"We don't belong here we don't belong here we need to leave this isn't safe please let me go we need to leave..."
Magpie had stopped fighting, but she hadn't stopped muttering. Silver probably would've felt genuinely awful for her, if it wasn't for the urgency of their situation. There was nowhere else for them to go—no way to flee back to Moonrise without wandering right into the waiting hooves of the army. There was no way to go but forward.
"We can't stop," he urged, as gently as he could. "Please, Magpie, we're not in danger. Don't you think if this place had traps waiting for us, they would've triggered by now? We're safe, it's okay. The ones following us won't be able to navigate the Sacred City. They probably won't even send anypony through the portal. They'll... just assume I died on the surface and leave it at that." And you still might, Silver, so don't get too confident.
Some part of him refused to believe what he was seeing, like the whole world was a strange illusion that might puff away at a moment's notice. After everything he'd imagined might be in his future, the one thing he'd never considered was that he might be worthy of a trip here. Traveling to the Sacred City hadn't even happened in his lifetime. There just weren’t any creatures that the princess considered worthy of the trip. Exploration was an activity for an earlier, greater age. A time before military rule. A time when there was still a council that mattered. Why did we let it end?
Silver wouldn't curse his ancestors for whatever string of events had led to the world he lived in. Probably they had their reasons, even if they didn't make sense to him now. He wouldn't try to redefine the past, when it couldn't be changed. His own father lived in that past, and whatever noble ancestors had been in the princess's army during the last siege. He could only hope they'd be smiling at him now.
Magpie wasn't screaming anymore. Silver stopped walking, finally letting go of her foreleg. "Are you going to stop struggling yet?"
The pony looked even paler than usual, if such a thing was possible. Her ears were flat, expression haunted. She had no scent, at least none that was natural, though she did remind him a little of the crypt cavern. Like an ancient, honored dead that was up and walking around with the living. She met his eyes, and he felt instantly paralyzed with guilt. He'd seen that expression before, on the faces of other street-trash that lived in the dark corners and forgotten alleys of Moonrise. "You were trying to kill me."
"What?" He took a step back from her, eyes wide with shock. "Magpie, I'd never do that! I don't even think it's possible, but even if it was... why would I do that? You gave me a chance to study magic like I never had before, Magpie. I'm using a spell I learned from your books to breathe right now."
She whimpered, then shook herself out. She glanced up and down the hallway around them—a strange vaulted affair, with conduits on the ceiling and metal doors spaced periodically. "We're in Vanaheimr. Finding this place was Nightmare Moon's first order when we got here. She wanted the weapon it hides to escape from the moon and reclaim our homeland. So we looked and looked, and eventually we found it."
"Makes sense." He sat back on his haunches, as though he could somehow take the weight off his horn. It didn't help. Even with his body relaxed, his magic was strained. If Silver was very lucky, he could keep this spell up for another hour before he collapsed from the effort. "The Voidseekers were supposed to be her... most important ponies, right? The ones she trusted with her most important missions."
Magpie glared at him. For a moment he wasn't even sure if she was going to reply. "The Nightmare warned us that the city was protected. It had... ancient magic around its foundations. Machines that would wake when we drew near and destroy us. But it sent us in anyway, to hunt down the weapon and retrieve it. The princess was too valuable to risk herself. We were expected to die for her."
She wandered away from him, staring down the nearby hall with empty, haunted eyes. "Three of Nightmare's best had already died back in Equestria. The Sunbringers—they don't matter anymore. They're probably long gone, with all of us up here. But half of the ponies left died in this city. Eventually Nightmare Moon realized what the Nightmare was making us do, and she made us stop. She actually cares about us, or she did. But half of us were already gone by then. Nightmare doesn't... care about its servants much. If the princess hadn't noticed when she did, you never would've met me."
"It's been a long time since then," Silver said. "The city has been visited many times. I'm sure those magical defenses have all been disabled. We had a whole group of ponies to come in here, the Gatecrashers. They learned all kinds of incredible things from these ruins." It didn't seem like his reassurance was helping her very much, though. Silver reached out weakly, wrapping one leg around her shoulder. "I'm sorry I forced you to come here. If you want to run away, you can. Wait somewhere on the surface, I'll be out to use the portal again in a few weeks. Say... three weeks, to be safe. We'll want to come back at night, so nopony will be anywhere near the old Gatecrasher guild building."
It was strange to be so close to Magpie. He'd expected her to feel like rotten fruit, maybe even leaking fluids at his touch. Her body didn't yield strangely, or stink when he touched it. She was only a little cold. He could've easily mistaken her for being alive, if he didn't know better.
"I'm not going to run," she said, voice a faint squeak. "I don't think anypony could make this city safe for me. They knew what my kind were, and they hated us. But maybe... having someone alive near me is stopping it from activating. Like you're... tricking it. I'll have to stay with you as long as we're here."
She shoved away from him abruptly, expression dark. "I don't know why I have to be the one to remind you about this, seeing as you basically foalnapped me. But you just said we're going to be here for weeks. How are we going to do that if you're depending on that little spell to stay alive? Won't you run out of magic way before that? How will you sleep?"
He started walking again, taking his spell with him. She wasn't forced to follow exactly, since she didn't need to breathe. He could only imagine what it would be like to have the air suddenly missing. Would it hurt? Could they even feel pain at all? She's probably way stronger than an ordinary pony. She could've fought much harder to stop from coming in here, and she didn't. Maybe she'd been so overwhelmed with the horror of her imminent death that she hadn't been able to think straight?
"I thought about that, or I never would've come here. It's all about the Gatecrashers. They... have little parts of the old city they've made safe. My father used to tell me about the library, and how amazing it was. It had books that could speak, books that would move, like memories you were watching before your eyes. I don't... really care about any of that, but they made those parts safe. They brought air, and I'm betting they'll have food and water stored as well. Old stale air is still air I can breathe. If we're really lucky, they'll have one of those fancy machines, the ones that Moonrise uses. Then we could probably stay here as long as we wanted."
"You think they left all that behind?" Magpie might not be really trapped by the shield, but she did seem like she wanted to stay close to him. She kept beside him in the hallway now, glaring at every open doorway and fork in the tunnel like death might be waiting for them at its end.
It wasn't. So far as Silver could tell, all of Magpie's fears had rotted to nothing. Even spells could fade away with enough time.
"My father said they did. It wasn't supposed to happen—just look at how advanced all of this is." He stopped beside a wall of perfectly clear glass, with something like a playground on the other side. It had the look of flexible plastic to it—a mystery Moonrise had yet to solve. "Why would we leave if we haven't learned everything we can from copying them? I don't know what caused it... the princess got angry, or... maybe we got another Lord Commander. It was before I was born, so I don't have any memories. Point is, my dad said that they had less than an hour to leave the city. They would've left everything exactly as it was, just... abandoned. You saw the Gatecrasher guild. Everything was still in there, waiting for the next brave explorers and scholars to travel through. Just... abandoned."
She nodded slowly, still looking unconvinced. "And the princess isn't going to send her soldiers after us? Assuming the city itself doesn't murder all of us. Or maybe Nightmare Moon herself will come to kill us. She was completely nuts about this place."
"I don't think she'll find out," Silver said. "Even if we pretend for a minute that they figure out where we went... instead of just thinking that we wandered out onto the surface to die... imagine how many layers they have to connect in the chain of command before a message gets to Nightmare Moon. Each time a new creature hears about this, that's another pony that might be upset. Another pony that might be punished. How many even know I exist? We didn't even really do anything!"
Magpie shrugged. "Well you seem convinced. I'm just happy to be alive right now. Give me a few hours, and I'll probably be furious you made me come here. It's all kinds of stupid. Of all the places we could've run... you choose Vanaheimr." She turned away, wing and stump spread in frustration. "There's only one explanation. You and every other creature in Moonrise have completely lost your minds. That’s obviously it. Ponies aren't meant to live in holes, on a world where you bounce instead of walk and the sun doesn't really shine. You're all rotting away."
He didn't really have a response to that. Silver was concentrating on the air-bubble, and even more on remembering everything he could about Vanaheimr. His father had said something about the library, what had it been? The view, that was it! It had a glass wall, and you could look out on the surface of the moon while you were studying inside it. Almost like the creatures had built it for that reason.
He chose the fork leading to a ramp. "I want to go back to Equestria as much as anypony else. Didn't... creatures know in your time how impossible that was? Even an Alicorn as powerful as Nightmare Moon can't connect us to Equestria alone. It's... some kind of enduring space magic, making teleportation impossible."
"Oh, sure. You know that travel is impossible, but you have a Lord Commander preparing you to invade every moment. I feel like something else isn't connecting here."
Silver groaned—though obviously he wasn't mad at her. It wasn't like any of it was her fault. "So many ponies have thought the end would come during their generation. And the Lord Commander... maybe he knows more than we do. Maybe the princess is about to get us home, and all this is pointless." Too bad I'm going to kill him.
But the more he thought about that, the less certain he became. After all, he didn't actually know if Rockshanks had anything to do with the way Whites and Yellows were treated. Maybe it was all some kind of... misunderstanding? Maybe his real enemy was Colonel Flint. She'd been the one to actually hold public executions. She was ultimately the one responsible.
Silver felt like he was dragging his hooves up the stairs. The further they wandered, the less certain he was that there might be anywhere in the ancient city to hide. Even so, he couldn't dare stop. Whenever he grew weak, he tried to imagine the awful machine, and the row of ponies lined up to die. Maybe they'd been brave enough to resist Flint's authority, or maybe they'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, he wasn’t going to be like them.
Silver Star had forced a spell for too long before, so he knew the delirium when it started to set in. He began muttering to himself, circling back on paths he already knew. But as his world started to fuzz, there was always a voice urging him onward. High pitched, tiny, shoving him in the side and sometimes dragging him bodily away from circling back the same way. Even if his strange magic didn't let the cold kill him, the fog of his own breath didn't help with navigation.
The longer he kept up the spell, the more Silver's world contracted. Color lost its meaning, fading into dull grays. Yet something kept pulling him along, and shoved him whenever he started dropping the spell. In many ways, it felt like starving. Except that he didn't usually have a companion along for any of that.
Silver was dimly aware of a few rooms filled with hissing, screaming air, and then there was something soft under his hooves.
"You can sleep now," said the little voice, the one that always sounded so furious with him before. "You made it."
"Won't I..." He couldn't remember what would happen. "I thought I wasn't... had to keep it up forever."
"You made it," the voice said. "Stop your spell before you have a hernia or something."
That wasn't how magic worked, but he didn't have the energy to tell her. He'd been keeping up the magic for so long that he really didn't need much more invitation to make him stop. The spell collapsed, his little bubble of air popped, and he slept at last.
Silver Star had strange dreams in the void. It wasn't the first time he'd felt like somepony was watching, but rarely did it seem like there was a pony walking with him. He was on the surface of the moon, yet somehow the lack of air didn't bother him. He should've been suffocating... but he felt fine. If anything, the shadows and darkness were what really concerned him. He lit his horn, but it could provide only a pale glow. The darkness was more than shadow, more like a physical force that twisted and curled around his body, trying to strangle him.
"You can't light this way," said the other figure. A pair of slitted bat-eyes appeared in the gloom, along with a voice that was mature and powerfully sad. "I invited the Nightmare here. Nothing can send it away now."
"Why not?" he asked. He didn't know who he was speaking to, except that they were taller than he was. Probably female, though the voice was deep enough that it was only a guess. "Don't we have enough nightmares when we're awake?"
He gritted his teeth, focusing on his spellcasting as he never had before. He reached, and strangely his reservoir of magic wasn't as empty as he'd thought. His horn grew brighter, so bright that it should've blinded him, but didn't. He could see the gray dust under his hooves, and a distant outline ahead of him. He was standing at the gates of the Sacred City, but in another time. Flashes of angry light rained down on it from above, shattering structures, tearing through metal, and killing with every blast.
"You are right in one respect, child," said the voice. "Life is certainly a nightmare. There is no field far enough, no flight fast enough. Death follows at our heels regardless. No desire to do good is enough to overcome the hatred arrayed against us."
"Who are you?" Silver turned, and the magic he conjured grew even brighter. Bright enough to see the face of his companion...
He woke with a start, jerking upright in the folding camp cot. An old sleeping-bag shed dust around him, forming a little cloud that set him to coughing and spluttering. His head ached, worse than it had the one time he'd got his hooves on an old soldier's grog ration. What the buck had he done to himself last night?
For a moment he thought he was in total darkness—then he saw the stars. A window larger than anything in Moonrise rose above him, its glass clear and perfectly even as no pony hooves could work. And outside, the stars. He groaned, tried to rise—but his hooves were caught in the sleeping bag. Instead of standing, he squealed and fell over, landing with an awkward thump.
"Well look who came back to life," Magpie said from nearby. Silver looked up, and saw the bat reclining on an oversized sofa. Oversized compared to her, anyway. It was probably the right size for a proper pony. It didn't look like any furniture he'd ever seen in Moonrise, though. It was too fine, its cushion made from that strange soft plastic that they couldn't manufacture. The kind that seemed to last forever. "I thought you might never wake up."
"I was out that long?" he groaned, shaking free of the old sleeping bag, and rising to his hooves. He was covered with dust, and his body fought to stand, but at least he was standing. "Is there water anywhere? I'm... feel like I'm dying."
Magpie pointed to a large pile on a nearby table, one that wasn't covered with dust like much everything else. These were cans, the things used to keep food fresh and eat crops out of season. He'd only ever seen them empty before, but he knew the theory. "You think they're still good after all this time? Before you were born, you said."
"Probably." He scanned their labels, old blocky text that was identical on each one. No water. But if he remembered right, most of this stuff was stored in a little water. He just needed one of those weird-shaped knives to get the cans open. "My dad said they get all swollen when they're not safe to eat anymore." Some of them had that look, bulging at their tops. He picked something at random—a can of string beans, trying to lift it into the air towards him.
His head began to throb, and he dropped it after just a few inches, groaning. "Ugh... stars above, I think I hurt myself."
"Sure looks that way," Magpie said absently. "I think it's called 'spellshock?' Don't quote me on that, it's been buckin' ages since I've talked to a doctor about anything."
He dragged himself over to the table, picking up the can and flopping around until he found the little knife there. "You went searching for these, didn't you? They wouldn't have been all neatly piled up like this."
She nodded absently. "Oh yeah, wasn't too hard. I still think this place will try to murder me if I get too far from you, but I figured the library would be safe as long as you were in it. Seems like I was right about that. Not dead so far."
"Technically..." But he didn't even have the energy for a bad joke. He took the knife in his mouth, struggling to get the blade into the top of the can. He had no idea how to actually open the damn thing—there was a circular blade as well as the little diamond one, and probably a crank to turn. But his hunger could wait. A little persistence and he finally broke the edge of the can, and could knock it back.
Green-bean water dribbled out the opening, right down his throat. It might very well have been one of the most disgusting things he'd ever tasted. But he was so thirsty that he didn't even really care. He emptied the can of every drop of moisture, right down to the little floating bits of vegetable. Then he moved onto another one, and did the same.
Finally he felt like he wasn't going to dry up, and wandered back to the cot, pulling the sleeping bag weakly over his body and closing his eyes. "Do you, uh... remember what to do about spellshock? I promise you've seen more doctors than I have."
Magpie didn't move from her perch. With his eyes closed, he couldn’t see how she might be reacting to his pain. But then, he had dragged her here. Maybe it was silly to expect compassion. "I think you're just supposed to avoid casting spells as long as possible, and... sleep it off."
There was a thump, probably her hopping off the sofa. "This place is gigantic, so we probably won't run out of air anytime soon. I don't know how its staying warm though. It doesn't seem like any machines are running, but... the room stays at the same temperature even with absolute darkness outside. Weird magic, I guess."
"I guess." He'd just have to add it to the long list of things that had saved his life. He wouldn't be able to drink ice from those cans. For that matter, freezing them probably would've destroyed them. "Good insulation, or..." Thinking was too much effort. He closed his eyes again, rolling to the side. Maybe he'd feel better in the morning. Wasn't he supposed to be fighting in a rebellion or something?