//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 - The Tower // Story: The Tower of the Fallen Star // by Raleigh //------------------------------// Celestia and Baron Redblood strode down the wide boulevards lit by glowing orbs suspended by tall poles, which banished much of the night.  On all sides, the towers, temples, and palaces Celestia had only glimpsed from the lower city glittered in the wan moonlight - golden domes, ivory spires, marble pillars, and silver arches.  She saw gardens with exotic flowers imported from all across the known world, shrines tended to by grim-faced priests in crimson robes, and intricately-carved marble statues of unicorns she had no hope of recognising.  Even the air smelt sweeter here, as though perfumed. Celestia did her utmost not to look impressed by the gaudy wealth, but the knowing grin on Baron Redblood’s face told her she had failed. The Tower of the Vizier stood out amidst the elegant ivory forms as a dark monolith that towered over its neighbours, as if trying to establish some sort of dominance over them.  The two made their way towards it, across the wide, empty streets, and all the while Redblood’s visible unease about his proximity to that tower became more and more apparent. “It’s a lovely evening,” he said.  Celestia and Cimmareians in general were not ones for idle small talk and most of their journey had been undertaken in silence.  “The unicorns have outdone themselves tonight.” She looked up, away from the opulent surroundings, to the same sky shared by rich and poor pony alike, civilised and barbarian.  The full moon shone down brightly upon them, as did the myriad stars that speckled the oppressive black, such that it almost obliviated the need for streetlights.  A barbarian like her would have learnt to allow her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and where necessary her other senses - hearing, smell, touch, taste - would compensate, while civilised ponies flocked to their torches and magic lights. “It was almost on time too.” “Why wouldn’t it be?” asked Celestia. “Raising the sun and moon each day uses a lot of magic,” said Redblood, “and finding enough volunteers to give up their magic is a very unreliable system, if you ask me.  Ah, we’re here!” The tower rose before them; a tall, slim, black pillar that, from their vantage point near its base, seemed to stretch up to touch the night sky itself.  Now closer, and illuminated somewhat by the dim lights of the street below, Celestia could see rippling veins of gold and silver cross-crossing its surface.  A stone wall, three times as high as a unicorn, surrounded its base.  Where they stood at the street just outside, they were confronted by a plain iron door, and the simplicity of which, contrasted with the delicately filigreed gates of the neighbouring palaces, seemed to make clear its occupant’s desire not to have visitors. “Well,” said Redblood.  He shuffled awkwardly on his hooves.  “I hope you won’t be too offended if I just leave you to it, then.  If you make it out alive, my palace is open to you, what’s left of it.” With that he nodded his head, turned on his hooves, and galloped into the night without looking back, leaving Celestia alone there in front of the tower.  Standing there she looked over the tower, its walls, and the streets around her.  There appeared to be no guards as the whore had said, at least, not pony ones that could be seen.  Indeed, where before she had passed watchponies on patrol, around this tower there were none that she could see.   Celestia had come this far already, but here was the point of no return.  She approached the iron door and, ignoring what that stallion had said about the Vizier not welcoming visitors, knocked on it.  The sound cut through the still of the night, but there was no answer.  She had hoped, despite what everypony else had told her that night, that this could be done in a manner she thought that civilised ponies would approve of, but as she waited, the ringing sound fading from her ears, she realised that the more direct method was needed after all. There were bushes and shrubs along the wall, and in contrast to the well-manicured lawns she had seen thus far, these were overgrown.  She crept cat-like over to them, her hooves curiously silent even on the stones, and, reaching the base of the high wall, looked up at them.  A unicorn might have been dwarfed by it, but she, a giant amongst ponies, found that she could quite easily rear up on her hindlegs and place her forehooves on the very top.  She glanced around, and, seeing that there were still no guards visible, or indeed ponies at all, pulled herself up and over the wall. She dropped down amidst the bushes on the other side.  Immediately before her, a pony reared up with a sword in his mouth to bring down upon her head.  On reflex, Celestia darted to the side, drew her immense metal slab of a sword from its scabbard to swing and- The pony hadn’t moved.  Celestia stopped.  She placed her sword on her right shoulder, holding the mouth guard with her hoof to keep it steady, and cautiously approached the stone statue.  It was stunningly life-like, and not at all like the idealised forms of the marble statues she had seen before.  A brazier burned nearby and illuminated the figure, and she could see carved into the solid stone every wrinkle in the pony’s clothes, every strand of his coat, and even the raw terror in his eyes.  Sniffing it, she could even detect a very faint scent of pony. Celestia tore her gaze from this peculiar statue, and looked around to see that the garden in which she stood was full of these statues.  Each was unique in appearance and pose - a unicorn mare poised to cast a spell, a pegasus spreading his wings to take flight, an earth pony halfway through drawing a sword from its scabbard, and so on - but one thing they all had in common was an expression of fear so vividly rendered in the medium of stone.  The icy, primal fear of a threat out there that she did not understand gripped her heart. She crept between these statues, at once fascinated and disturbed by their intricate detailing, though she could not put a hoof on why she found them to be so unnerving.  Across this small garden was the base of the tower itself, and when she reached the wall she followed it, sticking to the shadows where she could.  As she tried to remain hidden, she mentally kicked herself for not asking Baron Redblood for some ash with which to dull down her white coat and pink mane and tail.  This had all been a spur-of-the-moment thing, entirely unplanned, and though her stubborn nature would not allow her to consider the idea she might have been wrong, it did occur to her, as the branches snagged at her coat and scratched her skin, that perhaps she might have benefitted from an hour of planning.  Still, it was too late, and she could only press on. The tower itself was wide and seemed to narrow towards the pinnacle, though that might have been the distortion of perspective.  Eventually, following its rounded surface led to a door in the smooth, marbled wall.  It was tall, wide, and made of a dull, patina’d gold.  A short paved path in the grass led from the iron door in the outer wall to this entrance.  Still seeing no guards, Celestia stepped out in front of the door, and considered it.  A testing push with her nose found that it was locked. It was the pure, savage instinct of a barbarian that saved her.  Celestia sensed something behind her, though it made no sound.  She turned, and there, hidden in the bushes was the black shape of a creature the likes of which she had never seen before even in the deepest of Cimmareia’s forests.  At first she thought it was some sort of horrid serpent, yet its head was the wrong shape, appearing to be rounded, blunt, and possessing a beak and a crest.  There were wings too, like a dragon’s, spreading from its back. Tiny, hate-filled eyes glared at her.  Celestia’s hooves felt heavy, as though they were turning to lead.  She swung her sword in a wide arc, and the blade ripped through the bush, bisecting it and decapitating the creature.  Hot, stinking blood splashed onto her face.  The twitching corpse dropped to the ground in a pile of leaves and chopped branches, followed by its head, which she saw now resembled that of a chicken if poultry were capable of expressing such hate. The leaden, stiff feeling in her legs melted away.  Celestia moved her foreleg testingly, finding it still a little slow to respond, and on closer inspection there was a peculiar coating of stone dust on her coat.  From further away in this garden, she heard yet more hissing.  In the darkness, scores of red eyes stared. Celestia turned on her hooves and charged for the door at a full gallop.  A Cimmareian never runs from a fight, but a fight as she understood it was a fair contest between ponies where the winner won through strength or cunning.  This was sorcery, and there was no shame in a warrior fleeing from the soul-sucking horror conjured by the most depraved of unicorns. Using the full momentum of her charge, she turned her head out of the way and slammed her shoulder into it.  The lock broke and the door swung open wide, revealing a grand entrance hall filled with light.  Celestia stumbled in, all but tripping on her own hooves to arrest her momentum.  She dropped her sword to the floor, seized the door with her hooves, and slammed it shut behind her with a ‘bang’ that echoed through this cavernous room.  Heart pounding, sweat streaking over corded muscles, she held that door shut until the feeble banging of those abominations on the other side faded and stopped. There was silence, save for the pounding of blood in her ears and her own ragged breathing.  Celestia turned and slumped to her haunches, resting her back against the door, and looked around at the chamber. The circular hall was a riot of bright colour, such that Celestia thought perhaps her vision had been cursed by those strange creatures.  The floor at her hooves was a colourful mosaic of tiny stones, with a yellow path winding this way and that over a field of greens and blues, and which terminated at another golden door at the other end of the room.  Here and there, standing apart from this snaking path, were pedestals, and upon each were huge jewels, marble carvings, and other curios.  The walls were resplendently painted, depicting unicorns of all colours in a city engaging in various activities - bartering, working, sleeping, playing, and so on.  The ceiling was a high dome, and painted so that one half depicted the sky during the day, with a stylised sun and clouds, and the other at night, with a full moon and a field of stars.  She gathered that this was a reception room of sorts designed to impress visitors, and on that account, at least, she thought it worked. Closer to where she sat against the door were a number of sofas, the sort decadent unicorn fops like Baron Redblood liked to drape themselves across, or so she’d heard.  Celestia rose up to her hooves, and while keeping a wary eye on the door, dragged one of the sofas over to block the door.  The scraping noise of its golden feet on the polished stone mosaic filled the entire chamber with its echo.  Celestia was not satisfied that it would hold the creatures indefinitely, but it would keep them for as long as required.  It would have to do. There was nopony to greet her.  From what she had picked up of grand unicorn palaces there should be servants, ponies employed to do the menial work of others too important and lazy to do themselves, rushing to take her cloak, give her drinks, and run for their master.  But here there were no ponies, but she could not shake that primal sensation, bubbling up from her warrior’s instinct, that she was still being observed somehow. Celestia picked up her sword and returned it to its scabbard for now.  Anxiety knotted in the pit of her stomach as she picked her way along the yellow path, the sound of crude horseshoes on the delicate stone ringing through the hall, that unnamable, superstitious instinct of hers telling not to stray from it.  The gems and jewels on the pedestals scintillated in the light as she passed them -- a golden chimera seemed to burn with inner fire, a diamond as large as her hoof refracted her reflection a thousand times over, and a jade dragon was so skillfully crafted she thought it might come alive and attack her.   Each of these items would have bought her one of those big fancy houses, she thought, and it was certainly tempting to just wander from the path and take one.  She carried on, but the urge scratched at the back of her mind.  Her funds were rather low, and while she could always get a few coins by doing odd heavy lifting jobs for ponies at the docks, among other profitable and often less-legal ventures where her strength and size were assets, she was certainly tempted by the promise of never having to worry about paying for ale again. One item, however, caught her eye as she almost walked past it.  An exquisite carving of two ponies engaging in a certain activity she had indulged in twice that night.  She stopped and stared at it, entranced by the sheer, wondrous skill of the carver to have created such a perfect, artistic depiction of her favourite thing to do in the world.  Even from such a distance, she could make out the pure ecstasy of two loving ponies captured at their moment of culmination.  Celestia wanted it, and so much so that she wandered off the path that had hitherto guided her safely halfway to the door. Celestia approached to within hoof’s-reach of the carving, seeing it revealed in greater and greater detail as she came closer to it - the musculature of the stallion, the soft curves of the mare, the way their manes were carved to appear matted with sweat, the detail on his… The floor beneath her hooves gave way, as though it just ceased to exist, and Celestia’s hindlegs dropped through the trapdoor.  Her stomach lurched violently.  Her forelegs scrambled for purchase on the smooth mosaic tiles, only slowing her descent through the pit until it simply stopped.  She looked down to see that her rear end had blocked a hole that a normal-sized pony would have just about slipped down.  The sides pinched rather painfully around her muscular flanks. A dart flew from an unseen gap in the wall and struck her in the hoof.  It stung, but no more than her embarrassment at being saved from death by her large backside.  Examining it, she saw that it was a tiny thing, no bigger than a wasp, but she could see a vial emptying some foul green liquid into her body.  She ripped it off, but the damage was done; the pinprick was tiny but the skin under her coat had started to take on a sickly green hue, and her hoof began to feel numb and lifeless. Stupid.   She had let her guard down, and for what?  Mere base lust over a pretty little trinket.  If her mother could see this she would be ashamed; she was raised to be a better warrior than this.  A warrior this stupid was useless.  No, worse than useless: a danger to her tribe.  No wonder she had to leave.  A big, stupid, useless, horny, drunk giant, who was going to die with her arse stuck in a hole because she was too inattentive to see the obvious and too fat to escape before the poison took her. No.   Heat rose from her breast and seemed to suffuse her entire body.  She whipped her head to the left to see the golden door that led to the rest of the tower, beyond which lay the answers to a question she had momentarily forgotten.  All she knew now was that she wanted it more than anything.  Snarling with the effort, her thick, corded muscles strained as she dragged herself, inch by inch, out of that tiny pit.  The edges scraped painfully against her flanks, leaving ragged, bleeding cuts, but she felt the pain only in a distant, abstract manner. Freed, Celestia stormed defiantly to the door, never taking her eyes off it.  A quick buck tore it from its hinges and sent it flying down the corridor beyond.  Not slowing for a moment, she passed the unconscious form of a manticore -- knocked out by the metal door striking it directly on the forehead. Celestia found a flight of stairs leading up.  The Vizier lived at the top of the tower, she reasoned, so up she went.  She tore through the corridors and rooms.  A hail of arrows from one end of the hallway passed harmlessly between her legs, being aimed to strike an average pony in the chest.  She leapt through a room of flames and paused only to discard her burning cloak.  Her coat was singed and her skin smarted with the heat, but she pushed on.  A jolt of lightning cast from a spire in the next room only tingled, sloughing off her skin and re-directed through her wings to the ground.  She didn’t stop to question it. Only when she reached a small ritual room, many levels up from where she started, did Celestia stop.  The tiredness that adrenaline and simmering rage had held back came flooding in, like the banks of a river during one of the very many rainstorms of her native land.  She staggered in, sucking in deep breaths of the stale air in this tower, and finally allowed herself the opportunity to rest a moment. Compared with the rest of the tower she had seen, this room was thoroughly modest.  The walls were bare grey stone, though the flickering candles in sconces on the walls seemed to deepen the cracks and fissures between them.  At its centre was a font, with a shallow indentation about the size of a soup bowl.  There was a plain wooden door at the far end, made of a thick and sturdy oak that was reinforced with iron bars.  It lacked a handle, lock, or any obvious way of opening it save for pushing.  Across its surface floated symbols that Celestia failed to recognise. It was quiet here, so Celestia retreated into a corner to take stock of her situation.  Her saddlebags had been knocked about in her trek through the tower, but her canteen of water and oatcakes were still perfectly usable.  She drank and ate as much as she dared, withholding some for later should she need it, and tucked the rest away. Celestia examined her hoof where the dart had struck her, holding the appendage up to a candle and turning it over in the light;.the tiny pinprick had scabbed over and her skin under her coat had returned to its soft pink.  There were many things that perplexed her about her own body: that she was stronger than most ponies was a given, it was obvious just looking at her tree-trunk limbs and barrel chest, and the wings and horn were still a mystery, but she had just survived things that would have slain even the mightiest warriors of her clan.  She wondered if she would truly find the answer to the question that had plagued her when she first noticed she was different from the other fillies and colts -- what am I? There would be no answers gained from sitting around.  Celestia could have benefited from a little longer to rest, but, despite her growing exhaustion, a sense of nervous eagerness put her limbs into motion.  She approached this door and rested her hoof upon its surface.  A gentle push revealed that it was shut solid, though she could feel the cold, lifeless surface almost imperceptibly begin to buckle when she pushed harder. The symbols shone brightly before her.  ‘Writing’, she had heard it being called; the civilised ponies liked to record thoughts, feelings, and stories with symbols drawn on parchment or carved into stone.  Nopony had thought to teach Celestia how to read, for there were very few ponies in the clan who could and she didn’t think that it was important that she learn anyway.  Knowledge was passed down by the simple telling of it and that seemed to work just fine for them.  So she stared at the words, recognising a few letters like ‘f’ and ‘d’ but unable to see how one could possibly convert these shapes into speech. Celestia inspected the empty font.  On closer inspection she saw a dark, rust-coloured residue at the very bottom and some soot caking the sides.  If she had to guess, some sort of ritual was required to open the door, but as she couldn’t read what she assumed were the instructions she was rather at a loss.  The memory of a few bratty unicorns laughing at her when they discovered she couldn’t read the sign to the privies in a roadside tavern bubbled up into her mind, and she felt a twinge of embarrassment. Embarrassment, which she harnessed into anger. Celestia backed up against the door.  She steadied herself, spreading her forehooves for support, head down low, and then lashed out with her hindlegs.  The great oak door shuddered under the impact with the sound of snapping wood, and two large cracks appeared in its surface.  The glowing letters flickered briefly. Most doors would have shattered under that, as the others she had left broken in her wake would testify.  She sucked in a deep breath, steadied herself once more, and bucked again.  The impact shuddered along her powerful hindlegs, seemingly reverberating into her bones.  The door lurched and the wood splintered, shattering two large planks to leave a rather modest hole. Celestia’s hindlegs ached.  It would have to do, so she kicked out a few of the loose planks and snapped off jagged edges to make a hole that she could just about squeeze through. Once on the other side with only a few more scrapes for her troubles, she found herself in yet another empty hallway with a door on the other end.  Celestia groaned in frustration, and stamped a hoof into the paved stone, leaving a modest crater of shattered marble.  This tower seemed endless, and without windows through which to glimpse the passage of the moon and sun she had no idea how long she had been trapped here.  Minutes, hours, days -- it had all become meaningless.  But with the stubbornness so characteristic of her clan she carried on, having gone too far to give up now. Where are the ponies? The thought was sudden and unbidden, but the realisation stopped her in her tracks.  From the moment she mounted the wall she had not seen a single living, breathing pony in this tower.  She at least expected to see slaves or servants whom she could interrogate.  Yet, despite this tower clearly having been inhabited by somepony to clean its chambers, dust its nick-nacks, and maintain its many deadly traps, she encountered absolutely no ponies here, and she could hardly imagine a very important pony like the Vizier doing all of those menial tasks himself.  Perhaps, she considered, they were all hiding from her, and judging from the minor trail of destruction behind her she could hardly blame them.  This tower was certainly expansive enough for it, and she wagered that, from what she had seen, the entirety of her clan would only occupy a quarter of the total space of this tower with more than enough space to accommodate each family. If anything, what she had travelled through in this tower felt like far more space than what she had seen from the outside would allow.  In her rampage through the lower levels she was hardly taking stock of her position, as a hunter of monsters stalking the gloomy forests should, but it occurred to her, as she crept on through this maze of corridors, that she had been travelling rather more horizontally than she expected.   She came to a set of ivory doors inlaid with ice-blue diamonds.  Cautiously she pressed her hoof against the door, and to her quiet surprise it silently swung open.  Celestia stood at the threshold, poised to unsheathe her sword and fight or flee, as the room beyond was revealed inch by inch.  She saw a large and homely bedchamber; the walls were packed with shelves heaving with books and parchment scrolls, the floor was marble as white as the full moon and partly covered with rugs of deep blue and purple.  The air here no longer tasted cold and stale, but was fresh, sweet, and smelt faintly of lavender.   Celestia’s gaze settled on a bed at the far end of this long, rectangular room, draped with purple bedsheets, but atop it rested a unicorn with her legs folded under her body, reading an open book propped up on a pillow.  Her coat was grey-blue and her mane and tail a light azure.  She wore a shimmering black silk robe that draped elegantly over her slight, slender frame. The mare looked up from her book and saw the towering Cimmareian standing at her door.  An expression of alarm flashed momentarily over her aquiline features, before they settled into a polite smile.  The book was shut with a soft thud.  She rose from her bed and approached, while Celestia stared in quiet amazement, and said in a clipped, refined voice: “Hello, my name is Luna.  What’s yours?”