The Servants of Memory
It was a little difficult to walk proudly when you had to go about with your face hooded to hide your monstrous visage from the world, but nevertheless as she approached the camp Raven endeavoured to walk proudly. She kept her head high even though no-one could see it; even though no-one would wish to see it; even though she only pulled down her hood to intimidate people as though she were wearing a Nightmare Night mask to scare the fillies and foals.
She would not approach as a supplicant, even if she was asking for a favour. She would not beg. She would not plead. She would simply ask that they do as they were sworn to do, and protect the Heart of the World and all the terrible secrets that it might reveal.
It had taken her a little while to find the camp. It had not been where Raven remembered it. She had been forced to cast her net wider, to scour the edges of her memory, to stalk about the land searching for them.
Another thing it was hard to do while going about hooded and cloaked like a villain was persuade people to give you food and water. Raven had given up much of what it mean to be a pony, she had sacrificed a great deal for power or for the worthless promises of the same but she was not an automaton. She still needed nutrients to sustain her body, still needed water to drink, still appreciated tastes upon her tongue. When she had arrived back in Ponyville, a part of her had wanted to rush at once to Sugarcube Corner and gorge herself on those wonderful sensations that she had not tasted for so long.
It had taken a great deal of self-control on her part to refrain; self-control and the knowledge that she did not deserve them. She didn't deserve the sweet taste of sweet cakes made with love, she didn't deserve laughter or friendship or any of the things that had delighted her in the past; she didn't deserve to feel the warmth of an embrace, nor the comfort of companionship. She had cast aside her right to all of that when she had… when she had failed them all.
She would not fail again, but in order to ensure that she would not fail she needed help. Or at least, she needed help to avoid the kind of success that would leave a trail of broken bodies in her wake. It would be simple to kill Twilight and her friends, but although it might yet come to that Raven was loath to do it. What she had done to Pinkie Pie… it had been a mistake. It haunted her as gravely as anything else that she had ever done, and she had done plenty of things to haunt her. In the name of Olympia and the King of Kings she had done such things as… there was a reason she slept but little, and rejoiced to wake again. For all the problems that she endured while awake, all the pains, the aches, the emptiness inside of her, there was nothing worse than the regrets that gathered around her like ghosts.
What she had done to Pinkie, what she had been prepared to do, had been a grave mistake. She had acted like the soldier that she had come here to escape, like the brutish warriors that she sought to prevent from desecrating Equestria with their steps. She had jumped to violence, jumped to sacrificing Pinkie, one of those she had come here to save! She had come to prevent death and destruction, but she had brought both with her here.
Perhaps Silver Spear should also haunt her; he was not so near her conscience, for all that he was dead, but Raven was wise enough to know in her head that she just because she felt less guilt in her heart it did not make her blameless. Far from it. She had woken him and thrown him into the path of harm, and then when that hadn't worked she had thrown Pinkie in her turn.
And the only reason Pinkie hadn't perished was because Lightning had been better than she had thought he had be.
Pinkie, the sweetest of her friends, the only one who had never blamed her for the parade of disasters that she had brought upon Equestria, Pinkie had only survived thanks to Lightning. Lightning!
It was almost enough to make her wonder if she had misjudged him. But she could not take the risk; even if she had misjudged him she had not misjudged his father or his people.
No, she had to continue down this road; Twilight could not reach the Heart of the World.
And yet she would be more careful now than she had been before. She would take greater care with the lives of their friends. She had sought to take care with Mantle; the dragon was flawed to be sure but he was not a savage, he would not have devoured the ponies for no reason, not have crushed their bones out of mere hunger. He would have ransomed them back to Princess Celestia, and soon they would have found themselves back home in Ponyville once more, where they could put all thought of the Heart of the World out of their minds.
Obviously that hadn't worked. So she would need to find another approach that would work instead.
Fortunately, there were the Servants of Memory.
Their camp lay before her. Given the way they haunted the wastelands they were often mistaken for bandits, but no bandit camp would have been so well organised, so disciplined. Despite the seeming lack of wood in these sandy waste, they had erected barricades of sharpened wooden stakes – the trick, as Raven had learned, was very simply to carry the wood with them where they went, and to make it last out in these arid conditions – and dug a ditch in the sands around. No banner flew above their tents of black, but as Raven approached she could see that those dark tents were laid out in neat rows, in a more organised fashion than any brigand troops could have achieved.
The Servants of Memory were an ancient order, much like the Circle of the Dark Between Stars but, unlike the latter, they had not succumbed to the decadence of their society and forgotten their purpose over the years. A hard land had kept them strong, and vigilant, and determined. They had been founded in the aftermath of Olympia's disappearance, for the purpose of preventing Olympia's return – or anyone from reaching the Heart of the World, and unlike their pony counterparts they had stayed true to that oath, for the most part.
Raven would hold them to that ancient oath now, as they had held to it against Sunset Shimmer, and as they had held to it against Sunset Shimmer she had little doubt that they would hold to it now.
They would keep their oaths and honour their obligations; the hard part would be getting them to spare the lives of Twilight and her friends.
Raven took a deep breath. Finding the Servants had been more difficult than she had anticipated, and movement in this hot land was not as easy as she might have liked; her body was drenched with sweat, her cloak was sticking to her legs in places. Nevertheless, she walked forwards, and tried not to let her weariness or her discomfort show.
Two guards, tall zebra warriors with spears, their bodies and faces concealed beneath robes of dark grey, stood upon one of the gaps in the palisade to permit entrance. As Raven approached, one of them cried out, “Halt!”
Raven halted, her gaze flickering between the two as they both advanced upon her.
“Who are you?” they demanded. “And what is your business here?”
Raven appreciated the fact that they were speaking in prose. It might have been intended as an insult to her, but in this heat she was in no mood to try and follow rhymes. “I come in peace, and…” she could not bring herself to say she came in friendship. “I come in peace. I ask for the gifts of water and shade, and to speak with Ardeth Bey.”
Even bundled up as they were, the two zebras’ eyes were visible as they exchanged glances. “How do you know that name?”
“I know more than that,” Raven said. “I know that this is a camp of the Servants of Memory, perhaps the only camp; you have done well to last this long with such numbers, but your numbers are decreasing, are they not? A pity, I am sorry for it. In any case, I know who you are, and I know your task.”
“Who are you?” one of the Servants demanded.
“One who seeks the same as you: to keep the Heart of the World from being disturbed,” Raven said. “Now, may I speak with Ardeth Bey.”
“Show us your face before you enter our encampment.”
Raven raised one eyebrow, for all that they couldn’t see it. Pity, they were missing on a delightfully arch expression. “Far be it from me to criticise your dress, but it does render your demand ever so slightly hypocritical, don’t you think?”
“Nevertheless,” the zebra said, “you cannot enter our camp wrapped in those robes.”
“Then I shall wait until it pleases Ardeth Bey to come to me,” Raven declared, sitting down upon the ground to prove her point. A chuckle escaped her lips. “Here I and sorrows sit; here is my throne, let kings come bow to it. Or the leader of the Servants of Memory in this case.” She laughed again. “Why don’t one of you go and tell Ardeth Bey that unless he comes out and speaks to me somepony is going to reach the Heart of the World; and then we can see if my choice to hide my face proves too great an impediment to him.”
Again, the two zebras glanced at one another warily.
“I will go,” one said, after a while. “You stay here, and keep an eye on her.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Raven assured them.
The guard who had volunteered to go offered merely a harrumph at this, and turned away, kicking up sand as he trotted back into the camp.
The other guard continued to watch Raven warily.
Raven did not bother to watch him. She looked down, and began to draw pictures in the sand: pictures of her friends, having a picnic; the picnic when they had learned that Shining Armor was getting married, the picnic that hadn’t actually happened yet.
And it never would happen, not the way that she remembered it. Because Lightning had been there at the time; she remembered his presence as clear as day. She had… to think that she had actually been… how could she have been so foolish as to…
What a naïve filly I was.
She scuffed out Lightning in the sandy drawing with one hoof, removing him from the picture as she wished that she could remove him from her memories.
It was just the girls now, and Spike; the girls, and Spike, and a blur of scuffed out sand, a haze, a shadow of a thought, banished from a place where he did not belong.
Just the girls and Spike, enjoying a delightful picnic. She could close her eyes and see it now: the red and white chequered blanket, Rarity’s hat, the way the sun shone so brightly.
“He was my big brother best friend… forever,” Raven whispered, the desert air snatching at her words and carrying them far, far away.
Just like the event itself was far away, and yet at the same time so much more real to her than so much else that had befallen.
But gone, just the same.
Raven angrily scuffed out the whole picture, erasing Spike and Pinkie and Rainbow and Fluttershy and even Rarity with her hat, erasing all of them, even – especially – herself. It was all, all gone now. All lost to her. All the dream of a stupid mare who thought that picnics and parties and singing with friends would do any of them any good when the storm clouds rolled in.
A stupid mare who thought that the changelings at her brother’s wedding were the worst thing that could happen, little dreaming what horrors lay in store.
Raven felt tears well up in her eyes, and instantly felt ashamed of herself and of her weakness. To cry. Over that, of all things. What would the zebra think?
She turned her head away so that he could not see her wipe her eye. She coughed, and cleared her throat. “So,” she said. “Read any good books lately?”
He did not respond. It was hard to tell if he even understood the question.
Ardeth Bey emerged to speak with her soon enough, just as she had expected that he would. They might be wary of Raven from her looks – as well they might, she looked like a black-hearted villain, as even she would concede – but they understood the importance of her warning. They understood that a threat to the Heart of the World was too great to be ignored. They understood that they could not put their purpose to one side merely because they did not like the messenger.
If only Twilight could have been so understanding.
Ardeth Bey was a tall zebra, with a lordly bearing a wild, tangled mane that framed his face on either side. He did not cover himself with so many robes as his followers did, he allowed Raven to see his face, and it was a noble face, for all that it belonged to a zebra of her father's generation. He was strongly built, with fine square features that spoke of muscle, and the scars on his face showed that he was not unseasoned in battle. He was the last of a dying breed of zebra, a warrior of the desert sands. When Raven had met him first she had thought him a walking anachronism, but now… his was a nobler heart than that of Lightning Dawn; here was a zebra who understood the world he lived in, who understood that he could only protect the soft and civilised world by cutting himself off from it, forsaking its pleasures that others might enjoy them. It was only now, looking back with a more mature eye, that Raven could appreciate what a sacrifice that was.
Here was a zebra who loved the world. And yet even he had those whom he loved most of all.
"I am-" he began.
"Ardeth Bey," Raven said. "I beg of you, speak to me in prose, it is much easier for my eyes to follow than poetry; I will accept the disrespect inherent in the same. In fact I will go further and say that I deserve all your disrespect and so much more." She chuckled. "It's good to see you again."
Ardeth snorted. "I would say that I know you not, but with your face hidden you could be anyone."
"And with my face revealed under the light of the sun I would be many things else, and few of them good," Raven responded. "How are… no, how is your son?" At this point he would only have one child, if Raven's calculations were correct – and they usually were.
Ardeth Bey's eyes narrowed. "What do you know of my son?"
"Only that you have one," Raven said. She knew else besides, but there was no need for him to know that. "And that you wish to protect him – and your wife – as much, more, than you wish to protect the world. Please, sit."
Ardeth Bey made no move to do so.
Raven sighed. "I am not your enemy."
"You do not have the manner of a friend."
"No," Raven confessed. "No I do not. You… you must forgive me for that. Manners and friendship have, I fear, been driven out of me. Burned out by…" By the flames of war, if that doesn't sound too melodramatic. "Burned out. But I promise you, I mean you no ill. My name is Raven."
"A bird of ill-omen," Ardeth murmured.
"A harbinger of death, indeed," Raven replied softly. "I do not wish for it to become appropriate. There is an attempt to be made upon the Heart of the World. You may not like me, but you cannot ignore that."
"First you speak of my son, then of the Heart of the World, how do you-"
"I know a great many things, Ardeth Bey, commander of the Servants of Memory," Raven declared. "I know things that you and your order have striven to keep secret, I know things about you that even you do not yet know; I know that for all your efforts the watch of the Servants has become lax of late-"
"We strive as we always-"
"Sunset Shimmer and Dawn Starfall," Raven snapped. "Both sought the Heart of the World. Both escaped you. Yes, you wreaked havoc and slaughter amongst Sunset's coterie of helpers, yes, the bones of Dawny's friends lie out in the sand but Sunset escaped you, and Dawn too. That was careless of you, so careless that it could have led to disaster. Fortunately for you it did not, and it will not… unless Twilight Sparkle, following in their steps, reaches the Heart in turn."
"Twilight Sparkle?" Ardeth Bey repeated. "More unicorns?"
"I know, they get everywhere, don't they?" asked Raven, with a weary sigh in her voice. "Yes, Twilight Sparkle, her five friends, her baby dragon and her single royal bodyguard. If I judge right they will either have shortly set out from Utica or will shortly do so, headed for Mount Hyperion."
"How do they know that is the location?" Ardeth demanded.
"Twilight Sparkle is a very clever unicorn," Raven said. "As Sunset was before her." She did not extend the same compliment to Dawn Starfall. "She knows exactly where she's going. I had… I need your help to stop her. As you are sworn to stop her by ancient oaths."
Ardeth Bey was silent a moment. "How do I know that this is not a deception?"
"What reason have I to deceive you?" Raven responded. "What would I gain by it?" She paused. "I will come with you, and if there is nothing to be found you may do with me as you will. But when you find Twilight and her friends I do not wish them killed."
"Death is the punishment for seeking the Heart," Ardeth said.
"That does not mean it need be so," Raven replied.
"You would set us upon them, but you would also have their lives?" Ardeth asked. "Why?"
"Because they are the ones I seek to save," Raven declared. "You know as well as any creature living that the Heart of the World is a trap. There are neither riches nor glory to be found there, it's gifts… it's gifts are poisoned. I would stop these ponies from being infected with that poison, and all of Equestria besides."
Ardeth regarded her closely. "You claim to have much knowledge of many things, but it seems to me that one way you could know that, at least, was if you had been to the Heart yourself."
Raven chuckled. "Guilty," she murmured. "You didn't stop me, either."
"Why?" Ardeth Bey demanded. "What prompted you, what prompts them? Was it wealth you sought? Glory?"
"I went, as Twilight goes, for love," Raven said. "Just as for love I seek to stop them now."
Ardeth Bey was silent for a moment, a pensive look upon his face. "Very well," he said. "If love be their motive, it is perhaps the only motive that is forgivable for such folly as this. For love, they shall have their lives. But they shall also be stopped."
"That is all I ask," Raven said. "For it is all that I desire."