//------------------------------// // Luna: For the Night is Dark IV // Story: Game of Worlds // by DualThrone //------------------------------// During the conflict with Celestia, Nacht had insisted that Luna develop the ability to blink over immense distances using the Void, “skimmng the edge” as the eldritch being had put it. With Nacht’s guidance, she’d eventually became so adept at it that she could do it with the ease that her advisor could. Experience, though, didn’t make it any more pleasant. Luna stumbled into the bracing cold of the plain that surrounded the throne cavern of the Dragon Lord and had to take several shuddering breaths to chase the impossible chill of the Void off. “Until I had a form of my own, I never really understood how unpleasant that is for the living,” Nacht said. “Is everyone alright?” “All awesome here,” Rainbow said. “Creeped out, but awesome.” “I have a good view of this place and can bring others here as needed,” Spite said. “I feel that I should return in case Kyra needs my services.” “Like collecting the griffon and her caregivers?” “Among other things,” Spite said. “I know many places and if needed, could supply food, water, and medicine as the situation warrants.” “Then please do,” Luna said. “Gladly, Princess.” And with that, Spite disappeared. “After my time with you, I got used to doing that, traveling the Void,” Luna said with a gesture to where Spite had diseappeared, “but it never got any more pleasant. Did the airship happen to mention where the Archive was in relation to the cavern?” “You mean cardinal direction in relation to the entrance? No, they just reported seeing it materialize on the plains,” Nightmare said. “So what’s the deal with this Archive?” Rainbow said. “It’s just a bunch of books, right?” “Basically, books bad, don’t read, the Archive will eat your soul if you do,” Luna said. “Did I get that about right?” “Close enough,” Nightmare said with a shrug. “It’s more enslavement but it might as well be eating the soul, at least if its guide spirit is to be believed. Naturally, there’s no way to test whether the spirit was being truthful without going to the core.” “Why haven’t you?” “I tried.” Nightmare snorted. “Of course it had a completely separate defense against someone who could rebuff its attempts to worm its way into their mind. The classic infinite loop defense where it endlessly displaces your route ahead of you as you travel so you can’t make progress, while hammering at your mental defenses. I couldn’t spare the power to break its displacement while shielding against it, so I got nowhere.” “Sounds complicated,” Rainbow said. “It’s actually very simple, which is the genius of the design,” Nightmare said. “Simple machines are the most difficult to break or otherwise render non-functional because their mechanism is robust in its simplicity. The same principle applies to building magical constructs.” “Cool. So, shouldn’t there be like, dragons all over the place?” Rainbow gestured with one of her dragonic wings. “Like, this is where their king is at. Shouldn’t they be pigpiling us or something because we just showed up out of nowhere?” “They should be,” Luna said, “but if this Sotto Voce is on Nacht’s--excuse me, Rainbow, Nightmare’s--level, I’m not surprised to find this place silent as a… well, grave.” “Let’s not jump to conclusions, Selune,” Nightmare said. “Wanton slaughter would be unusual for an unexceptional nightmare unless they were cornered in their husk and those that cornered them were extremely reckless.” “Which would be typical of dragons,” Luna pointed out. “Fair point,” Nightmare said. “Still, eliminating your entire stock of possible replacements would be wasteful.” “...alright then, that’s not creepy or anything.” Rainbow said after a moment of uncomfortable silence. “Do I even want to know?” “You probably don’t,” Nightmare said. “We should probably begin searching the….” “It’s about fucking time!” Luna turned her head in time to see the very distinctive sapphire-scaled form of Princess Ember emerge from the caverns carrying an ominously large sword in a single hand and close the distance. “Where have you been, Princess?” “Canterlot,” Luna responded, lamely. “What do you mean, where have I been?” Ember stopped just barely outside of easy reach and planted the tall sword, looking up at Luna but holding herself like she towered over her instead. “I mean, where have you bucking been? I see your moon every damn night, see your sister’s sun every day, and the two of you have been sitting with your fat plots in your thrones for all this time while some… something has been squatting in my kingdom, ripping the identities out of my subjects, and then ending up with some fucking pony building planted next to my home. Aren’t you supposed to be the clever one who can shove your way into dreams and read minds? And you didn’t figure out to come here until after the scary little bint and her papa dearest dragged your nieces and their friends off?” Nightmare gaped at the angry dragoness. “Her what?” “Scary little bint?” “She took Twilight, Dawn, and their friends?” Luna said. “Do you know where?” Ember grimaced and pointed at each of them in turn. “Her papa dearest,” she said pointing at Nightmare. “Little zebra filly with a unicorn horn,” she said with a gesture to Rainbow. “And yeah she did, they went with her with some manipulation, and she said something about a heart.” She finished by looking at Luna. “A… zebra filly with a unicorn horn.” Luna blinked. “That’s… I didn’t know that birth defect was even possible.” “Don’t think it was a defect,” Ember said. “She threw spells like they were goin’ out of style.” “And she called Sotto Voce her father,” Nightmare said. “Which means… actually, I have no idea what it means. I’ve never heard of this kind of thing being done before.” “He’s somehow using her as a voluntary vessel, the way you did with me, right?” “No,” Nightmare said. “I don’t know what he did or how this is possible, but zebricorn fillies don’t just trot up to several adult ponies, four of whom are the Elements of Harmony, and make listening to their sales pitch the best option. Not even with a nightmare on my level pulling the strings.” “‘Scuse me but did the dragon here say something about a heart?” Spite said. “And aren’t we here to stop Sotto Voce and whoever else from getting one?” “Name’s Ember, squirt,” Ember said. “Princess Ember, if it means much. And yeah scary little bint said she had her heart set on a crystal or something like that. Took the gal pals with her cuz Dawn spotted that if they didn’t, the Elements would be short when they got to wherever they were going. Left me and Thalia behind. She’s off somewhere doing something but bet she’ll come running if she figures out you’re here, Loony.” Luna gave her a steady look. “I have an older sister, Ember. She can hold me down and poke me into submission, so she gets to call me ‘Loony.’ Unless you’re planning to fight me right here and now…?” Ember rolled her eyes. “Whatever Loon.” “If you don’t want to call her by her given name, call her ‘Selune’,” Nightmare said. “Selune huh?” Ember smirked. “OK, yeah, I like it. So anyway, Selune, I’m sure ‘Lia will come running if she knows you’re here.” “While we wait, explain the scary little bint part,” Nightmare said. “I was there when Queen Chrysalis told Twilight and her companions about the message from Thalia but I could only speculate about what the rather vague allusion to a ‘child not a child’ meant.” “Not too hard,” Ember said. “Looks like a kid, sounds like a kid, but talk to her for a minute and it’s pretty obvious she’s faking the little kid part. Told the blonde pony with the hat that’s she’s older than Selune, and blonde pony bought it. Pretty sure that means she was being straight.” “Older than me?” Luna’s brow furrowed. “But that would make her thousands of years old. That can’t be right. I’d have heard of someone so long-lived, even just in the form of a rumor.” “Probably because she’s only kinda alive,” Ember said. “Not dead but… it’s weird, believe me. She’s cold as death to the touch, but she breathes, needs food and drink, and does the rest of the alive stuff, but I don’t think she’s supposed ta be alive, yanno? Like she was gonna die, then something stepped in and said no. So she’s sitting on that cliff just before dying, but not taking the jump.” “Well if she was meant to die, she would have,” Nightmare said. “Nothing could have stopped that.” “You know, you seem sorta like a pipsqueak,” Rainbow said from above, in the middle of doing a lazy circle over the head of the dragon. Ember looked up and stared at her for a couple seconds. “OK, run that by me again?” “I said, ya seem like a pipsqueak,” Rainbow said. “I mean, except for Spike, all the big adult dragons are like, boom,” she spread her wings as wide as she could, “giant, bout a hundred times my size. But you’re ‘bout as tall as Nightmare here.” “Is this leading to a point?” “Yeah,” Rainbow said. “Ya called it yer kingdom, so I guess that means you must be the boss, right? But ya look like you’re about as old as I am.” “Well, how old are you?” Ember said, an annoyed tone starting to creep into her voice. “Twenty-six, give or take six months.” She looked down and smirked. “What about you?” Ember glared at her. Rainbow’s smirk turned into a grin. “Yer younger, aincha?” Ember glared harder and after a moment said, from between clenched teeth. “Twenty-six in two months.” Rainbow’s grin stretched to Pinkie Pie levels. “Hah!” And then it dropped and Rainbow resumed circling without looking down. “But seriously, what’s the deal?” “Dad’s… not in good shape,” Ember said. “Better shape than the rest but… yeah, whatever the bint needed to do to keep him from putting her through a thick wall, it wasn’t very…” “...gentle?” Luna suggested. “Yeah.” She grimaced, squeezing her sword grip which she had yet to let go of. “Eating, drinking, sleeping but… weak. Can’t… can’t really keep a thought together in his head. Can’t move around much. Gets the chills of all the fucking things.” “Sounds like the result of very heavy-hoofed magical restraints,” Nightmare siad. “Or…” Luna looked at the other alicorn. “...a specific one,” Nightmare said, looking back. “A humourchill spell. Far and away the most effective method to use if you needed to subdue a dragon.” Ember looked between them, her expression becoming one of guarded hope. “So you know how to fix it?” “If it’s what we think, it would be very simple,” Luna said. “But if it is, it would be extraordinary. The specific spell is several many, many hundreds of years out of date, a brutal relic of a less refined system of combat magic. Ones that are simultaneously more efficient and significantly less painful have come into common use since the class was phased out.” “But humourchill remains by far the most effective,” Nightmare said. “There was a reason they were phased out,” Luna said quietly. “And why Tia so enthusiastically endorsed Clover’s work.” “I know. But this offers a couple of interesting insights into this apparent filly. First, that she’s genuinely old enough to know how to use the spell and second, that she embraces the same brutal war logic that I do,” Nightmare said. “Which is something that doesn’t seem to come naturally to any of the pony or pony-like races, even the pony race who took on the role of being Equestria’s soldiers.” “Yeah, she’s definitely got the carrot and stick schtick going on,” Ember said. “Treats the girls all nice and polite, but casually mentions that cutting up the annoying pink one was meant to be done to the other annoying pink one, to stop her from using her Element. Said it as casually as if she was talking about the weather.” “...cutting up?” “Yeah,” Ember said. “She’s got some construct she calls ‘the cards’ that switches personalities totally at random and one of the personalities likes making things hurt for fun. She thought that the sadist would carve up Pinkie but he carved up the other one instead. Don’t worry, she’s fine, Twilight fixed her up so it’s just painless scars now.” Luna frowned pensively. “I think that we should go look at your father now and on the way, you should go over the entire story of this filly from the beginning. Because she doesn’t sound like just an element of some plan.” Ember snorted. “Element? Naw, pretty sure the little bint is the mastermind.” It was a relatively short walk from the entrance of the caverns to the cave where Lord Scorch was convalescing, but Ember was able to fit the entire tale into the audible equivalent of bullet points: how she found Penumbra, the disposal of the Scepter of the Dragon Lord, the arrival of Twilight and her friends, and the various conversations that happened, ending with Penumbra bundling the girls into arctic clothing--forcibly when it came to Twilight who had protested that she could just maintain a warming spell on the group--and blinking out of existence. “She was true to her word,” Ember was saying as they approached the closed cave, “so everyone starting coming back to themselves although they’re so exhausted that they pretty much dropped where they stood. Still don’t know what she was doing but she turned it off like she said.” “Mass compulsion?” Nightmare said. “It’d need a font as large as myself and Tia combined,” Luna said. “Keeping hold of a will is difficult, moreso with a dragon.” “I vaguely remember as such, from my secondhand examination of your interactions with… mmm… what was her name…?” “Singe?” “Yes, Singe. Did you really have to overthrow her will to get her to calm down?” “You’re thinking of Pyre,” Luna said, smiling a little. “Thought we’d come to kill his sister, not put a crown on her head, so to speak.” “And he was mad that you weren’t throwing your weight behind Ember?” “There was that too.” Luna looked at Ember. “She would have been your.... Great-great-great aunt?” “Great-great-grandmother,” Ember said. “Singe couldn’t have kids.” “Oh.” Luna shifted uncomfortably. “Well… oh, that’s…” “Way in the past,” Ember said. “And no biggie, wasn’t anyone’s fault, severe bellyrot just after hatching.” “I… genuinely never knew,” Luna said. “That’s a real tragedy. It’s good that her descendents follow in her footsteps, even if it didn’t quite turn out well.” “Could have turned out better, yeah,” Ember said as she switched out the gearing of the opening mechanism and started moving the door out of the way. “At least she was an honest bitch and good to her word.” “I still wish I understood her nature,” Nightmare said. “Her long life makes no sense, and being so closely connected to Sotto Voce should have turned her into a scoured husk in months.” “And the plans she spoke of sound pointless,” Luna said. “They also don’t match her way of working. She can’t have a harmless plague so she goes for a lethal one? Resorts to torturing Pinkie Pie to disable her, and yet claims to want her to survive and raise a family? Claims that none of this was conceived of in malice, but a nightmare is sat on her shoulder? She has some grand plan to make everything better, but wants to do it in secret and using evil methods and at the end she gains, what exactly?” “LUNA!” a massive, basso voice bellowed from the door just as it opened barely enough to squeeze through. “WHERE THE…?” Lord Scorch’s voice dissolved into a wheezing cough midway through his question. “...where the buck have you been?” “Canterlot,” Luna said as she magically nudged the door open further and stepped in. “I see you’re well enough to roar at me.” In truth, Scorch looked like death warmed over. His eyes were sunken, his scales hung loosely or were drawn tightly against his bones, and there were several places where the tough skin between his wings had torn and been bandaged. Far worse though were the telltale signs of the humourchill she’d suspected: blood visibly oozing from cracked gums and nostrils, a milky film over his eyes, and the cloying tang of partially-digested gems that wafted from several ragged tears in his sides. “...Reaper’s razor mercy…” Nightmare breathed. “You look like shit, Scorch,” Luna told him. “That little demon really broke a hoof off in you, didn’t she?” Scorch grinned at her, blood dripping from a corner of his mouth. “Small but fierce. Reminds…” He coughed. “...me of a certain war princess.” “Well, I’m not here to kick your tail right now. Wouldn’t be worth the effort.” Luna softened her tone. “How’d she get a sucker punch in on you?” He tried to laugh but the first gruffaw dissolved into hacking gasps and a spray of blood from his mouth as he coughed. “Didn’t. Beat… me down in a fair fight. Didn’t even… have to try.” “So she nailed you with humourchill right in your face.” Nightmare looked at Luna before back at Scorch. “How’d you not turn her into spare ribs while she was doing the chant?” “Chant?” Luna looked at Ember. “A humourchill spell this strong would require layered casting. Takes nearly a minute to do, which is why a magi using one needed a lot of help to put it together without getting gutted.” “She didn’t… need it.” Scorch grimaced. “She stepped in right in the midst of casting something and then...  can’t… quite describe it. It was like she did… all that but it got fit into a couple seconds.” “Well, if anything was going to make my skin crawl right off my bones and out the door, that’d do it,” Nightmare shook her head. “I don’t know the counterspell, Luna.” “I do. Subsidize me?” “Do you even need to ask?” Nightmare’s horn glowed and Luna felt a thread of power reach out and delicately wind around her own horn, temporarily letting Luna combine their respective fonts of power to make the casting easier. As she’d suspected, whatever mysterious benefactor had formed the body Nightmare was using had made her an alicorn in truth as well as appearance: her font was at least as immense as Tia’s. One saving grace of the humourchill type spells, and one of the reasons that even the compassionate Celestia had been slow to endorse phasing them out, was that dismantling them was simple. A lot of work, requiring the magi to have support so she could ‘snip the threads’ without collapsing, but requiring no real complex work. Penumbra had poured a staggering amount of power into her casting, enough to fully disable a centuries-old dragon in his prime, but if anything it was even more simple to take apart. Dismantling the spell had as dramatic an effect as Luna remembered: the gaping wounds closed and mended, the blood oozing from gums and nostrils, and his eyes cleared. Scorch took a deep breath, and stretched. “The hell’d she even hit me with?” “A humourchill spell,” Luna said. “Out of use for about a thousand years by now but it still works for laying out especially strong creatures without killing them.” “Like, phlegm and bile and crap?” “Similar principle, but different,” Nightmare said. “There’s a lot of magic theory and experimentation involved but it boils down to altering the flow of magic within the body. Like clotting a lot of veins at once.” “It’s not hard to unclot them, it just takes a lot of power and magical energy,” Luna said. “So how’d she sucker punch you?” “Thought she wanted the Scepter, so I weighted it and threw it in the Wound,” he said. “Turns out I was right--but she didn’t want it to use, she wanted it so she could wrap it in weights and throw it in the Wound.” “Ember mentioned that in her bullet points,” Luna said. “If that was manipulation...” “Naw, she didn’t know I was on to her until after I got rid of the thing,” Scorch said. “Pretty sure she was coming up with a way to get it and chuck it, but then I did it for her cuz, yanno…” “...even if she couldn’t use an artifact of that magnitude for its intended purpose, there’s a lot of things you can do with that raw energy.” Luna nodded. “Helluva thing when the smart move is what the other guy wants you to do.” “And the foundation of the most foolproof plans,” Nightmare said. “When you can make your opponent taking the smartest course of action the basis of your victory, it’s hard to lose. So what does it do?” “All kindsa shit,” Ember said. “Big one is deflect magic.” “No prizes for guessing why she wanted it out of play,” Nightmare siad. “Any way to put it back on the board?” “If ya give me a month,” Scorch said. “Bet yer going after the demon now, right?” “Seems like the only way to stop her from doing whatever it is she plans to do.” “Everyone’s dancing to Penumbra’s tune.” Luna looked to find Thalia standing at her side, looking at her in turn. The changeling displayed a truly awe-inspiring amount of muscle, reminding Luna of a professional gladiator, and she suspected that the mare also had the unconscious stalking gait of a hunting cat, seeing as how she could approach silently. “Penumbra? Not her ‘father’?” Nightmare said. “She all but fed the atermors to the Physician,” Thalia said. “I’ve been having a word with Chryssy, who got the scoop from Chidinida’s bodyguards. I saw how she communicated with Canceros, how she made sure that Zambet was there to see it done, and it seems clear to me that she permitted personal loathing and contempt for a useful tool to supersede calculation.” “Even I would hesitate to do that,” Nightmare said, nodding. “I doubt Sotto Voce would be willing to sacrifice such a destructive tool if he had a choice.” “She also employed the self-named ‘Master’ to work at cross-purposes with Canceros, crippling the ability of the plague to do any lasting harm,” Thalia said. “Kyra’s account of what she personally experienced makes that clear. It’s a very strange decision, ordering one servant to sabotage another, and then claiming that she intended for the plague to be more dangerous.” “It sounds like she started in one strategic direction, and then reversed herself,” Luna said. “Like planning to get Pinkie Pie cut up to prevent her from using her Element, and then suppressing it in some other fashion which was clearly selective because she didn’t try to stop Applejack from attacking her with a fraction of Honesty.” “Don’t sound like she likes being nasty,” Scorch said. “She didn’t apologize for…” “I didn’t say she regretted it, said she didn’t like it.” Scorch looked from his daughter to Luna. “Starts a deadly plague then sabotages it. Tries to get Pink cut up, but doesn’t try again when the wrong one gets cut. And she didn’t abuse anyone, she just made ‘em unable to stop her.” “What about with you?” He shrugged. “Bet she’d do the same to Queenie, or you, or Celestia, or another big player. Gentle don’t work on any of us. Only way is ya hit so hard we’re either buried or can’t do shit.” “Fair point.” Luna looked at Thalia. “I assume the changelings remain the military power I remember?” Thalia grinned. “Not to brag but when Penny said that Chryssy has enough force to make her stop whatever she’s planning, she wasn’t exaggerating.” “So is she…” “When she said she had enough time to win, she also wasn’t exaggerating,” Thalia continued, her grin dropping. “Chryssy could have everyone standing by to march at any second, and mustering would still take days. It’ll take at least six because several units are helping the Royal Guard keep peace and help sickened ponies, General Market and his First Tantalus are posted at Ponyville with his Black Mambo airship, and pulling the elite guard from the Families in to a central staging point cannot be done quickly. Tettidora will be able to help with speed but…” “...logistics are a brutal mistress, and she might have to sustain a campaign.” Luna sighed. “And Penumbra didn’t even have to sabotage it. Not, I suspect, that that was in her power.” “Whatever she wants the Crystal Heart for, they can only undo it after she’s acted,” Nightmare said. “We have to assume she has a way to get the Heart.” “We need to know how, and what her purpose is.” Luna tapped her hoof on the ground. “And it just so happens she left us a way to find out.” “Your Highness, I don’t think you understand…” “You’re right, I don’t,” Luna said. “But I understand that we’re dealing with an ancient magi, with an even more ancient nightmare perched on her shoulder, who has just dragooned two thirds of the most powerful artifact we know of into keeping her company, and is certain that another terrifyingly powerful artifact will serve her purposes. I don’t see an alternative, Princess Thalia.” “Countess.” Thalia sighed. “Well, fuck. I suppose we’ve got some books to read.”