Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky
Part V - Chapter 1: Servant's Respite
* * *
An acrid, sweet stench filled Sun's nose as the light from the teleportation faded, one that he immediately recognized from whatever knowledge Spike had imparted into him the night before. Looking down he saw that he was now fetlock-deep in murky, brackish water, or at least what he assumed was water. Wherever he was it was as dark as night, and making the sudden shift from a well lit morning left him dazed and nearly blind.
"Silence, you there?" Sun asked in his head. "C'mon, I could use some guidance here."
He received no response, even as he began to feel the rhythmic pulsing in the back of his head that normally signaled her presence. The beat in his head was slight, more subtle than normal, as if the connection they shared was tenuous at best.
"And I'm alone, figures," Sun groused to himself as he illuminated his horn. The silvery magic made for an adequate light, and when his eyes finally adjusted he found himself in as alien an environment as he had ever been in.
The water he was standing in was indeed murky, but in the presence of his magical light began to glow a faint teal green underneath him, with thin lines of light shimmering underneath the surface and tracing towards the numerous trees that surrounded him. The bark of the trees was smooth with small nodules of wood that ended in a blunt point surrounding their bases. Each of these nodules was tipped with a small teal light, and the lines under the water traced up the trees, creating swirling, irregular patterns on their bark. Moss hung low off of the trees, swaying gently in the slight breeze.
"It's better, at least, than being frozen or seared by the sun," Sun stated to nopony.
Noticing a small break in the tree line with a thicker band of lights running towards it, Sun started forward. The slosh of the water against his legs and the occasional snap of a branch pulling against his cloak were the only sounds that weren't inside his own head. He took time to mentally catalog the various plants he saw around him, from small trees with white nodules of salt hanging off of their leaves to large plumes of grass that snagged on his cloak and cut against his skin when he got too close to them.
He walked for seemingly hours, with only the lights in the water to guide his path, and after too long felt that he was getting himself lost following random strings of underwater lights. The nonstop beating in the back of his head was grating on his nerves as well, and he needed a place to rest his hooves.
Noticing a small protrusion of land off of the path of lights, Sun went to the side to take a rest. As soon as he left the path of lights they faded into the water, leaving him alone with the darkness and only his horn to prove that he wasn't lost in a stagnant void.
"What're you playing at, Silence?" Sun muttered to himself. "You tell me to come out here on my own, and then you stop talking to me and expect me to just move on without a clue."
"Hello?" a voice asked from behind Sun, one so small and demure that it almost wasn't there at all.
Whipping around, Sun brightened his horn enough to see a figure pushing their way through the brush. She was a pony, presumably female judging by the size and muzzle shape, who reflexively shut her eyes as he brightened up his horn. Her coat was a pale yellow, and her long, leaf-and-stick strewn mane was a similarly pale pink color.
"Who are you?" Sun demanded as he approached the stranger.
"Turn that down, please!" the mystery pony pleaded, shielding her eyes with her hoof. "You don't want the Shifters to see that, do you?"
"Answer the question," Sun reiterated, taking a few steps forward. "Who are you, and we'll go from there."
"My name's Fluttershy, I live just a little ways away!" the pony answered, sounding like she was on the verge of tears as she plopped down onto her backside. "Please, I just come here to collect moss!"
Feeling a twinge of guilt for having scared this pony so badly, Sun lowered the luminosity of his horn to just enough that he could still see Fluttershy. Peeking past her hoof with a big, dewey teal eye, she cautiously lowered her leg and scooted a few more feet back towards the tree line.
"I'm sorry if I scared you, but I have to be careful," Sun said, sitting down where he was standing. "I'm not sure if I'm welcome here or not."
"Nopony's been welcome here for a long time," Fluttershy said, her words coming in between heaving breaths. "I thought I was the only pony that lived here, if I'm going to be honest."
"There aren't any other ponies out here?" Sun asked, starting to feel a bit more worried.
"Not that I've ever seen, no," Fluttershy answered, eyes darting between Sun and the stand of trees to her left. "Just… just little ole Fluttershy, all by her lonesome in the swamp."
Just as Sun started to apologize, Fluttershy bolted to the the left, disappearing into the trees. Scrambling to his hooves, Sun darted after her, snagging his cloak on a few branches and falling face first into the swamp water as he chased after her.
"Wait, come back!" Sun called, lofting his horn up to shine a light forward. He could just barely hear her hoofbeats echo away through his waterlogged ears, and stumbled upright as he ran after her, following both the lines of lights and the wake she was leaving.
"I don't have anything you want, just leave me alone!" Fluttershy pleaded back.
"Please, I'm lost and you're the only pony I've seen since I got here!" Sun retorted. "I know we got off on the wrong hoof, but you just startled me!"
"If you're startled by me, then you won't last a second aga—"
Fluttershy's voice cut off, and Sun hoped that she hadn't gotten caught by any of the numerous underwater predators that he assumed were lurking off of the beaten path. He instinctually dimmed his horn at the very thought, and so didn't notice Fluttershy standing stock still in front of him until he had barreled her over and sent both of them plunging into the swamp.
Sun and Fluttershy both surfaced with a gasp, and he turned to face his quarry.
"Look, I'm sorr—"
He couldn't get his second apology out before Fluttershy slapped a hoof over his mouth, her gaze transfixed forward with pinprick pupils. Her whole body quaked, involuntary spasms that only seemed to be held in check by her sheer force of will. Turning to look where she was looking, Sun could understand why she was so frightened.
Hovering above the surface of the water a few dozen feet off was a creature that Sun could only describe as a bug-pony. It had a shiny black carapace that glinted and glittered in the dim light of his horn. Diaphanous wings on its shimmering teal back fluttered with such rapidity that he could only tell they were there but the low, droning buzz they let out. And topping it all off was a face dominated by two large, teal, compound eyes that shone with a slickness that made every facet shine like a gem. The creature buzzed and flitted about above the surface of the water, seemingly searching for something that it could not find.
Sun's gaze shot over to Fluttershy, who slowly gestured backward with her head. Taking care to not make any extraneous noise, they slowly started scooting backwards through the water, Fluttershy keeping her hoof on Sun's mouth as he slightly lit his horn to light their retreat.
It was with dawning horror that Sun saw the tracing teal lines in the water illuminate and trace towards the creature, who took notice and followed the lines all the way back to the pair of them. It let out a low, breathy hiss as it took notice of them, and Fluttershy leapt to her hooves.
"Run!" she screamed before bolting back the way they came. Sun didn't need to be told twice as he chased after her and away from whatever horror was behind him.
Sun felt his breath burning in his lungs as he swerved between trees and around bushes, his horn now fully illuminated since the need for stealth was all but lost. He was able to keep some pace with Fluttershy, but could see now that she was a pegasus and was using her wings to help gain a little extra speed by beating them in time with her strides. The horrific droning buzz behind him was starting to get closer and closer, and feeling his ill-timed confidence surge, turned to strike it down with a bolt of magic.
As the silvery beam shot out from his horn the bug-pony deftly dodged in midair, and followed by what could only be called a smirk, it was enveloped in a glut of teal flame that, when they receded, exposed a perfect copy of Sun, down to the scratches he had gotten from the cutting grass.
"What're you doing?! Run!" Fluttershy called to him. "That thing will kill you!"
"You get out of here, I'll hold it—!"
A searing lance of pain streaked down Sun's side, as white hot as the explosion in the mines, and Sun let out a cry of pain as he toppled into the swamp. His wound sizzled as his side hit the water, and before he could pull himself up a familiar hoof pressed his head down into the murky darkness. He rotated his eye to face the surface, and could see his own face, distorted though it was, staring back at him with a grim smile.
Feeling the energy surging inside of him, Sun let out a muted scream of defiance from under the water and shot a beam of magic directly at his own face. The creature didn't have time to react before its head was engulfed in silver light, and when it toppled into the water its head, his head, was little more than a charred skull.
Spent for energy and feeling his side burning all the more acutely, Sun passed out in the murky darkness, the last thing he saw being the faint teal glow all around him.
* * *
Fluttershy was, in a word, apoplectic. In the space of the last fifteen minutes she'd been threatened with death, chased through the dark by a unicorn with magic the same color as the lights from the Misty Vale, nearly been eviscerated by a Shifter, and then saw the same unicorn turn its skull into a chunk of burned wood with a blast of magic that then seemingly killed him from sheer exhaustion. The only question she had left to ask herself is why she was hauling this unicorn's body back to her hut in the hopes that she could save his life.
"Why can't you just leave well enough alone?" she whined to herself. "You have enough to take care of just by yourself, why didn't you just leave him in the swamp for the bugs and fish?"
Fluttershy had been muttering this mantra and many others like it as she slogged through the water back to her hut, the baskets strapped to her haunches laden with healing flowers and roots as well as some heavy moss to bandage the unicorn's wounds with. She'd just have to explain to everyone else why she was late and why she had a stranger with her, both of which were conversations she didn't feel nearly confident enough to have yet.
The first wave of relief hit her when she saw the familiar blue and green glimmering of the lanterns outside of her home, followed by another when she saw a few of her animal friends scurry out from the various cubbyholes and hastily crafted doors she had created for them over the years.
"Scale-Tooth, could you get a space ready in the living room?" she gently asked to a thirteen foot long crocodile that waddled towards her. "We have a guest tonight, and he needs some healing."
The crocodile let out a series of low hisses as well as clattering its jaw open and shut a few times.
"I know it's unexpected, but today's been… interesting, to say the least," Fluttershy answered. "If you do this for me, I'll make sure to catch you a big juicy catfish for dinner tonight."
Seemingly sated, the crocodile let another low grumble out from the depths of its throat as it scuttled back towards the house.
Several more of Fluttershy's animals followed in her wake, both pleased to see her and curious about the strange pony draped across her back. They chattered, chirped, hissed, and buzzed to each other in a cacophony that was starting to wear the single nerve she had left thin.
"Everyone, I know this is weird," Fluttershy said as she turned about face in front of the rough driftwood door, "but we have a guest who needs his rest tonight, so if you all could go back to your hutches, hovels, and hives for the time being I would very much appreciate it. I promise I'll explain it all tomorrow, okay?"
There was a general murmur of assent from the collected insects, mammals, and amphibians, who all hurriedly scrambled, hopped, and flew away as Fluttershy made her way inside, taking care not to knock the stranger's forehead on the frame. After what he had experienced, he certainly didn't need a blow to the head to complicate matters.
A sweet smell of lemongrass pervaded the main living space of the hut, and in the center of the room where normally her work table was instead was a flat reed-grass mat with a large pile of moss and feathers situated at one end. Scale-Tooth was just finishing the last touches on the moss when he saw Fluttershy come in, scooting backward with a look of awaiting gratitude.
"You did very good, thank you," Fluttershy said as she hefted the stranger onto the mat, keeping his wounded side up. She quickly rubbed the crocodile along his forehead before gentling shooing him out the door, leaving her to the stranger.
Taking care as she moved the burnt edges of the cloak away from his side, Fluttershy took a reflexive breath in as she saw his side. The edges of the skin where the Shifter's magic had hit him were curled back and blackened, while the underlying muscle was almost completely seared to the bone. Thankfully the heat had sealed the wound shut so that he wouldn't bleed out, but it was a very nasty injury that had a very high chance of getting infected after being submerged in swamp water.
Moving around the hut with speed she normally only reserved for her animals, she quickly tied her hair back with some woven vines, grabbed up a few pastes made from the local flora in small earthen jars, and a huge pile of moss and got to work. Gently rubbing the paste into his wounds, she began to chant the old, familiar words that her father had taught her when he passed the old craft down to her.
"From the earth comes life, from life comes pain, from pain comes wisdom, from wisdom comes age, from age comes death, and from death comes the earth."
Over and over Fluttershy chanted the words to herself, rhythmically rubbing the pastes into his wounds, and as it had so many times before the wound began stitch and heal itself. A soft squelch erupted from the wound as a spurt of blood hit the mat, being replaced by the salve as it created new muscle and skin to replace that which he had lost. Brushing any remaining paste off of her hooves and back into the jar, Fluttershy grabbed the moss and carefully layered it onto the wound. The salves would bind to it, and in a few hours her guest would be right as rain.
With a sigh of relief Fluttershy left the stranger on the mat, breathing slowly and rhythmically as her healing did its work. She had had a very stressful day, and tending to her animals would help put her nerves back together.
* * *
A creaking of wood roused Sun, who slowly flipped upright, expecting to feel a biting pain in his side but instead feeling a rhythmic, soft pulsing, like hooves gently massaging his skin. As his eyes focused up, he looked back to his wound and instead saw a sight that nearly made him vomit.
Where he had expected to see raw flesh or some kind of bandaging there was instead a grey-green, pulsating, slick mass plastered to the side of his body. It writhed and squelched in time with his heartbeat, and every pulse sent another small trickle of his own blood seeping out from underneath it where it was forming a small puddle.
"Please don't scream, if you would, I just got the possums to sleep," a tiny, familiar voice said to his right. Whipping around, Sun saw Fluttershy, now more visible with the illumination from a small fire in a pit on the far side of the room.
"What is this, what did you do to me?!" Sun demanded.
"It's healing your wound," Fluttershy answered, taking a step back towards the door she had just entered from. "You took a really bad hit from that Shifter, and this was the only thing I knew how to do to help, I'm sorry."
Sun looked back to the pulsating mass; for as viscerally disturbing to look at as it was, it didn't hurt, and as far as he could tell he was in better health than when he'd fallen under the swamp.
"Then… thanks," Sun said, "and I'm sorry for pretty much everything that's happened since you snuck up on me in the woods."
Fluttershy didn't say anything more, just stood by the door and did her best to avoid eye contact.
"I'm Setting Sun, if we're gonna redo our introductions," Sun continued, trying to prompt her to speak. "You said your name was Fluttershy, right?"
Fluttershy nodded her head weakly.
"Uh… do you know how long this is gonna take?" Sun asked, gesturing to the mass on his side. "I have to get to the Glowing Wastes, it's important."
Fluttershy's head shot up upon Sun mentioning his destination, and her knees started to shake in place.
"You can't go there, nopony goes there!" Fluttershy said, her breathing coming in sharp, short huffs. "The Misty Vale is forbidden!"
"Forbidden or not, it's where I'm going," Sun replied, bemused to get more of a reaction out of the now terrified pegasus. "I have to find somepony there, and it isn't hyperbole to say that the fate of Equestria could very well hang in the balance here."
"Look, I don't know what this 'Equestria' is, but you can't go out there!" Fluttershy reiterated, this time more forcefully and punctuating it with a stamped hoof.
"You don't know what Equestria is?" Sun asked back, rising to his hooves and narrowing his eyes. "You live in Equestria, everypony does."
"I don't live anywhere called Equestria, I live in the Magic-Flood Swamp," Fluttershy countered. "Did you come from this Equestria?"
"I did, but that would be a very long story to tell to you, and I have to keep movi—"
A particularly forceful pulse from the mass struck a memory in Sun's head, one of the sensations that Spike had given him, and he rubbed his chin as a plan began to foment.
"Say, how much longer is this thing going to take to work?" Sun asked. "If it's healing me then I doubt I'm in a fit state to go anywhere."
"It should only be an hour or so until it fully absorbs into your body," Fluttershy stated, "and if I'm being honest you could probably leave now if you'll just promise you won't go out to the Misty Vale."
"Then it looks like I've got an hour to convince you to let me go," Sun said, sitting back down. "This is going to be something of a cut down version of this story considering I don't really have a whole day to tell it, but everything I'm about to tell you is the complete truth as far as I know it."
Cocking her head curiously, Fluttershy sat down by the door, closing the latch with her teeth as she did.
"You have one hour, and I don't want to tell you your business, but you had better use it well."
* * *
A rhythmic pulse beat in the back of Silence's mind, one that she had come to expect and even relish in the last few weeks of the task that she had been bade. Sun had finally come to the Wastes, and with that her job was now finished.
Rising from her seated posture, her knees shaking and her chitinous wings hanging limp at her side, she shuffled her way across the hive, every hoofstep a struggle. She had given so much of herself to Setting Sun; her knowledge, her power, her will. Her legs, wings, and even her horn were now riddled with holes from the dispersal of her vital essence, a state that she found pride in. She was so much like her beloved queen now, and soon would be reunited with her.
The trip through the labyrinthine tunnels and walkways of the hive was grueling, but Silence's keen sense for her queen's position at all times was enough to see her to the end of her journey. All she had hoped to do was explain to Sun how much he had mattered to her in the end. He had given her a purpose that few drones like herself were ever given, and by serving him, she was able to most ably serve her queen.
The dull green glow from the queen's chambers filled Silence with a warmth that her kind found very rarely, an almost euphoric state that invigorated her enough to try and break out into a run. Her hopes of rushing in with news of her success where dashed, however, when she lost her footing and fell forward past the threshold and found herself too weak to rise back to her hooves again.
"My dear, precious drone, why do you carry on so?" asked the most soothing, sensuous voice she had ever had the pleasure to hear.
"I… this one has done its job most ably, your majesty," Silence replied, her voice quavering and weak from sheer exhaustion. "The unicorn has come, he is in the swamps to the east."
A quiet clatter of chitinous hooves against soft hive-floor grew steadily louder as her queen approached, and Silence found herself fortunate to see that their hooves were similarly marred indeed. A nimbus of bright green magic lifted Silence from the floor, her limbs and wings hanging limp even as her neck was gently held in place so that she could face her queen.
"Ah, you are the one called Silence," the queen stated, her globular green eyes scanning up and down Silence's form. "He gave you that name, correct?"
"He did, and now he is here, just as your majesty asked," Silence answered.
"You have been a most capable assistant, Silence, far more than your brethren. You may make a request of me, and if it is within fate's grasp I will grant it, for your aid to my cause."
"This one wishes only to serve," Silence answered, the warmth rising in her chest again. "This one has only ever wished to serve."
"Then serve you shall, until the cause is completed."
The magic encompassing Silence's body quickly shifted from green to that familiar, lovely silver that she had gifted to Sun, and with rhythmic beats and pulses she felt the vitality return to her body. She had done well, and in her return to the Heart she could rest after having served.
It didn't even hurt when she faded away, a final kindness from the queen that Silence knew loved her.
* * *