‘Never has the Sun seen the shadows.’
-Dimmet Verge, Imperial Griffon philosopher.
A buzz.
A slight hiss.
The shy chime of bells.
The sound of falling chains followed by a rusted door opening coursed through the stone walls across the underground.
Plain, red eyes moved in sudden agitation, all heading in unison to the pale light now illuminating the dark home of its underground inhabitants.
The sound of shuffling and chains wrapping the door once more
The outside light of the night faded and another came forth, more soothing and pleasing to their eyes. A tall figure paced slowly, making sure not to startle them. They knew her; she knew they would not harm her, but she did not want to disturb their non-diurnal lives.
She put down the crates, opening them for the bestial things to feast upon their content. As usual, they did not immediately head toward them. Instead, they congregated closer around her, distancing themselves from the source of the light, or else they feared lest it would burn them.
‘I’ve brought you… medication,’ Luna addressed them as a mother would to her children.
The beasts grunted. Some snarled, letting their drool dribble to the floor in thick gobbets. They were happy to hear Luna’s voice. It was comforting, delightful even.
She smiled back at them, some did the same to her, but it did not last. As suddenly as it brightened her youthful visage, it vanished. It felt wrong to smile like that. She was like… mocking their fate.
Luna sat down and began to rehears the spell in her mind. Her mouth emitted a quick succession of words in a loud whisper, echoing in the chamber’s walls. They could feel that more was plaguing her mind. The creatures knew their protector was ill, but from what, their forgone minds could not tell.
Crimson disks fixated on her without any obvious intellect behind them. They were no longer sapient, barely sentient even. They once had been Batponies but after being cursed by the mad cabal, they were transformed into hideous and monstrous things. Beneath their thick, black fur, their skin was alabaster white – almost ghostly in appearance. Their wings lost their leathery membranes, leaving the bone frames ever hanging on their own. Their teeth were slightly curved on the top, half-resembling canines, and their fangs had been elongated to unnatural proportions. Some had a second pair growing out of their lower jaw, jutting out and piercing their flesh; they could barely close their mouth afterward. It hurt them. She would regularly find blood splattered or fangs turned red from the blood running down them.
Luna ceased her rehearsal and approached one of those miserable creatures, its condition unbearable to leave unattended to. Its real name she knew not, but she had given it the name of “Silv” for the patches of gray on its fur and skin – maybe the last remnant of its past self. Luna never uttered their names aloud in case it might confuse their fragile minds. Perhaps break them further. She took Silv from the muzzle with an abrupt grip. The miserable creature snarled. She made Silv look her in the eyes with a light push and caressed the back of its neck, calming the beast. Luna reassured the thing further, to finally start cleaning their bodily liquids. If outsiders saw her they would wonder why a being such as her not simply use magic to get it done in an instant. She would have answered them that it felt disingenuous; like she was cheating out the creature from a precious intimate moment. The only time she would use her powers was to cut the tusks-like things and heal the self-inflicted injuries. It always earned her a bunt when she concluded her work, and for them, a pat on the head.
As much as they were comforted by her presence, their sight broke her. It was not her fault they had been cursed and transformed into hideous beasts, but she was the one that took them in when everyone else had rebuffed them. Luna promised to return the villagers to their past selves. Someone had to. Someone had to be their “friend”.
She finalized their cleaning and stopped to wonder if she should proceed with a bath. For their cruel lack of intelligence, the shimmer of an instinct remained buried beneath – they could still clean themselves. Hygiene seemed to be too much of a rooted instinct in the minds of creatures for it to be extinguished.
Luna crouched, preparing herself for yet another attempt to rescue them. Arcs of pale blue lightning issued out of her horn, enveloping the beasts and lifting them from the ground. They did not debate her – they knew whatever she was doing, it was not going to harm them.
Her head began to hurt; she did not relent. She had to save them. Luna pushed forth, but the strain she was putting on herself finally overwhelmed her.
It failed. For the thousand times, it failed.
She let gravity depose her on the unclean floor as she let the seeping sense of capitulation deflate her. To make amends, to ever so slightly improve their lives, she elected to clean their habitat. At least, they would continue having a pleasant life – if they still recall what one must be.
Luna reflected on her failure. A young girl approached her. She was still a child, the only one still live amongst them, when they had been cursed but retained the wonder only children possess. An innocence Luna forgot she had ever experienced before. Experience had dissipated any sense of wonder in her.
The foal caressed her head along Luna’s left arm like a dog demanding attention and play. Luna did not let her demand linger long and picked up the child, holding the girl close to herself. The girl, sensing Luna’s troubled mind more keenly, hugged her. Luna returned the gesture, recognizing the adoration and trust radiating out of the deformed creature.
Luna sighed.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked, disappointedly knowing deep down it was futile to expect an answer from them.
The girl looked at Luna directly in the eyes like few dared do. The child’s mouth moved in an attempt to answer. Luna hid the mounting sense of failure. For all her attempts, her face still betrayed an inkling of disgust.
‘Eu… fri… mia,’ the girl struggled, forcing the letters halfway between a growl and the vestiges of her real voice.
Luna’s smile almost illuminated the room. Her features rejuvenated and the artifacts of her frown vanished.
‘Eufremia,’ she clarified the name in a voice soft as silk. ‘I’ve never heard the name before,’ her curiosity spoke. ‘It’s a beautiful name nonetheless.’
The others spoke, each telling Luna what could have been their names once. They had never done that before. It was wonderful and exciting to finally have brought anything close to normalcy and anything that related to their old lives back to them. Luna was proud of herself.
‘And you?’
She pointed toward Silv. It looked at her like a lost child or one wary to disappoint their parents with an answer that would not please them.
‘Au…n… reez…’ he finally forced out.
‘Aunreez,’ she repeated with an even voice. ‘I was calling you Silv because of your gray colors. Silv.’
He croaked his head and moved his jaws to adjust his teeth.
‘Silv,’ she said again.
Nothing.
‘I guess it doesn’t matter anymore… Onr- I mean, Aunreez.’ She awkwardly laughed.
He mewled a little, and that was enough for her to know that he appreciated her sentiment.
Luna nodded to him and he joined the pack once more.
She looked at Eufremia’s teeth, trying to spot any telltale signs of Aunreez inflection. The girl did not like it and made Luna’s task more arduous than it ought to have been. For ten seconds the girl struggled like her life was on the line. At the end of those ten seconds, Luna was done and thought Eufremia might have wanted to leave her. Luna let loose of the embrace but the girl remained firmly attached to her.
She could have used the Elements of Harmony to finally and truly save them, but they had not worked. They had used to before. Her sister and she had used them individually on numerous occasions in the past. She attempted many times to harness their powers for them. She had poured in everything to make them work, but they were too unstable. Perhaps it had been her expending too much of her powers during the night, so she limited her visits to the Realm of Dreams – but to no avail. They were useless to save them. She could not bring other mages, nor could she bring her sister. They could harm them. Those corrupted beasts were her people; they lived in her night when others were frightened by its darkness and lack of light. More than any other living creature under the Sun, she had to provide for the Batponies. It was her self-appointed responsibility.
Luna thought again about the Elements. They had used them to defeat Discord and had brought back creatures of lesser rationality and far greater malevolence from the brim. Were they smiting her? Has it come down to this? The very things that had defined their reign were shunning her? She who cared for the Moon and dreams? It would not have surprised her. In fact, it felt almost exalting. She was not beholden to them anymore… but only answered to her sister. Luna smiled, but it was an odd smile – the Batponies sensed it. A thing between exaltation and the fake smile of melancholy. The Elements…
‘… of Harmony,’ she hissed between her teeth. ‘Harmony,’ she repeated aloud to the tone of a curse. Her voice then shifted. The echo of something within emerged. ‘Harmony,’ she clearly cursed in a dusty tone. ‘To keep balance, but of what exactly!’ She made it echo in an impossible boom, making the dungeon walls tremble and the beasts shrink at her voice. They dropped as their knees were unable to withhold the reverberations. Instinctively, they wailed, crying out for help, but for whom, they knew not. The beasts still standing stepped slightly backward. They felt something was wrong with Luna. They sensed something different about her, something they never observed nor perceived. Luna was sitting in front of them, but simultaneously, it was not her. For the first time, they were terrified of the Mistress of the Night.
Luna tightened her grip around the young creature. The girl named Eufremia sensed Luna’s trembles as she railed more determinedly in her anger. Eufremia hugged Luna, only knowing this method could calm her.
And it did. Luna did not thank the girl, keeping to herself to make sense of what had happened.
Luna closed her eyes; they returned to stand around her, returning to a melancholic silence.
Minutes passed, and Luna felt Eufremia’s weight. She thought the worst. All sorts of scenarios raced in her head, all vying for her attention. She had promised to save them. A slither of the hope shyly embered underneath her melancholy. It was denied replenishment; it had shortly rekindled by hearing the beasts’ brief glimpse of an intellect. To then be smothered once more.
Maybe she should stop caring that much about others plights. To stop focusing on them. But who would then if she did not? She had powers and experiences beyond any living creature; it was her responsibility. But who would care to remember her efforts? Her sister was too enamored in her own world to give back any attention. Everything Luna would ever undertake will remain unsung – even her nightly toil. Creatures of all kinds, of any age, of any time, will always be scared of the dark – of the night. No matter how bright it may turn, there will always be apprehension toward her realm.
Luna brought the girl in front of her in a flurry of panic. Eufremia opened her eyes and yawned as a kitten would.
She had been sleeping.
Luna excused herself. One of Batponies stepped forward a single step away from the rest. A male, the father of the little girl.
‘Want your daughter back, Arsal?’ asked Luna in her normal voice.
Arsal did not understand what Luna said but locked his eyes on Eufremia.
‘You want, then…’
Luna returned the child to her father.
She got up.
‘I’ll prepare the bath.’ Luna gestured forward with her head. ‘Follow me. I’ll have to shorten my stay, unfortunately… I have other errands… other ordeals…’ She sighed. ‘I still have to get my crown.’ Luna pointed forward again. ‘Follow me. Excuse me for my temper… I’m sorry.’
She recalled another point. ‘And there will be no walk tonight. The bad season is arriving… Damn it,’ she whispered the curse.
At the very corner of her field of vision, where the root of a tree shyly peered, Luna noticed red lines descending the walls. Tentatively she approached them, the creatures in tow. She smelled the red veins – no irony scent, not the typical smell of blood; it was humid. Had their blood mutated to such an extent that it transformed to occlude all its former self? She took another sniff. Her eyes widened, her expression wanting to showcase a smile but locked in a stupor. The veins tended to turn white as they descended the wall. Then it hit her – a fungus. The red was simply the fungus expanding to a root on the floor below.
She quietly chuckled in mockery of herself; Luna turned to address her flock. ‘See? We are not so different, you and I.’
Luna detested the expression, but the comic tone behind it made her smirk to widen.
She gestured for them to follow her toward the grand pool she had carved within the rocky underground, decorating it with all matter of intricately ornate designs and representations. She had let herself loose on that one; depictions of forests, rivers, and animals striding under a sky illuminated by a full Moon. Then again, it was one of the few places she could let herself free without any sort of barrier.
The liberation of rocks had not been what she spent most of her time on. The carving and the designing of the irrigation system, however, had been where she poured in everything. Maybe no one will pay it heed; maybe people and later centuries will find it ravaged by the elements and the carvings barely perceivable, but it was her creation, and she was proud of it.
Luna sat on the edge, observing them enjoy the cool water she had let pour in. She thought of soaking herself in it, but a quick observation and sniff of the water made her elect otherwise. She loved them and was ready to share in their hardship, but even her love had limits. And constantly cleaning the water while dipping in would be nigh impossible if the likes of Eufremia wanted to play their, at times, quite brutish games. The times she sealed scars caused by their tusks and bony wings were too many to count. Their games had even earned her a small scar underneath her right wing.
Luna quivered at the thought of potentially ingesting their water, not deigning to hide her disgust.
She and her sisters were immortal – that is true – but it did not immune them from sicknesses. Luna was more resilient in that department, whereas Celestia always seemed to unwantedly catch herself something.
‘You’re sweltering, Celestia. Where have you been? The swamps?’
‘Worse! The city!’ she had intentionally exaggerated… half-exaggerated; cities in that time were a haven of clustered packs for disease to spring up from. Sanitary reforms and improvements were not yet to be promulgated, though it wouldn’t have been long until they were forcibly applied.
Luna smirked. ‘Well… At least, your pyromancy is being used for once.’
‘I do use it… often. When you’re not here… and when no one is looking,’ she jokingly diverted her regard.
‘Oh, sure. I trust you though – partially,’ she laughed.
Celestia joined Luna, only stopping when it became too painful to continue. ‘By the Aurelian Path of the Carrion Road of damned Tartarus… my head…’
Luna got up from her side and gently pocked Celestia on the head. ‘You better rest, idiot. It will be boring on my own.’
‘I promise to rest!’ Celestia declared. ‘Can’t you heal me?’
‘Something has really melted in there,’ poking her more on the head.
‘Remind me. I tend to forget when-’
‘-convenient,’ chuckled Luna. Celestia agreed with a nod coupled with a smile. ‘At any rate. Say I take the marmalade out of the cupboard, then the marmalade will be out of the cupboard, but the cupboard remains, right? If I take the disease out of you, it will remain out, and I will be tempted to eat it.’
‘Willingly catch my illness? You must be mad or utterly deranged. And you eating marmalade is even more unlikely.’
‘My point exactly! And why not both?’ she grinned in amusement. ‘Additionally, you are the mad one here.’
The conversation had occurred… Luna could not remember, but it was in the early days – she was sure of it. She rummaged for the memory, searching all the recesses of her mind for more details – more anything related to a fragment of memory. The memory was gone, however.
“Oh, sure. I trust you though – partially.” It sounded partially foreign to her, like a thing she had not said. Could it have been that she was imagining this entire conversation? It felt real in some parts, of which she could not ascertain where the lies began or ended. Perhaps her sister would have her doubts – but, at the same time, she could be lying. From the side, Luna noticed the different truths Celestia shared. Luna noticed the half-lies and half-truths she indulged in. Which of her words could be her earnest ones, Luna gave up deciphering. Luna could not cut down on the number of past promises Celestia had reneged upon. In their long existence, changing residence had come surprisingly little; when it would happen, Luna would begin by drawing the plans for the general layout in addition to the more hidden chambers strews around for delicate trinkets. At first, Celestia was indulgent with the time and cares her sister gave for each, letting her an almost infinite timeline and budget to act upon her creative mind. But as the years went by, as society evolved and its miens shifted, Celestia became less patient with Luna’s creativity. The castle had to be finished. The castle had to be made for modernity – for the preferences of the age. Luna still held the reigns as Chief Architect and the preeminent builder of the dungeons, though the second in command had taken a more arrogant and decisive position. Luna berated Celestia openly for letting such behavior be tolerated by “her puppets”. Celestia readily obliged; then the behavior returned. Luna complained. It receded. Came back again. Luna eventually gave up on either of them to grant her freedom.
In Shire, however, there she had let her imagination run freely. Courtiers called it the “Hidden Jewel of the West” or simply and more commonly, the “Hidden Jewel”. Luna cared not to promote its existence. If it had to be known it would be by popular consent rather than pushed opinion. Of course, her sister had praised and even vaunted her talents – one of the few instances she could recall that had not been drowned by Celestia taking the light from her or people simply forgetting.
It was not as if the west of Equestria had anything to offer. Compared to the east, it was almost economically barren and irrelevant. Other than the scant trade routes with the north, there was nothing for her to warrant great attention. The nobles ruled themselves without her intervention, more scared by Celestia’s disapproval than her own.
Even still, Luna found it hard to not trust Celestia’s words. It was her sister, the last remnant of what once was; the only other Alicorn and immortal in that world – who else could she trust? It was naive of her. She knew it. Luna hated her naivety. Yet she was constantly pushed by her mind to trust Celestia’s praises. Luna believed her when she would spur excuses. She was convinced, every time, that promises would be upheld.
She had concluded its construction centuries back. She had not added anything to it since then. There was simply nothing new to experience in that world. She had little to nothing to enjoy about that world.
Luna had given her residence all, and only received forgotten and lost approval.
Many had even forgotten she was the architect of all the many Equestrian monuments. Not that they cared to know.
An hour passed. Luna beckoned for the corrupted Batponies still lagging behind to exit the bath and join their brethren standing behind her. Like dogs drying themselves, the creatures agitated the water off. And following her initial mistake, she knew to keep some distance away from them. After checking everyone was on her side of the pool, Luna siphoned the filthy water out and cleaned the bottom from the clumps of fur that had fallen. There were more this time, but it could be just happenstance. She thought having seen this much before even if her inner voice was telling her otherwise.
As she cleaned the bath, the Batponies went to eat. She also wished to be able to teach them how to properly masticate. If there was something she could not handle was the sound of chewing. When she would be at dinners or any occasions of this sort, Luna was like a hawk preying for any sound that could disturb the peaceful proceedings. Her sister called her behavior inappropriate, but she was not the one lacking the proper table manners for food consumption. A thing they should have learned when they were children.
It was time to leave now. She would return late. Maybe in a week or less – depending on what she could garner and conjure for them. They were not very demanding and their bizarre biology had made them impervious to the same kind of satiation normal creature would.
Beginning her turn, she was interrupted by a loud mewling. Eufrima came rushing towards her with a portion of her meal, Arsal had also stopped to eat but only to keep a distant eye on his daughter. His concern was understandable, though Luna wondered where the mother was.
‘No, thank you, Eufremia; I am not hungry. Maybe another time.’ She had gestured her refusal to take the girl’s gift.
Eufremia was clearly saddened about it; Luna pet her on the head to assure her that she was not mad at her. Luna then called for Arsal to take the girl.
‘Keep her safe, Arsal. You have a wonderful daughter.’
She was sure all her words had meant nothing, but he had nodded slightly. Putting Eufremia on his back, they returned to where the rest had gathered, but at the last second, Luna took the food Eufremia had proposed and ate a noticeable portion out of it.
The little girl rejoiced and that alone meant the world for them.
‘I promise to save you,’ she said, doubting if she could uphold her promise, but hoped it would reach them. ‘If I am not able to, I promise to remember your names. You will not be forgotten.’ She was confident about this last part. Their lives had been cut so brutally short. Every one of them had ambitions, desires, interests, and dreams once. They could have been something great. They could. The least she could offer them as compensation was her last promise.
They will be remembered. For eternity, they will be remembered.
‘I promise.’