The further Magpie led him; the more impressed Silver became. It wasn’t just that she knew where to take him to avoid exposing them to the hundreds of ponies working in the skytowers, but also the simple reality that she had made it so far entirely on her own. Magpie was half the size of a modern stallion, and made sounds like glass whenever she moved. He wouldn’t have imagined something like her even could hide.
She clearly hadn’t snuck past every obstacle—outside his cell was a hallway, and at the entrance, a pair of soldiers lay limply in their armor, bleeding out onto the stone. “You did this without getting caught?” he asked. “I thought you didn’t…” He glanced towards her, and could clearly make out the shape of her rifle under her robes. But could she have fired a gun in close quarters without getting the wrath of the Lunar Army called down on them? “I thought you didn’t know how to fight.”
She shivered, pulling up her hood. “I served in the Nightmare’s service for… a long time, Silver. I’m a thief, I didn’t know how to kill. I didn’t want to. The Nightmare didn’t let me choose. When you swear, your choices aren’t your own.” She stared down at the dead for a few seconds more, then hurried past them. Silver followed, turning with her. They dodged a large doorway probably leading to a central hall, and instead she stopped in front of a tight ramp, tucked away in the corner and surrounded with pipes.
“Service ducts,” she said. “Lesser ponies who keep the city running use it. You might have trouble fitting.” She ducked under a broken piece of fake wood, then began climbing up. Silver followed, and discovered almost instantly she’d been right. He would’ve been able to slide through without too much difficulty, assuming he hadn’t had any armor. With it, he had to squirm and wiggle to get in, and the ramp itself required deliberate steps. There was a slim opening directly in the middle, and he could see down it all the way to darkness far below. At least being so large meant he wouldn’t be falling.
There was a terrifying distance above them, though it couldn’t be more than a hundred meters or so. A long way to climb when one of his back legs barely worked, and the alarm might be going off any second. “If you come with me, Magpie… you’re probably going to fight again. You could die.”
“Yeah,” she answered, in a similar whisper. Just because he couldn’t hear any activity through the walls didn’t mean there weren’t ponies close. Maybe they were asleep, maybe they were hiding in ambush and just waiting to attack. “Guess so.”
“I thought you didn’t want to die for Moonrise,” he said, as neutrally as he could. “Didn’t you tell me dying for something was stupid? We only have one life, so… all we can do is make it last as long as possible?”
She didn’t answer for a several moments, long enough for them to reach the top of the ramp and begin crawling through a tight stone tunnel. It was so narrow at points that he nearly had to teleport to make it through. If it got much worse he’d strip the suit—which would be great for movement, but not so great if he had to fight again. Given his day so far, that seemed likely. He kept the alien gun levitated behind him, ready to use at a moment’s notice. But so far, they’d seen no one here. Just lots of rusty pipes, dripping moisture. It was too hot for frost.
“I’ve had a long life,” Magpie eventually said. “A good life. I can afford to take a few risks for the right cause.”
He wanted to embrace her right there, but the tunnel was too tight. Instead, he almost cried. “Thanks.”
The tunnel ended with another section of fake wall. Silver felt the cold through it, even if it didn’t hurt him. They must be near the surface now. Maybe an airlock? “It will be guarded,” Magpie said. “Watch my back. I don’t want to get shattered by some dumb soldier. If I go, it’s gonna be dramatic. Explosions, flames… not getting dropped off a table during a fancy dinner.”
She crawled out, and Silver rushed to follow, leading them to a large hallway cut in the rock lined with little doors on either side. In a single terrible flash, Silver realized he recognized this place. He could still remember cowering here, watching as his last living parent was led into an airlock, never to return.
There was a special exit up here, it was the one they used to murder ponies.
He’d been young, but not so young that he couldn’t remember. “There’s a guard post around the corner,” he whispered. “Can’t we go another way?” That wasn’t why he wanted to find another exit, but of course Magpie wasn’t going to just accept his reasoning. She rolled her eyes, then started fumbling with her robes. “You won a duel with Flint, and now you’re afraid of a single guard post?”
He lifted the rifle up in front of himself, checking it compulsively for damage. There was none of course, and no obvious excuse to get them to change directions.
They crossed around the corner in a single blur of motion, with Magpie’s gun already up. There was one waiting guard at the desk, a bat bent over a stack of papers with boredom on his face.
“Stop where you are, or I shoot,” Magpie said, thrusting the edge of the gun towards him. She held it so well, balanced over one shoulder like an expert.
The pony jolted for the wall, smacking up against a round metal disk. It began echoing, a shrill ringing that made Silver fold his ears flat. Then there was a harsh, echoing crack, and the soldier fell dead.
“Brave,” Magpie said, expression strained. “Looks like we aren’t the only ones willing to die for something today.”
They ran past the empty desk, reaching an airlock with rusty machinery clogging a relatively narrow passage. Silver concentrated for a moment, but this time the air-shield came easily. He’d had weeks of practice with it, after all.
He could hear hooves pounding up distant stairwells as the door finally shut behind them, and the little airlock hissed. By the time he could finally see motion approaching them from behind, the doors opened, letting them out onto the surface.
Silver hurried out, stopping only long enough to levitate a large rock from nearby and prop the exit door open.
“Clever,” Magpie muttered, nodding towards the rock with approval. “At least they have to wait until they think of getting a unicorn to come up here and levitate it out of the way.”
Of course the surface was dark. That was the entire reason ponies down below were suffering so much. “Do you think the light on your armor still works?” Magpie asked, after they’d been walking through the gloom for a minute or so. “I can’t see much out here. I used to have the best buckin’ night vision around, but… this annoying little unicorn kid took it away. Maybe you know something about that.”
He glared sidelong at her, then reached down towards the lamp with a hoof. He wasn’t going to like what it showed him if it worked, he just knew it.
The lamp came on immediately, a spotlight that lit up at least a hundred meters of lunar surface. The landscape was hilly here, broken with frequent piles of rubble and occasional low stones. This wasn’t the surface beside Vanaheimr—there was no untouched regolith here, only somewhere thousands of hooves had walked.
“Oh buck,” Magpie whispered. “Those aren’t rocks.”
It took a few more seconds for Silver Star’s eyes to adjust. As they did, he saw that Magpie was right. They weren’t rocks, they were corpses.
Obviously they hadn’t walked so far from the city on their own. If they were just left to die at the airlock, they probably would’ve left a pile of corpses directly at the door, pounding against the return door for a few seconds before they succumbed to the void.
“When they kill a pony out here, they… use a unicorn honor guard, who can cast an air shield like this one. They walk you out, then… take the spell away. Even earth ponies die so fast, they don’t have to shoot them.”
Magpie kept pace with him, walking slowly through the single clear path between the rubble and fallen bodies. There might be hundreds of them out here, some much older than Silver himself. There was no easy way to tell how long a corpse had been here. Yet they were never buried, a grisly reminder of what happened to those who upset the ruling orthodoxy.
“Didn’t they kill your family this way?” Magpie asked quietly. “Does that mean…”
He’d seen more of death in the crypt caverns, where ponies were left to decompose and eventually return their nutrients to the soil that Moonrise needed to grow. He’d seen bones, skulls, and bodies in various stages of decomposition. Few of these looked so bad.
“Yes,” he answered. “My mother… I don’t even remember her. I know she must’ve loved me, but… even Dad didn’t talk about her much. I don’t know if she’s up here. But my father is, somewhere.”
He stopped abruptly, clutching suddenly at his chest. Off to one side, beside a large pile of broken stones, he saw flashes of silvery fur, and a fallen metal crutch. It could be somepony else, surely Argent Star wasn’t the only pony with bad legs who had been executed up here. But Silver knew it was him, deep down in his chest.
“When this is over, I’ll come back for you,” he promised. “For all of you.” He didn’t want to look too closely, to see the strange mixture of vacuum mummification and the constant heating and cooling of the harsh lunar cycle. It wouldn’t be kind to the dead, he was sure of that.
Something nudged his shoulder—gently enough, but so unexpectedly that he nearly jumped. But it was just Magpie, looking sad. “Silver, the dead can’t hear you. I’m sure he’d want you to worry about the living.”
“Right.” Silver had to force himself to move, but he managed. He lifted stubborn hooves, trudging away from the place of death and towards something that was only an outline on the horizon.
The Lunar Palace was some distance away, so much taller than the surrounding hills that he could see its outline in the stars it blocked. Yet compared to anything in Moonrise, the structure seemed tiny. It wasn’t even as tall as one of the skytowers, though it was wider. A castle unto itself, built from blocks of lunar stone.
What’s the point of it, anyway? Almost nopony can live up here. The princess can’t keep plants, she probably can’t even eat a meal up here without protecting her food with a shield.
They left Moonrise behind, crossing to a low slope leading away from the city. At least there were no more bodies here. There was no rubble here either, and all the craters had been filled in. How many thousands of hours of labor had been wasted on something so pointless? Was this how the Lord Regent bought the princess’s favor? Stroking her ego with stupid things?
Silver felt it before he saw it, a sudden roar of power blasting towards him from beneath. It might’ve been from the princess, or maybe some defensive spell placed outside the castle to ward away intruders. It did make sense for the Princess of Nightmares to be hostile to those who approached uninvited.
Silver shoved suddenly against Magpie, pushing them both away from the center of the spell to roll into the sand.
The spell finished moments later, a crack of sound echoing through Silver’s air-bubble. The spell rumbled and shook, as another bubble touched it from within. If it had been his own invention, the spell probably would’ve failed in a single terrible instant. But these air-shields were ancient magic, designed for all sorts of scenarios. The bubbles combined, expanding around a large chunk of the barren expanse.
Three figures appeared before them, armor gleaming white in the reflected light of Silver’s spotlight.
Regent Rockshanks was in front, his body covered not in air armor, but something far stronger. It was the Lord Commander’s Armor, the ancient possession of all Lord Commanders before him. An impervious set of armor, left over from the war against the Sun Tyrant herself. His face was covered in a newer helmet, made of a single piece of True Lunarium hammered and shaped around his head, with wicked spikes along his horn. It was painted the same, yet Silver felt no magic from it. Just metal, compared to the powerful artifact that otherwise protected him.
Rockshanks was flanked with two of his bodyguards, or… warmages was probably more accurate. One was panting from the effort of the teleport, dropping a heavy bundle of paper to the sand in front of him. Coordinates, perhaps? The other seemed better off, her horn still glowing even now as she maintained the shield.
“You escaped a stasis spell,” Rockshanks said, his voice furious. “That’s impossible. Nothing imprisoned can escape.”
Then his eyes settled on Magpie, who was just then getting up beside Silver. Her hood had fallen in the shuffle, revealing a face transparent enough to reflect starlight. “Oh. Now that’s… unexpected. What kind of demon did you conjure?”
The Lord Regent didn’t carry a rifle, but a sword, its blade black enough that the spotlight didn’t touch it. He couldn’t even look directly at it without his eyes getting sore from the pressure, and him looking away compulsively.
“A Voidseeker,” Magpie answered. She didn’t sound like a child, but her stubby legs didn’t go very far to suggest otherwise. “I’ve been watching the way you ruled in the last year, stallion. Let me tell you I was not impressed.”
Rockshanks laughed, his voice echoing strangely in the air-bubble. “I have seen the honored Penumbra, on my visits to the princess. I don’t know what the buck you are, but it isn’t a Voidseeker.”
All humor vanished from the Lord Regent’s voice, and his eyes hardened. “You will not trouble the princess. You have already threatened the safety of Moonrise. She would only kill you the instant you arrived. That will not happen. You killed my inferior, Silver Star. I claim my right of challenge for this insult. You will fight me. You want to rule Moonrise? Now is your chance to try.”
Silver reached down with his magic, lifting the alien rifle from the dirt and brushing away the gray sand. It was apparently strange enough that the regent didn’t immediately recognize it, though it did share some similarities with a rifle’s basic shape.
“You murdered my father, Rockshanks. You ignored my victory against Flint. Are you seriously expecting me to care about our laws? I claimed Flint’s office by conquest using those traditions. You don’t honor them.”
The regent didn’t answer, lunging for Silver in a blur of purple and black metal. There was no time to think, no time to react.
Silver pulled the trigger, and the alien gun fired. Time slowed, and he watched little bands of light form around the weapon, all dust and debris instantly dislodged from it. Its sides opened, revealing a pulsing, thrumming heart that beat in time with Silver’s own. The barrel split into three pieces, opening wide until they encompassed the regent’s whole body.
A roar echoed through the bubble, louder than any mounted gun. The regent took the blast directly to his chest, where the armor’s protection was the strongest.
Enchanted metal exploded, trailing thaumic blue and purple as they fizzed out in all directions. The blast continued straight through, approximately one meter. Through the breastplate, into the regent’s chest. Silver shielded his face with a hoof as blood and worse exploded from the impact, and the pony that had been the regent stopped being shaped like a pony anymore.
When he finally looked back, there was something worse on the lunar sand than any of the prisoners he’d marched to their deaths.
The late regent’s bodyguards looked on in horror, armor misted with blood and bits of other things. The mare finally opened her mouth, anger coming through her shock. “You can’t… you broke the… you can’t use a gun in a duel.”
The gun in question clicked back together, only a faint glow left from the barrel. It was apparently the only thing in the bubble that didn’t have bits of the regent on it. Silver pointed it slightly to the side, squarely at the other unicorn. He knew from experience how hard it was to teleport while holding a bubble intact. That other pony, though…
“When you return to Moonrise, you will go straight to the core and return heat to the lower city. If you do not, you will get the same as your regent.”
Then he turned, leaving the body of Moonrise’s tyrant steaming on the lunar surface. Both of those ponies were armed, some part of him expected an attack. Would he have to use the terrible weapon again?
After a few seconds more, he felt the shutter as the volume of his air-shield shrunk abruptly. A teleport didn’t break it, the excess air just scattered harmlessly out the edges and away onto the surface.
Magpie hurried to catch up with him, glancing sidelong at the rifle more than once. “Stars above,” she said. “Polestar wasn’t lying, that place really is an armory.”
Silver nodded. He settled the strap back around his shoulder, letting the gun hang there. There was still some hope he wouldn’t need to use it on the princess. “Feels like it was made to break down castles, not kill ponies.”
“A weapon of the gods.” Magpie didn’t say more for a long time, until they’d actually reached the massive castle doors. They were several times a pony’s height, made entirely of wood. It had warped and scorched in the heat and cold of the lunar surface, though a Lunarium frame held it together. “We could still turn around. The story of what you did, breaking that armor… maybe it’s enough.”
“No,” he said, patting the gun with a hoof. Silver wasn’t sure if it was him or the Polestar speaking then. If it was the latter, he no longer cared. “We’re not leaving this unfinished. The princess is going to help us fix this, or…”
The massive doors began to rumble, entirely of their own accord. Then they swung inward, moved by powerful magic.
Together, they stepped inside.