Silhouette stumbled blindly through the streets of Canterlot.
He turned corners at random, hurrying down every avenue with a sense of urgency despite having no destination in mind. Where he was going didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered right now was putting as much distance as he could between himself and the train station.
But his efforts were in vain. Even now, he could feel his thoughts turning back toward what had just happened, to the things he’d seen and heard after Princess Cadance had brought him back to life. That he’d been resurrected by the servant of a different faith was mortifying enough, but that had been nothing compared to the sight that had awaited him then.
Whereas Cadance’s goddess had given her the power to perform a miracle beyond anything Equestria had ever known, his own was in no state to do any such thing. Far from it; he had barely been able to recognize the unicorn in the train car, surrounded by the other princesses. Had the cutie mark not been unmistakably that of the pony he worshiped, he never would have thought it was the same person. But once he had seen it, once he’d realized just who the mangled mare was…
His foreleg, the one that had withered so badly after he’d begun receiving divine magic, suddenly gave out under him. Having broken into a run without realizing it at some point, Silhouette couldn’t recover his balance in time, hitting the ground hard and going tumbling. It was only after several seconds that he came to a halt, lying in the middle of the street in a daze.
He could hear several voices whispering, and others were raised in offers of help or questions as to whether he was alright or not. But Silhouette ignored them all, his brain filtering them out as unimportant. Instead he looked at his mangled foreleg, the symbol of his devotion. He’d been so proud of it, so pleased to wear the proof of his faith – of how the one whom he revered had bestowed her power upon him, of all ponies – upon his very body. But now…now he found himself seriously considering tearing the offending limb off completely, hating the sight of it.
She tried to apologize for this, too, he suddenly remembered. She hadn’t meant to twist his foreleg like that; it had been an accident, an unintended consequence of her bestowing the tiniest fraction of her power on him. She’d started to say that she was sorry for it, but he hadn’t wanted to hear it. Transcendent beings didn’t apologize. That wasn’t how it worked. By their very nature, they existed beyond such petty concerns, surpassing and exceeding the mundane problems that mortals had to deal with. They didn’t worry about what others thought of them, and they certainly didn’t feel the need to express remorse for their actions!
And yet he couldn’t block out her voice from mere minutes ago…
“S-Silhouette!” she croaked, tears running down her face. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! What happened to you was my fault! I wasn’t strong enough!”
The memory made Silhouette clench his teeth so hard they almost cracked, and he could feel a scream welling up inside him. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to keep it in, he looked around wildly. But he’d stumbled into one of the plazas that dotted downtown Canterlot, and there was nowhere that offered any sort of seclusion. So instead, he did the only thing he could. Loping toward the plaza’s central fountain as fast as his three undamaged legs could carry him, Silhouette threw himself at the edge of it, dunking his head beneath the water just as the last of his self-control snapped and a wild cry escaped his lips.
He screamed and screamed and screamed, until his lungs were burning and his ears felt like they were going to pop. Even then it wasn’t enough, and he thrashed wildly, banging his head on the bottom of the shallow pool around the fountain again and again. It was only when he couldn’t make himself utter even the most strangled of gasps, blood clouding the water, that he lifted his head out of the pool and fell back, collapsing next to the fountain.
Dimly, he noted that his demonstration had caught the attention of everypony nearby. They were all looking at him with wide-eyed expressions, ranging from complete shock to abject horror. For their sake, Silhouette hoped that none of them approached him, because he felt not at all mollified, his attempt to release the agony in his heart having failed. The only difference was that now he found it even harder to stave off the memories of what had driven him to this…
Of that mewling, defeated wretch of a mare back in that train car, bleating apologies at him like a squealing pig.
Of what had been left of Luna, his beautiful, elegant Goddess after Lex Legis had finished with her.
Hacking and coughing, Silhouette somehow climbed to his hooves, stumbling away from the plaza. It was too open here. Too exposed. He needed someplace where his memories couldn’t get at him, couldn’t make him see that image of the mare he’d once worshiped in his mind’s eye anymore.
His hooves dragged along the ground as he trudged through the city. Several times he stumbled, and once he threw up, spewing water in great lungfuls until he could barely breathe. But somehow he made it to the edge of the city, almost collapsing down the stairwell that led to the basement entrance, fishing the key out from behind the loose brick to the left of the door.
Having been built into the side of a mountain, space was always at a premium in Canterlot. Even the tiniest apartment cost more to rent than a spacious loft would have in Manehattan. That was why almost every member of the Royal Guard lived rent-free in the castle barracks. But after one week there, Silhouette had known that he needed his own place. The other guards lacked the proper respect for the Goddess, their games and carousing interrupting his prayers. Worse, some of them were prone to speaking lightly of her, or daring to mention her time as Nightmare Moon with fear or disdain, instead of recognizing it as a holy expungement of her mortal imperfections, allowing her to return from her thousand-year cleansing ready to look within the darkest of dreaming minds and be unsullied by the filth she found there. It had been maddening.
The breaking point had been when one guard had dared to speak of the Goddess in a lustful manner, as though she were some ill-bred tart rather than a savior. Silhouette had put a stop to that quickly enough, however. After that, everyone knew to speak respectfully of the Goddess in his presence if they didn’t want to spend their meager salary having their teeth replaced.
But although his compatriots had restrained their iniquity, it had been clear to Silhouette that he couldn’t worship in peace in that place. So he had found somewhere else to dwell, trading proximity to the Goddess for a place where he could pray to her without interruption. It wasn’t much of a dwelling, being a dingy little basement apartment with only two rooms (a living/dining area and the bathroom) and an equal number of windows, but at the time he hadn’t cared. Quite the contrary, he’d turned the far wall of the living area into a shrine to the Goddess.
It was composed of a series of shelves that he’d repurposed, all filled with trinkets that he’d dedicated to the Goddess. Pictures of her clipped from the local newspaper. Figurines of her that he’d carved and painted. A now-withered bouquet of lavender that she’d placed in the wall-sconce of the guard barracks while he was there (and which those ungrateful mongrels hadn’t even noticed). A spoon that had touched her elegant lips at a repast she’d shared with her sister. And his most prized possession, a few strands of her beautiful hair, which he had secreted away after noticing them on her pillow.
It didn’t amount to much, but it was the very least he could do after all that she’d done for him. In the wake of the Elemental Bleeds, when he’d been tormented by nightmares every night about what had happened to his brother, Luna had been the one to come into his dreams and soothe his pain. Thanks to her, he’d no longer seen Manehattan burning each time he’d fallen asleep, no longer witnessed what had become of his brother after he’d gone back to the kennel, insisting on making sure all of the dogs there had been freed from their cages. He’d succeeded, but not before the monsters that had come with the flames had found him…
Luna had saved him from the torment of those memories, her resplendent presence protecting him as he slept, mightier than any nightmare. And he had known then that he’d survived for a reason: to love her and worship her and make her benevolence known throughout Equestria. But the reminders of his devotion for her assaulted him now, and he felt a new surge of anger flowing through him at the sight of them, hating them for daring to ambush him when he was trying to recover! Despite what Princess Twilight had said about the strain on his body, and despite what he’d put himself through on the way back, Silhouette was still an earth stallion, and he lunged across the room in sudden anger, lashing out at the shrine in fury.
The collected baubles went flying now, crashing to the floor as he tore the shelves from the wall in a rage, hurling them across the room. Nor did he stop there, smashing the sole chair he’d bought for himself to splinters, before turning his wrath on the cot that he’d set up for himself. At one point someone knocked on the door, but that merely resulted in him turning his wrath against the offending portal, throwing a lamp against it as hard as he could. It had very nearly knocked the door off the hinges, sending whoever had been there scrambling back up the stairs in a panic, which was just as well. Silhouette still didn’t want to see anypony. It was only when there was nothing left to destroy that he slumped down into the corner, thoroughly exhausted and utterly miserable.
Once again, that fatigue allowed the events of earlier to come back to him, hearing the words in his mind even when he covered his ears.
“I think that’s what you said the guards saw! Remember how the ones that were still conscious said they saw Lex’s magic lift Luna up and wrap her in some sort of black aura, and how it seemed to sink into her? I think that’s it! That’s the magic of his curse!”
That had been what Princess Twilight Sparkle had said. Those words, combined with that horrifying imagery of Luna held aloft in that pink aura, tugging ineffectively at that horrific black substance had clung to her like a second skin, told him everything that had happened since he had been slain. And although the knowledge felt like someone had poured acid on his very soul, there was nothing he could do to stop it from sinking into his mind now…
His sacrifice hadn’t saved the Goddess from Lex Legis’s wrath. The sorcerer had fought her, and he had won, and he had been merciless in his victory. If his Goddess had met her end in battle, spitting in the evil sorcerer’s face in defiance and fighting him to the last, then it would have been far kinder a fate. That would have allowed her dignity to remain intact, so that she might remain in his heart and the hearts of all those who revered her forever, unblemished.
But Lex Legis hadn’t wanted to kill her. He’d wanted to ruin her. To desecrate her. And he’d done exactly that, reducing her from a transcendent being to a fallen one. By making her less than she was, Lex Legis had turned her from being a Goddess into being a victim, and victims by their very nature were objects of pity.
You couldn’t worship someone you pitied.
That was the inescapable truth that Silhouette struggled with as he sat there rocked back and forth amidst the wreckage. As badly as he wanted to continue worshiping Luna, to keep revering her as the Goddess of his heart, he couldn’t. The awe he’d felt for her had been ruined now, the memory of what had become of her spoiling what had formerly been a sense of rapture. Even if the other princesses succeeded in changing her back, the knowledge of how Lex Legis had sullied her would, he knew, never go away.
And so there was nothing Silhouette could do but sit there and let that horrible memory eat away at the most important thing in his life. Devouring the one thing that had given his existence meaning. Until all that was left was hatred for the pony that had done this to him.
Hatred for Lex Legis.