightmare Moon won’t even let ponies talk to her about it! Even Iron… even he couldn’t talk to her about it without her getting… enraged, irrational. She refused to see what it could mean for Moonrise. We all have our… sentimentality. And you stepped all over it.” Faith shrugged her wings. She couldn’t do more—she’d been commanded not to speak of their conversation. “You can ask the princess if you want. But I did it, Mom. Maybe I won’t be a Dustwalker… but I’m going to be something just as important. I’m going to help fix the problems with Moonrise that nopony can fix. I’m going to be more than just a mare who makes an heir, then dies. I’ll matter.” “That’s…” Penumbra sniffed, expression impossible to read. But little things like emotions were always hard to judge. She’d learned to watch her mother’s tail and ears for subtle signs—she was still a bat, even if she was dead. But she couldn’t find any this time. “I wish you hadn’t gone. You should’ve talked to me first. I could’ve warned you.” “I tried,” she said quietly. “And you just said what everypony always says. I should know my place. Why should I want to be a Dustwalker? My place is wherever I bucking choose to go. With Arclight, if I choose. Or maybe out there helping Moonrise. Being blind isn’t going to stop me.” Penumbra vanished from across the room in a brief surge of greater darkness. It wasn’t a teleport the way Arclight could do—there was more a lack of magic around her than a surge of power as he used. But instead of running away, Penumbra was suddenly beside her. She was almost blinded for a moment by her, stumbling back. She wasn’t disgusted by her, or afraid as some other ponies were. But Penumbra had spent so little time with her—done so little actual mothering, that any contact between them was unnatural.  “Cinereous Gale would’ve been proud of you,” she said. “He… cared about Moonrise to the end. Even when it hurt him, he… was always looking out for us. You’re a lot like him.” That did it. Faith started to sniff and cry all over again, as she’d never done for Nightmare Moon. Her mother might be strange and distant, but her dad was something else. He was why she wanted to help Moonrise in the first place. “It’s not fair,” she squeaked. “Everypony else still has their parents. But Iron Quill… he was the First Commander. He did more than anypony, and he’s gone.” “I know,” Penumbra whispered, wrapping one wing around her shoulder. She felt cold and numb, the way she always did. But there was no stench of decay. More like she’d perpetually died only a few minutes ago, forever. “When we just met… I tried to get him to take Nightmare’s gifts. He could have, so many times… and then we’d both still have him. But he never did. He didn’t want Moonrise to be led by… a nightmare. He wanted everypony around him to be better. It worked. I am better, thanks to him. And the Princess is too.” For once, Faith didn’t push her away. “Me too,” she said. “It’s still not fair.” “Nothing is.” Penumbra held on a few moments more, then broke away. “I can tell you’re exhausted, sweetie. I’ll let you get some sleep. But tomorrow, I want to hear about it. You’re gonna tell me everything. And when ponies start going over there… I’m coming with you.” “Something good, I hope,” Chain Mail said, his voice more than a little impatient. “I can’t keep giving you troops if you aren’t returning with useful information.”  Faith flared her wings out around her, though she didn’t actually start pacing in the Lord Commander’s office. She had developed a little restraint over the years. “If you’re asking if I discovered the ancient secrets of Alicorn weapons—no, I still haven’t found that. But it doesn’t matter, Lord Mail. What Moonrise is learning… it’s bigger than that.” Chain Mail was a short and squat pony, though to be fair all the old Equestrians looked like that to moonborns. As he aged he’d only grown more solidly built, like one of the ancient stones they excavated to make way for new living quarters. His accent would always sound strange to her, just like his smell. But he was the Lord Commander, which meant that he was the most important pony in her whole world. “Nothing is bigger than our sacred revenge,” he said. “Nightmare Moon commands—” “Commands that our army always stand in readiness to return,” she interrupted, striding right up to the desk and glaring down at him across it. She spoke low and urgent, only for his ears. “Chain Mail, you know the truth as well as I do. Nightmare Moon isn’t taking us home in our lifetimes. Insisting that everything be useful in war is stupid. Our great great grandfoals can worry about that, maybe.” Chain Mail didn’t move in his seat, didn’t so much as shift his weight. But his scent grew a little sharper for a moment—frustration with her, she guessed. He wouldn’t be the only pony to be a little annoyed. “Faithful. I’m as patient with you as I can be. The princess… insists that what you do must be allowed to continue. But you’re shortsighted. There’s a reason you haven’t taken your father’s seat, and it isn’t your eyes.” She tensed at that, glaring in his direction. She’d grown quite good at pretending to glare, at least if ponies’ reactions were any guide. Arclight told her that her cloudy blank eyes made it seem especially creepy when she got it right. “Yeah?” “Yes,” he said. “You lack foresight.” He rose from his seat, gesturing with a wing. “Walk with me.” She did, though it seemed unlikely she would be learning anything worthwhile. But if she was to have any chance of getting the marepower she needed for this next excavation, she needed more than Silver Needle’s tacit endorsement. She needed the Lord Commander’s signature on her requisition form. They walked out onto the balcony. Chain Mail didn’t use her father’s old office—his was a spartan affair overlooking the parade-ground. As soon as they stepped outside, she could hear the chaotic echoes of ponies down there. Metal smacking against metal, ponies grunting and heaving under the effort of strenuous exercise. Their numbers mixed together with the cave’s vaulted ceiling and the rest of Moonrise mixing in many other voices, but she knew how many soldiers they had. Hundreds, even today. “If you had your way, would you have every one of these stallions abandon their posts? Cease their training?”  She didn’t want to answer—it was a trap, it had to be. But he would see her expression and infer it anyway, so there wasn’t much to lose. “Not all. We need peacekeepers.” “Okay, peacekeepers. So… let’s say, two hundred good mares and stallions. Send the rest to form bricks, and cast metal, and blow glass.” “And farm,” she supplied. “And study. Studying’s important.” “And that’s why you can’t be Lord Commander,” he said. “I know you cannot see them—but what you hear down there, that’s esprit de corps. That’s tradition, and history. The young ponies who grow in Moonrise are being taught the craft by ponies who fought. They will perpetuate the tradition, and so will their children, and their children… for as many generations as it takes to escape this place and have our revenge on the Sun Tyrant.” “I don’t understand,” she said. Not argumentatively, she knew how not to provoke him. She spoke as honestly as she could. “Why not wait until we can go back, then raise an army?” “Because then it’s too late,” he said. “We need ponies who spend their lives preparing for it. We don’t know the time or the hour of our return to Equestria. So every generation has to be prepared to meet it. If that honored tradition is ever broken, it cannot be replaced. We’ll be fighting the Tyrant’s experienced army with greenhorns, and we’ll lose to her all over again.” She grumbled, folding her wings tightly against her side. “I understand, Lord Commander. I didn’t mean to actually suggest that we should… I was only answering your question.” “I know,” he said. “But you must come to trust me. Iron Quill did. He ordered me to be ready for our return. I intend to honor his commands.” That was her opening. Chain Mail still felt loyalty to the First Commander. And she was his only child. “My father gave me instructions too, Chain Mail. I’ve done what he wants… but I need more marepower. It takes many hooves to do the excavation. Please, let me have your unicorn teams.” He spun around, and from his silence, she guessed he was looking her over. “What are you searching for this time?” “Nitrogen,” she said. “It’s… look, it’s the reason that our crops have been suffering so much. We learned from… Plants need it, okay? We can’t make it, that just isn’t possible. But plants and bodies have it. We’re going to build a fertilizer factory, and start recycling their old gardens. The great Alicorns left us lots to work with. When I’m done, I’ll know that Iron Quill’s grandson will always have enough food.” Maybe it was wrong of her to use her father’s name like that. But Chain Mail didn’t seem to notice, and she doubted Iron Quill would care. All for the good of Moonrise. “Fine,” Chain Mail finally said. “Two days. Two lunar days, and I’m recalling them. Make your time count.”