Duskmaker

by I-A-M


Chapter 4

On a quiet street on the outskirt wards of the city called the Crystal Empire by those ponies who had forgotten that the so-called Empire once spanned significantly more than a single frigid metropolis, a vagrant sat silently in the shadows of an empty alleyway.
He wore a ragged brown cloak that was torn and shredded by time, wind, and poor care. He was not the only one on the street, but he was certainly the most notable, were there anyone capable of noticing him.
Hundreds of crystal ponies walked up and down the street going to and fro to gods only knew where.
None of them paid any mind to the vagrant stallion they passed, despite his size. By any standard, he was enormous. He towered two heads taller than the largest pony walking the streets, and despite that, not a single one of the citizens of the Imperial Capital paid him the slightest mind. That was as the vagrant desired. He did not want to be seen, and so he was not.
Once upon a time, he had been stronger.
In those days he could have reached into their minds, snapped them like brittle ice, and reshaped those minds to his will.
Now… well, he might be able to manage it still, but it would tax him dearly and garner him nothing. No, the vagrant was satisfied with putting the slightest pressure on every mind that perceived him and whispering to those minds that they saw nothing. Just a frail old transient resting his bones in an alley shielded from the flurries of the cold north.
Curiously, none of them stopped.
The vagrant chuckled quietly to himself as he watched them walk by the beggar they thought they saw without a moment’s hesitation, and with their thoughts secretly bared to him.
Poor sod, someone should help him
Not my problem
Wonder what he did to deserve that
The vagrant’s lips twisted up derisively as he waited for the crowd to thin, then stood and began walking between the ponies of the Crystal Empire. He dragged his rear-left leg. It ached in the cold and moved stiffly, but it supported him fine enough so long as he didn’t lean so heavily on it.
Every mare and stallion moved around him, affording him the space that their minds were convinced he didn’t need, yet doing it all the same for some reason they couldn’t, and wouldn’t bother, to fathom.
The vagrant passed by a pretty young mare with a teal coat and sapphire eyes as he stepped inside of an apothecary. The moment he was inside, he let the world adjust to him.
The vagrant was gone and in his place was a stallion of modest means in the hood and robes of an academy professor who moved with an odd shuffle that suggested a bum leg.
If later asked, the patrons and proprietor might say the stallion had a dun coat, or maybe it was matte grey. But they would be quite sure that he was tall, or… no, wasn’t he a bit short, actually? He had brown eyes, though, certainly… or were they gold?
They might recall the limp.
None of them would remember a coat the shade of dark ash, or an obsidian mane, though. They would not recall a pair of eyes the color of blood-drenched rubies.
The professor— once a vagrant— paid for a small bundle of purchases, then tucked them beneath his cloak before bidding the proprietor farewell and turning to leave. He plodded between the shelves, past a pair of chatting ponies, and stepped past the threshold and out into the street, and he left the professor behind in the shop as he became a poor, overlooked vagrant once more.
One more stop and he could be quit of this miserable city for another moon, perhaps more.
His head ached along with his leg as he traversed the city. There were few places in the world he hated more than this one, but there was nowhere else to go where his existence would notably change, and at least he knew this city well enough to blend into it.
“The devil you know,” the vagrant mumbled.
A chuckle rumbled out of him as he made his way towards his next stop. The bookstore on the corner of the street he was on had a knack for picking up old finds. The owner of the shop had an eye for grimoires of good provenance, and the vagrant had taken up the hobby of learning the latest advances in the thaumic sciences.
Little of it was new to him, he’d realised. So much was lost in the Age of Chaos, then rediscovered, then lost again in the prevailing and so-called Age of Shadows.
The Nightmare Rebellions had, apparently, been the final nail in the scholarly coffin of magical research. The elder Alicorn had spent the coin of her grief on rage after banishing her sister, enacting Inquisition after Inquisition, uprooting every cult and two-bit warlock that had the misfortune to lay claw, paw, or hoof on a record of true power, whether that was a grimoire of proscribed arts, or something as simple as the first few syllables of some daemon’s name.
What passed for magical research and experimentation in this pale, lusterless age was a wretched thing. They studied simple, sterile topics, and the vagrant doubted there a single true artist of the subtle ways left among those supposed magi.
The vagrant ascended the two short steps off the street and into the bookstore on the corner of the street as the modest professor.
He spent an hour perusing the shelves, finding only a single volume worth purchasing in that time, and he took it, leaving the requisite bits on the counter with the owner along with another muttered greeting, and earning the usual ‘thank ye for your patronage’ as he left and became a vagrant once more.
Food, materials, ingredients, and a new book.
The vagrant had made his purchases and acquired his necessities, and while there was a bit more he could do in the city he had exhausted his reserves for dealing with the citizens of this colorless city.
Turning down the road, the vagrant walked along the shadows of one of the lesser roads to the main plaza and thoroughfare that led out into the frozen wastes where he was headed. Every step increased the throb of pain in his leg and skull, the latter was the worst, being a dull, heavy pressure that was settling ever deeper between his eyes.
Perhaps when he arrived ‘home’ he would brew himself a decoction that would knock him out rather than simply relying on his mental discipline and the arts of the mind.
As he made his way into the plaza, the vagrant stretched his mind across it, blanking his presence from each pony as they perceived him, the same as he had always done, except…
“What—?!” The vagrant stumbled, his bad leg going out from under for a moment as his mental sweep struck something utterly alien.
Something powerful.
Something… familiar.
The mind of the average pony was like candy floss against his will, easily distorting around the faintest breath of his power. This was like trying to bend cold iron with his teeth.
“You!”
The vagrant looked up, frustration and annoyance boiling up from his gut and through his throat as a pair of guards advanced on him. They hadn’t seen through the bulk of his veil, but his stumble had let their more vigilant minds perceive at least the shadow of the old stallion he had disguised himself as.
Layers upon layers upon layers.
They saw through the filter, and there was no putting that spilt wine back in the decanter, but the vagrant reached out and reinforced the image of the old stallion in their minds. A wretched old thing, penniless and homeless, perhaps they had some pity in them and would— 
“Move, vagrant!”
The butts of their spears jabbed painfully into his side and he stifled a grunt of pain as one of them jabbed at his back leg.
Then again, perhaps not.
On the other hoof, though, they were forcing him towards the outer wards and therefore the gate quarter. All he had to do was let them bully and hector him a little more and they would escort him, if a bit roughly, to the outskirts of the city.
“Get on you wretched—”
“Excuse me!” A mare with a coat like dull quartz and a mane like poorly mixed paints snapped as she stepped between the vagrant and the guards. “What’s going on? Has this stallion committed some crime?”
It took the vagrant only a heartbeat to realise who had come to his defense. He nudged her mind as gently as possible and there wasn’t even the slightest give. There would be no mind-twisting here, not with this one, this mind was older and just as strong as he recalled.
But there was a trick to her, he remembered.
It was like fitting a pick and torsion rod to the most complex lock imaginable, but the vagrant still recalled the pattern.
A twist of envy.
A turn of disregard.
The slightest pressure of melancholic nostalgia and—
“ACTIVIST?! I am no activist!
The image of a bitter old vagrant stallion settled over the ancient mind hiding beneath the visage of an unassuming mare just in time for that mare’s form to shatter like broken glass in a flash of power and rage.
“We are no activist,” the mare repeated, and a hush of awe fell over the plaza.
For a moment, the vagrant felt his own breath catch as the Alicorn of the Moon, Princess Luna of Equestria, the Mistress of the Night stood to her full height and unshadowed in her glory to tower over the two shaking guards.
“We art a Princess and were this kingdom mine the brace of you wouldst be stripped of rank, flogged in this very square, and then cast out in sackcloth to endure this ‘vagrancy’ you dost deride.”
A part of the vagrant wanted to remain.
Here there was still a flicker of that old, better light. Here there was still a thing of beauty, like pure silver yet untarnished by the passage of time and poor care. 
She was, he thought, just as beautiful as she had been the day she had killed him.
Stepping back, the vagrant let himself fade from the minds of the crowd as their full focus fell on the Princess and away from the pointless old transient who had angered the guard for existing in a place of refinement while lacking any of his own. He stepped away, just as heads turned skyward in time to see the last of the vapid and vacuous line of Cadenza descend on pretender’s wings.
The vagrant turned his back on the plaza and retreated into a nearby alley, waiting out the argument and admonishments. His arts were subtle ones and would work best once everyone had calmed and returned to their business.
So he waited, and watched, and while he did he watched her.
What a creature she was.
Luna.
The Goddess of the Moon.
The vagrant had always liked the moon better than the sun. It was less harsh on the eyes, and more beautiful to the soul. The moon was a subtle thing and its mistress no less so.
He was glad, in a way, that she was free of her dark prison. Glad at least that some glimmer of the past still shone through to this vain and barren age.
So he watched as she spoke to the guards, and spoke to the pretender, and then spread her beautiful wings before rising on conjured thermals. He watched as she wheeled about the plaza, looking over, and the vagrant’s ancient heart leapt in his chest as their eyes met once and briefly.
Just for a moment, and then she was gone, having seen only a broken old stallion.
As the vagrant turned and made his way out of the city, he let his mind wander to that age of war and blood. Everything was so much more hateful, so much more visceral, back then.
Was it better?
Likely not. Certainly not for the average pony. But things had a certain beauty back then that this world lacked.
He missed that.
The winds of the tundra howled as the vagrant reached the edge of the city, passed beyond the final pylons protecting the capital from the ravening fangs of endless winter, and stepped into the snowdrifts.
Words that were not quite words fell from his lips. They were the sounds of the mountains shifting in their sleep, and the groans of the bones of Equus as they settled with the passage of ages. With every word, the ground shifted beneath the vagrant, and every step took him a passage of kilometers away from the city.
Old magic, old words.
The vagrant knew many of them. Certainly he knew enough of them to make his life out in the tundra bearable if not comfortable.



Days passed, then a week, but the mare of the moon was still on the vagrant’s mind as he walked the ancient stone halls of his chosen home. It was a dark place that had played host to things best left out of mind if one valued their sanity.
Now it was a cold place whose cyclopean halls echoed only with the footsteps a timelost phantom that was content to rot away his remaining years in seclusion while the miserable world trudged onward into mediocrity.
He had found a new hobby at least.
The vagrant had taken to shaping the dark crystal of one of the large ritual halls. It had long since lost its mystic purpose now that the vast cults that once populated it were gone, but the crystal walls… those could still serve a purpose.
“More cerulean than teal, I think,” the vagrant said quietly to himself as he entered the ritual hall and paused before his latest work. “Yes… teal has too much green in it…”
The vagrant spoke a syllabic, shivering harmonic tone, and the vast swathe of crystal, almost six meters across, wavered as portions of the colors shifted and darkened. Yesterday he had risen certain deposits of brighter crystal to the surface on part of the mural to make the stars in her mane, but the colors had seemed off to him at the time.
After sleeping on it, he’d realised he’d been mimicking more oceanic colors, and while beautiful, they didn’t quite fit.
“Now… regalia…” the vagrant muttered as he let his eyes fall over her brow. “Silver, I think, silver always suited her best.”
Less was more with the Lunar Alicorn. Where her elder sister would be adorned with ostentatious gold and shimmering opals, the younger carried her beauty with her in the galaxies that swam in her mane, and the void between the stars that rested deep within her coat.
The rippling syllable that shifted and changed the crystal painted a simple circlet on the mare’s brow, just enough to tame her wild astral mane.
He was in the moment of considering whether or not he should add a small amethyst to the center of the circle at her crown when the ground shuddered beneath him. There was only the briefest moment of confusion before he felt a swell of ancient power flex within the air, and the taste of poison sunlight settled on his tongue.
“No, that’s impossible…” The vagrant turned and scowled towards the entrance to the sunken temple he had made his home.
 He moved as fast as his limping leg allowed him to, which was little more than a hobbled sprint whose questionable speed was only made up for by his immense stride. His mane of coal fell around him from beneath the dirty brown robe he was clad in that kept the worst of the cold out as he emerged from the temple, clambered up the steps, and alighted on a high drift.
In the distance, he saw it, and his stomach plummeted.
One of his greatest creations.
And his mightiest sins.
It spilled poison light from its flesh, boiling the snow away from it as it turned to look up at the moon-made-manifest that shone above its head like a star of ill omen.
She was alone.
Beautiful, but alone.
Mighty… but alone.
“Foolish,” the stranger muttered, his voice a grating, leonine rumble as he began limping forward. “But who is the greater fool, I wonder?”