//------------------------------// // Chapter Sixteen // Story: To Befriend the Night // by LucidTech //------------------------------// Shining Armor. Prince Shining Armor, husband to the alicorn of love and captain of the guards of Canterlot, brother to the Element of Magic and son of two well-established mages, and arguably the most influential unicorn alive. His gaze was sad as he looked at the ruins of the prison cell. Lying in the corner of the room, like a piece of gutter trash, was the cell door, bent outwards from an incredible blow. Where the door had been, there was instead a black char streak across the ground. He cursed under his breath and turned away, leaving the other guards to the task of acquiring testimonies from those who had remained.         All the prisoners were accounted for, except for Hendrick. A heavy, disappointed sigh split the air and the captain really wished he had something to drink. The sentence had been one year. One year in a cell for aggravated assault. But then, the princess of the night had come on the scene. Luna had swayed the jury, explaining all the good he had done. So, it had been reduced to ten days, and all seemed to be going well, as half of those days passed without incident. Then, Ms. Gloss had a cell transfer. She had scared her previous cell mates, so they moved her to Hendrick’s cell. “Surely, Hendrick can make her behave better,” had been their thought process. This was the result.         Shining Armor’s mind went back to the previous day. Hendrick had requested a few words, and the captain had decided to answer the call. There had been no warm greetings, no friendly exchange of words, only one question. One question from the apathetic stallion who looked like Hendrick, but didn’t act like him at all.         Are ponies like Moon Light’s parents common? Shining Armor answered after a brief pause of disappointment, losing any hope of having a happy discussion. With a very factual tone, the captain had informed Hendrick that no, it wasn’t common in the least. Hendrick had seemed relieved by that answer, and for a split second, Shining Armor thought he saw the familiar stallion again.         Hendrick had then excused him, saying, “You may leave now, Captain.” Biting back a cruel remark, Shining Armor left. The last thing he had wanted to do was listen to the words from the twisted tongue inside that imposter’s mouth. “What in Celestia's name has come over Hendrick?” Shining Armor had asked himself, angered by the very rough attitude that now formed the stallion’s being. Only now, looking at the destruction around him, did he realize how wrong he had been in doing so. Before that day, the captain would have considered himself one of Hendrick’s friends, but when the stallion needed to be reminded who he was, Shining hadn’t been there. No one had. No one would tell the captain how he had done it, but Hendrick had somehow destroyed the magically infused metal and escaped, leaving a shell shocked Ms. Gloss behind in the process. Another heavy sigh filled the air and several of the guards looked towards him. Eventually, one of them, an older guard, approached. He had left the captain to his thoughts, not wanting to interrupt. After that sigh, however, it was clear that the captain would more than appreciate a break. “Captain,” he started, throwing up a respectful salute. Shining Armor returned the gesture in a very lackluster way, then signaled for the guard to continue speaking. “A unicorn has spoken with Ms. Gloss. After calming her down with some relaxation magic, she was more than willing to cooperate.” “Excellent,” Shining Armor replied, a shallow smile coming to his face. At least he was getting answers. “So how did he get out?” A frown crossed the guard’s face. “Well, sir, she says she doesn’t really know.” “Were those her words, exactly? That she ‘doesn’t really know’?” “To the letter, sir.” Shining nodded in thought. That didn’t sound like the old Ms. Gloss. “Continue.” “Well, she says he had three bags that he had tied inside his mane. He mixed them together, then kicked the ground with the tip of his horseshoe until sparks caught on it. The next thing she knew, the cell door had exploded and Hendrick was running away.” Shining nodded again. Use of explosives. He had underestimated Hendrick. “Why didn’t she try and stop him?” “I mean no disrespect, sir, but he did hit her across the face not a week ago. I can’t imagine she was too keen on receiving another.” Another absent nod and a moment of thought later, he decided that while he waited for Luna to show up, as he knew she would, he would talk to Gloss, if only to pass the time. “You’re dismissed,” he said. They shared another salute and both set about their work again. Despite the distraction, the niggling self-blame still squirmed around at the back of the captain’s mind, and no matter how much he tried to ignore it, it seemed to come back to him again and again. He was captain of the guard! He was supposed to prevent things like this. And yet, here he was in a jail with a broken cell in the midst of a very worried Canterlot. With a very stiff walk, he turned the final corner and approached the room at the far end of the hall. After knocking once out of habit, Shining Armor opened the door and saw a mare sitting at the table. It took him a moment to realize it was Ms. Gloss. Without her makeup and primped hair, she looked entirely different. She looked... refreshed. She didn’t seem to notice his arrival; she was busy looking at her reflection in the immaculate table at which she sat. Some form of inner conflict seemed to plague her being. So extensive was it, that Shining Armor didn’t feel like interrupting. Her expression shifted at random intervals, from anger to despair to rage and back again. Then, without any warning at all, her face simply fell loose. She gazed at herself in the shiny surface for several moments, then a tear began to leak from one eye. Deciding that the time for silence had passed, Shining Armor let out a cough. Gloss looked towards the captain, then her eyes darted away as she wiped the moisture from her muzzle. She coughed to ensure her voice was steady, then turned back towards the alabaster unicorn stallion. “I hope you plan on giving me some form of recompense for that,” she said, her usual strict and pompous tone shattered by a soft undercurrent.           Shining let a subtle smile break his muzzle. “I’m not sure. We’re not used to things like that happening.” Gloss turned away, hiding her face. Something had changed; any fool could tell that. Hendrick wouldn’t have explained his plans or his escape, but he had clearly directed some well-thought words in her direction to have elicited this response. “What did he say to you?” he softly asked as he moved to take an empty seat for himself.         “Well, Captain,” Gloss began, a dwindling tone of superiority hanging onto her words with all it could manage. Shining Armor didn’t respond, so Gloss glanced back at him, a slight curiosity in her eyes and another tear trickling down her face. “He made me promise not to tell anyone. He said the words were for me alone.”         “That makes sense, I suppose,” Shining Armor said, smiling kindly towards Gloss. Hendrick seemed to have a knack for reforging ponies’ flaws with carefully selected words. The room echoed as Shining Armor face hoofed. “Well, now it makes sense,” the captain said, more to himself than the unicorn across from him. Gloss’s look of confusion intensified in response. “I suppose I owe Shroud five bits, dangit. You know, I was sure it was ‘wordsmith’.” The air battered against Luna as she flew, which is saying something, since there was no wind this afternoon. Such was Luna’s speed that she felt like she was flying through gale force winds, but she brushed aside the friction that tried to hold her back and pushed herself to go faster. Her cheeks began to chaff from the incessant wind that hit them, but Luna didn’t care. She was determined. Her meeting with Shining Armor moments ago had told her everything she needed to know. Hendrick was in trouble; something about him had changed horribly and Luna cursed her inaction. She had thought he was just going through a rough patch, but no longer did such a thought rest on her mind. Hendrick was losing it, and what he really needed was someone to help him, someone to ground him, and remind him who he was. Luna had done it before, though the situation hadn’t been nearly as bad. But that didn’t matter, because no matter what, she had every intention to do it again. As she neared her destination, her speed slowed. She turned the tight corner into the alley and was forced to flap backwards in order to land, sending eddies of wind over the single body that laid there. At first, Luna believed she was to blame for the shivers that racked the stallions body, but his shakes continued long after the air had steadied itself. “Why did you come back here, Hendrick?” Luna asked herself as she approached the sleeping escapee. “You knew this would be the first place I searched.” She slowly yet regally approached the stallion. Her steps were firm and unwavering, but her eyes betrayed a compassion that lingered in her mind. As she came closer to Hendrick, the air got colder and colder. Luna stopped in her steps, closed her eyes, and reached out with her mind. Luna’s magic weaved through the air and stopped inches from Hendrick’s head. She could feel the nightmare originating from his mind; she could feel his terror and his loneliness. Her eyes still closed, she stepped closer. The feelings grew stronger and his shivers increased. She retracted her magic. No change. Moving the magic to her eyes, Luna gazed once more upon Hendrick.                  Black lines crisscrossed his coat, pulsing like a heartbeat. It was old magic, old magic with a mind of its own. She couldn’t determine when it had started, but she could tell it was slowly corrupting him, and had only seen it once before. The victim had lost themselves in bouts of insanity that had no known cause. Luna’s heart ached.         Then, the lines stuttered. Luna watched with awe as the lines began to shrink, pulling away from his coat and closer to their point of origin as something forced them back. A particularly violent shiver rocked Hendrick’s body and the lines moved out again. Blinking once to clear the spell from her eyes, Luna moved closer to Hendrick.         She dropped onto her stomach next to him and looked at him. Then, without warning, she found herself inside his dreamscape, tumbling through emptiness as her mind rushed about how she had ended up there. She hadn’t cast a spell; she hadn’t even connected with Hendrick’s mind. How had she been pulled in? Her knowledge of the dreamscape came back to her, having not truly been inside one in a long time. It was the deepest subconscious of a being, where their soul took residence.         Suddenly, Luna felt her hooves touch on the ground, though it wasn’t visible. After landing, a figure in the distance grew closer, though it was facing away from her. It looked like Hendrick as a human, but then she realized it was composed of flames. A soul would look like the body, down to specks on their faces. He should not have been composed of flames.         Slowly, the figure wheeled around to face her. The sound of crackling suddenly reaching the air. “Oh,” the fiery creature said as it looked to Luna, its face unidentifiable from the flames forming its body. “Good. It’s you.” She sensed the old magic within this composition. This was the cause of Hendrick’s issue, she could tell, but the sincerity in its voice paused Luna’s judgement.         The fire coughed and looked side to side, as if fearing something was going to attack from the darkness around them. He turned his attention back to the princess and fought with himself as a look of worry and apprehension formed from the flames. Eventually, he managed to squeeze the words past his lips. “Listen, Cold Lady...” The words hung in the air, the speaker having reached another gap. He cringed, but continued. “I hate to admit it, but... I need your help.”