//------------------------------// // The Goddess Endures // Story: Imperial Forclousure // by The Sound of Loneliness //------------------------------// Tiny was allowed a few hours to rest from her training, so she spent that time under the deck, lying down and watching Daybreaker attempting to have a conversation with her other sister. Nightmare Moon was not interested, but she humored her sibling regardless, "Sister, you seem to acclimate rather well to your... situation," Daybreaker asked cautiously. She did not have much to do on the ship, mostly bossing the deckhands that came into her eye view. Tiny also overheard a crew leader saying that their presence raised morale and the crew is working harder to impress their high guests. "Why, dear sister, you do not think I was somehow unconscious during my absence, do you?" Nightmare Moon said lightly. "It seems that our afterlife is different from what ponies expect it to be. I met no one else but more of our sisters. I was distraught at first, but it passed easily." "What was it like?" "Well, imagine a vast sea stretching in every direction with no land in sight and only inhabited by more of our dear kin. Some of them are angry and resentful, others confused, even more, are simply sad and a few are content. They are all different in both their appearance and temperament. I met a few quite notorious personalities there, some even were our fellow royalty. King Guto must have had quite a lot of help in his reign, I must say. The sister that accompanied him would rival Twilight Sparkle in terms of raw intelligence. "The real wonder is underneath the sea, however. We cannot spend much time there, but while we are down there, the real world is showing us its glimpses. Only glimpses and of different times." "You could see the future?" Daybreaker breathed in wonder. "I suppose, although I cannot tell. It is unclear what it was I saw. I am certain I saw some of the past, I saw Celestia still in her court and Chrysalis... still breathing. But enough of that." "Sister, forgive me for prying, but did you, by any chance, see our creator, perhaps? I was always, let's say... curious." "Sister, you disappoint," Nightmare Moon said with a sigh. "I was sure you worked it out by now. Our creator is none other than Grogar, sister, the King of All Monsters. Who else would it be?" "That is a stretch, sister," Daybreaker spoke with disappointment. "Hardly. Why do you think we are only known to inhabit the powerful and noble? Why are we wired to fight for control and put our host into this lethargy inside their own body? Where does our instinctive understanding of creatures' psychology come from? This all is a little too much for a coincidence, don't you think?" Daybreaker sighed and laid down on her pillows, "I do. We could not possibly be natural creatures. All I am saying is that pinning us on Grogar does not seem to be justified. There were many evils across the ages." Tiny was quickly losing interest in their dialogue. Everything they ever talked about was something exceedingly boring. Like court etiquette, or political climate. Tiny picked up from her bed and went to get her bag. She didn't take out her favorite plush in a while. Mister Rich helped her to fix it up a bit, the tears were now stitched up and the dirt washed off. It would never be entirely pristine, but she loved it this way. It reminded her of where she came from. She took her plush out and checked for wear damage. Her dog held up admirably for the past few months, but the stitching on the front left paw was getting loose. Hmm... "Mister Rich, pray tell, how did you end up with a wagon on the road?" Nightmare Moon decided to change the subject instead of answering her sister. The stallion jerked his head, choking on his own salvia from surprise. He wasn't allowed to speak for the last few days, "Divorce, My Lady. My wife only tolerated me because of my office, after I retired, she filed for divorce. I did not object too much..." "Is that so? Mister Rich, this is not how I remember you. Previously, you would never give away money like this." "I learned a lot in my office, My Lady. Money is a tool, not a purpose. I no longer had a need for such tools." "Miss Tiara?" "My daughter has not spoken to me since I took the office, M-my Lady," Rich lowered his eyes. Nightmare Moon was silent for a while, "I am sorry," she said in the end. "We all make our choices in life, My Lady." "Yes... We do. Mister Rich, tell me one more thing, why are you here?" Now It was his turn to stay quiet. "Old habits die hard, don't they? Twilight would know where your daughter is, you could make amends now if you wish." "Diamond Tiara made it clear she did not wish to see me again," Rich quietly whispered. "My Lady, I don't want to speak on this matter." "I understand. There are hardly any more tears left to shed over the past, I only hope that you have few regrets in yours. What of you, my Shadow? Have you heard from your daughters?" Nightmare Moon turned to the changeling, standing by the door. "No, Mistress," Shadow answered shortly. Nightmare Moon did not pry further. Soon, Tiny and her ancient sister were back at work. It was not any new exercise this time. Now it came to the rest of the books Nightmare Moon ordered packed. History, more mathematics, magical theory. The routine settled in already, so Tiny did not mind spending the whole day studying, but her sister eased up on her and allowed her breaks. Tiny decided to lurk around and study the ship. It had three decks. The top deck, where the masts and sails were located. The middle deck, where the crew quarters and their own dwelling was located. And the bottom deck, where cargo and supplies were housed. The crewmates have been on their best behavior around her, they let her see all that she wanted to see and even explained some of the operational details in the ship. Overall, Tiny was growing more and more content with her life further on. She achieved her goal, she found her sisters. She had guidance from the impossibly old and wise Nightmare Moon. But something was odd. Filthy Rich was getting agitated. It was barely visible and neither of the royal ponies seemed to notice yet, but every day he was sitting just a little further away. He was awfully silent since they met her sisters too, he only spoke when he was spoken to. Being on the very bottom of the hierarchy must be getting to him. In contrast, Shadow The Changeling seemed entirely calm and content. She was high in their unspoken hierarchy but was treated much the same as Rich, with an added right to address both noble mares. She mostly stayed close to Nightmare Moon, however. She wasn't centred on her, Shadow was helping all of them and doing much of the menial work, but she was making clear with her behavior that Nightmare Moon was her final authority. Shadow was something of an unknown to Tiny. She was obviously very old for her species, but unlike Mister Rich, she did not show signs of weakness. Tiny didn't know how strong changelings normally were, but so far she proved to be stronger than Rich when pulling their wagon, she needed little rest and Tiny didn't see her eating or drinking once. She was told that changelings feed on love energy, but that just brought more questions than answers. After a whole week of sailing along the coast, they finally arrived at the port. Tiny never knew there could be that many ships in one place. The docks, stretching for miles, had ships of all sizes. Most had sails with wooden poles tried to them, some had simple cloth sails, but the most exotic ships she has seen so far were ships with metal hulls and no sails at all. They produced smoke as they moved. On the harbor's edge stood a tall, elegant tower with its walls gently curving inwards. A bright light shined on top. Nightmare Moon proceeded to ask how in this age in a major city there can be such a backward infrastructure. Daybreaker then proceeded to give a longwinded explanation of some long-standing traditionalist agenda of the imperial family. Tiny did not understand most of it, but neither of her sisters seemed to be as impressed as she was. Nightmare Moon made her get all her things long before their ship docked and they went ashore the moment it was done. Daybreaker swiftly levitated their wagon ashore, and they were gone again. No one said anything to the crew. They did not go far away, just to the first quiet corner. "Excellent work so far, Mister Rich," Nightmare Moon coolly congratulated. "Thank you, My Lady," Rich responded under his breath. "Here we'll find a ship to get us across the ocean. After that, we can make way to Mount Aris on hooves." "Do you have any particular ship in mind?" "I know a few captains, Lady," he nodded. "I could ask them." "How much time do you need?" "A day, My Lady. I know a few good inns around the city..." he suddenly stopped and his expression froze. "Is there a caveat?" "Yes... My Lady, would you consider staying out of sight? Ponies are not used to seeing... The ponies from before were constantly hearing rumors about your sister and weird things happening, here it Is not like that." "I see," Nightmare Moon sighed. "Sister, you indeed succeeded in finding the most backwards place in the world to settle in." "It was my intention. I wanted nothing to do with the ponies that betrayed us. I wished for solitude," Daybreaker calmly answered. "Mister Rich, I don't suppose you know a local airfield?" Nightmare Moon returned her attention to the stallion. "No, Ma'am. In this country, technology needs approval before it can be brought here." "So be it. Search for a ship, but I will not hide from anyone anymore. It would do good for these ponies to see something unusual for a change." "The authorities may interfere," Daybreaker warned. "And how would they do that, dear sister?" Nightmare Moon asked teasingly. "I understand," Daybreaker bowed slightly. "They will regret it." Their discussion was over with that. Mister Rich left them as soon as they found an inn that Nightmare Moon found satisfactory. The ponies all around have been giving them weird looks and tried to get out of their way, the inn maid even lost her speech mid-sentence when she saw who exactly was coming into her establishment. Daybreaker took the first key she saw on the rack and dropped the second earring on the mare's table. Tiny gave the startled mare a long stare when following her sisters down the corridor. Their room was one of the better ones which Tiny saw during her time with Mister Rich. It was sizeable enough to hold about six ponies comfortably, had a table, two chairs and a large bed. "This will do nicely," Nightmare Moon murmured to herself. "Sister, I hope you don't mind sharing your sleeping space." "What?!" Daybreaker swung her head, her calm mask dropping momentarily. "Sister, do you truly expect me to share a bed?" she continued more calmly after a short pause. "You don't expect our sister to sleep on the floor, do you?" Nightmare Moon turned away, considering that matter settled. "My Shadow, would you bring us some sleeping bags?" "At once, Mistress," Shadow immediately turned around and went back into the corridor. "Now then, Tiny, you may drop your books on the table and then we will be going on a little stroll." "No studying?" "Not today, dear. Go on." Tiny did as ordered and then followed her older sister outside again, they met Shadow who was just coming back with sleeping bags. She gave them a small bow and quietly passed inside. "What do you think of this place?" Nightmare Moon asked, musingly looking at the street. "It's clean and the streets are paved," Tiny commented. "Not so for your home place? What was it... Bottle Street, right?" "Yes." "Come, let us see how clean this city really is," Nightmare Moon proceeded to move up the street, further away from the harbor. The city indeed seemed much better than the vast majority of what Tiny saw before. The houses were built out of solid, masoned stone, there were no piles of trash ubiquitous in other cities she visited. The ponies were clean too. Some wore colorful tunics and had their manes groomed. "...hallowed ground!" the voice broke through the crowd chittering on one of the squares. "Stop," Nightmare Moon instantly turned towards the source. "Repent, for soon She will see the whole world enveloped in eternal night!" Tiny knew what it was. She saw a street preacher once or twice. Those people just kept shouting to a crowd something that only made sense to them. Nightmare Moon seemed interested, however. She started floating to the source, Tiny reluctantly followed in tow. The ponies, not bothered in the slightest by the shouts of the preacher, hurried out of their way. The preacher stood at the very centre of the square, on the edge of a monument of some kind, depicting a pony with a long, narrow beard, a book and a weird fan looking like an obscene, flat spoon. The preacher stood with his back to them and couldn't see them approaching. Nightmare Moon silently stopped ten steps away from him, listening, "You can still save yourselves! Repent and follow Her teachings! She is generous and just to all who revere her!" that stallion shouted with a weird accent, the one she has never heard before. "Our temple welcomes all to the ranks of disciples! Find us on the slopes of the Star Hills!" "Hey! I told you that I don't want to see your face here again!" another stallion stomped angrily towards the centre. "Let's put you into a dungeon for the day, see if that-" the city guard fell silent on seeing the menacing black cloud silently floating behind the preacher. "No one dares to silence the truth! The land under your hooves shall crack and burn and to the darkest place shall you fall!" the preacher sounded emboldened. He wanted to go on to the next round, but then he finally noticed that the ponies around either quickened away or looked uncomfortable to the extreme. He looked down at himself, trying to find the cause of this disruption, not finding anything, he looked at his cloak. Then, by trying to get a look at his back, he noticed the two of them. He instinctively made a step away and almost fell off his improvised podium. "Are you not glad to see me, my devotee?" Nightmare Moon overtly took enjoyment in the confusion. "I remember when you would prostrate yourself before me on the first hint of my approach." "Demon! Abomination!" the preacher quickly recovered. "Please, this is no way to treat your monarch," Nightmare Moon menacingly said. "You are no ruler of me!" the stallion stepped off the statue. "Fiendish heretic! You will be purged!" the stallion then ran away past the stunned city guard. Nightmare Moon let out a short giggle and turned back. "I have to say, I never expected that I would miss them," Nightmare Moon said light-heartedly, her mood improved after the interaction. "They worship you?" "Yes. It was a major problem for me, actually. Some of my subjects had the idea of my divinity. I was exiled for a thousand years and, when I returned, I discovered that my cult has never truly faded. They isolated themselves and began preparing for my return. It was flattering, but when you have thousands of fanatical ponies who don't know how to do anything else but fight, it becomes a problem very quickly. Naturally, they clashed with the rest of my subjects. Sometimes violently at that. But their new High Priestess sounded more mild-hearted than the former one, quite a sudden change of leadership that was. She was a maid in service of the current Priestess and immediately after I ordered them to disassemble their hierarchy, she rose up and took the lead, it was as if someone spurred her on..." Nightmare Moon was silent for a while. Tiny thought that her sister was finished with her monologue, but she suddenly continued: "I can't seem to remember, although I am certain I knew more about this transition. It's bizarre, really. Who would have thought that a phantom could have a faulty memory." "It was a long time ago." "I suppose it was, little sister." Nightmare Moon did not speak further until they returned back to their inn. Tiny noticed that the street and most of the surrounding ones were growing to be less populated. Ponies tried not to linger around them. Both Daybreaker and Shadow were still inside, just as they left them. Shadow was attending to a small tear in the waggon's cover that she already pulled off without asking anyone. And Daybreaker was visibly bored, to the point of her reading Tiny's books. "Welcome back, Mistress," Shadow said with her screeching voice. Nightmare Moon acknowledged her with a glance "Sister, I never understood why you would be keeping these," Daybreaker was visibly glad to have someone to talk with again. "When I looked through your personal library, I was bemused. I expected historical tomes, perhaps rare editions of classical writers. Not textbooks and poetry." "I don't think even I know how to answer this," Nightmare Moon sighed. "Sometimes, sister, you see an item that you like. Not because it can bring you more power and not because it is valuable." "I never knew you enjoyed poetry." "There never was an occasion to speak of it. As for the textbooks, well..." A long and awkward silence ensued. "I suppose, there is no face left to lose at this point, now is there?" Nightmare Moon let out an uncharacteristically nervous chuckle. "Sister, have you ever thought about having foals?" The question hit like thunder, stunning Daybreaker with her answer stuck in her throat. The alabaster mare simply stared wide-eyed. "Y-you wanted to have a f-foal?!" Daybreaker finally managed to breathe out. "Well, not exactly wanted... I entertained the thought. I did not make it public, but I was keeping a record of all potential-" "Stop!" Daybreaker suddenly bashed. "I-I don't want to hear anything more!" "Ah! There is the sister I remember!" Nightmare Moon purred. "Very well, if you so wish, I shall not trouble you with this. Have you seen Mister Rich since this morning?" "Not as of yet, he has quite a number of ships to go through. I suspect we won't see him until tomorrow. Sister, perhaps we could simply chart another transportation circle? We may not be able to reach Mount Aris directly, but surely we could save ourselves time." "I am not eager to spend our few resources that rashly. The mountain won't fly away from us. Besides, I enjoy our adventure together." Nightmare Moon floated to the table her sister was sitting at and lowered her mostly incorporeal body to resemble a sitting position. "This is the kind of activity I wished I could do with you and Luna." "Sister, it still boggles me why would you want to abandon your birthright like this," Daybreaker shut the book with a loud thud and put it on the table. "I already told you, sister," Nightmare Moon's voice turned tired. "Ruling a nation is not the dream that commoners believe it to be. You spent years with Celestia, surely you know exactly what I mean." "But that is just it, sister. Celestia never had the same issue as you did. Her responsibilities were not threatening to crush her. I was worried for your wellbeing, you looked like you didn't have sleep for days at a time. I heard Rarity talking about how you were much livelier in the earlier years. You never told me what happened." Nightmare Moon sat silently for a little while. "I came to a realization of something extremely important," Nightmare Moon solemnly spoke. "I had power, I had so much of it that I could rule the entire world if I only so wished. My soldiers adored me. My subjects revered me. And yet there was one thing that I could never have. My subjects would only ever see me as the source of authority and nothing more. They obeyed me without question, but I could never make them give me their hearts. Observing Twilight Sparkle was a truly enlightening experience. She was no great ruler, but ponies still followed her out of their own accord. Celestia was much the same. Ponies followed her not simply because she was powerful, but because they had an unflinching trust that she would always look after them." "A task she failed at miserably. Nightmare, Celestia was a weak-willed coward," Daybreaker said with disdain. "I know how she ruled, she manipulated others to do her bidding while never putting herself in any sort of danger. When you forced her to make a choice between using force against her own ponies or losing her crown, she was absolutely paralyzed by it. She spent days staring at the map, with piles of reports at her desk and an empty list of orders. When the time came for her to protect her subjects, she broke down. Equestria is better off without her." "Or so you say, sister," Nightmare Moon shallowly responded. "What had that pathetic wretch that you did not have more of? Sister, you are infinitely more worthy, don't belittle yourself like this!" "All these years and you still cannot see past the outline," Nightmare Moon sighed. "Celestia was unfit as a marshal, that is true, but that is very far from what makes a great leader. Celestia built the land of benevolence, where each pony strived to help another. Where conflict was infrequent and even more rarely did any lasting harm. Celestia wished for things like war to be the thing of the past. Do not blame her for not being prepared for it." "Tch," Daybreaker scoffed. "A delusion and a half." "Yet she made it happen. Sister, I cannot go a single day without cursing myself for what I did. I destroyed it. I crushed her dream, I rubbled everything she spent her whole life building. Worst of all, I broke her very spirit. Celestia that returned from the moon was not the same Celestia anymore. She lost her inner drive. She only kept going on reflex. After she saw Luna's dead body, she could not even do that anymore. I think what you did for her was more merciful than you would like to admit, dear sister." "Luna dead?" Tiny suddenly asked. She listened to most of the discussion while resting on the bed and what she just heard seemed to contradict the whole goal of their journey. "Not entirely. You see, Luna was completely dead at one point, but she is not any longer." "Like you?" "Not like me, she is very much... corporeal." "Cor-po-real?" "Yes, she has a body. She also has to eat, she doesn't need sleep, however. Oh... how much I miss having a body, I had such a wonderful coat!" Nightmare Moon enthusiastically mused. "Yes, that was something Celestia always envied," Daybreaker continued. "She had this short, white coat, while Luna had a gorgeous furry coat. She even had two, long and short ones, at the same time. Touching you was like touching a velvet drape." "So we were told. Thank goodness, they invented spells to simplify looking after it. Luna was seriously thinking about shaving before our exile." Nightmare Moon snickered. "Oh, so gauche!" Daybreaker cried. "I know. I barely managed to talk her out of it." "Your coat always was perfect, Mistress," Shadow spoke up, pulling away from knitting together a hole in the fabric for a moment. "You are very kind, my Shadow," Nightmare Moon answered without looking. "Well then, I think that Is enough enrichment for today. Sister, take your books. We will be studying illusion now, a very useful category of spells." "To hide?" Tiny asked with quite a bit of disappointment in her voice, not even lifting herself off the bed. "No, little sister, we won't hide for anyone anymore," Nightmare Moon asserted. "But you are a mare, not a stallion, despite your body. Illusion spells would allow you to rectify this- and more- until we can get to more complex spells and make permanent alterations." "How long will it take?" "Well, you are one of my more talented students, dear sister, so learning simpler illusions would not take you long, but anything as complex as physiological changes would take years to learn to apply safely," Nightmare Moon finished her explanation with a short sigh. "Well, I suppose the earlier we start, the sooner we'll get there, won't we?" Tiny sighed and stood up from the bed.