It was the sound of metal boots on stone that woke me.
That wasn't an uncommon occurrence, but the helmet whose side was pressing into my face certainly was. Not to mention the cold stone against my muzzle. Sacred Moon, please don't tell me I'd fallen asleep on guard duty again...
I opened my eyes. One was useless, pressed against the ground. All the other could see was a stone ceiling, full of holes, pockmarked, and bright with sunlight. Too bright. I squinted, grimacing. I had a vicious headache. I didn't actually remember anything from last night, but Morpheus must have convinced me to go out drinking with him again. I hoped he had gotten hit by a cart.
I tried to sit up and maybe cradle my pounding head in my hooves, but my body wouldn't respond. Afraid that something might have fallen on top of me while I was passed out, I thought my way around myself. Forelegs, hindlegs, wings, tail...nothing. I couldn't so much as twitch any of them. I couldn't even feel them.
That didn't bode well.
A set of silver-blue boots, the hoofwear of my faction, passed a couple inches from my muzzle. I couldn't believe that whoever it was hadn't noticed me. I called out.
"Hello?" My voice was a dry rasp. I swallowed, grimacing against the ache in my throat, and tried again.
The boots stopped. "Who speaks?"
I held back another grimace, recognizing the clipped tones and frontier accent of one of my superiors. Commander Hawk Moth. Wonderful.
"I do," I said, twitching my ear. Another attempt to climb to my hooves yielded, again, nothing.
Commander Moth remained motionless, judging by the absence of clinking armor. I rolled my eye, trying to find her, but clenched my lids together when the motion sent a bolt of agony through my skull.
"Who is 'I'?" she asked, her voice totally emotionless. My ear lowered of its own accord. I knew Moth well enough to tell when she was furious. Goddesses protect me.
"Poison Dart," I replied, doing my best to match her expressionless tone. My coastal accent contrasted harshly with the intonations of her home. Manehattan or something. One of the small townships out west. "Trained in sword and Pike. A member of Her Majesty the Princess Luna's carriage team. Assigned as combat partner to Morpheus Mist--"
"Dart," Moth muttered. I heard the click of armor against stone as she took a few hesitant steps in my direction. "Yes, I remember. You volunteered for this dark endeavor."
"...I beg your pardon, Commander. What are you talking about?"
"Comma--you do not remember?"
She edged a little closer to me, but I still couldn't see her. I still couldn't move. I found myself taking deeper breaths, in order to stave off panic.
"No, Commander. My most recent memory is--" I wracked my brain. "...being temporarily turned into a bat by Her Lunar Majesty after getting my wings tangled in the harness of her carriage."
Moth snorted, though the end of the sound was almost a sob. "Yes, I seem to recall such an event. Our Princess was in an uncharacteristically foul mood...'twas nearly half a moon ago."
My tongue suddenly seemed to go numb. As soon as I had forced a bit of feeling back into it, I managed to rasp, "You must be mistaken."
"Nay." A few quick hoofsteps, and then, suddenly, Moth was standing directly over my face. Apparently, she had yet to notice me. I saw where a jeweled eye joined the plates of her blue-and-silver armor, the strong lines of her ribcage, the flat gray plane of her stomach, and a few other things I had never had any desire to see. I averted my eye, more to preserve my own sanity than out of respect for Moth's modesty. "Where are you?"
"Directly underhoof, Commander."
She stepped back and glanced down, frowning. Her eyes widened when she saw me, and her jaw dropped just a little, to reveal her delicate fangs. A strangled sound came from deep in her throat.
"Commander?" I asked cautiously. I knew, of course, that I was devastatingly handsome, but this was the first time a mare had reacted to me quite like this.
"Dart?" Moth asked, her voice a strained whisper. She reached forward, presumably to lay a booted hoof on my pauldron. But I heard her boot connect solidly with stone, not metal. Moth's brilliant silver eyes were unreadable as she kept tapping at the ground below my neck. My ear twitched, and I felt the feathery extensions on its tip brush against the plates of my helmet. What, in the name of the sacred Moon, was she doing?
Finally, Moth leaned back on her hocks and let out a shaky breath. She absentmindedly reached up and tucked a lock of raven mane back underneath her helmet. It slipped out again almost immediately.
"This must be some witchery of the Nightmare's," she breathed. She leaned forward, and, in a louder voice, stiffly asked, "Does it pain you?"
"Does what?" I barely kept the tremble from my voice. "I feel no pain. What has happened to me?"
"Be still." Moth put a hoof on my muzzle. "I--I have no idea what has happened to you. I have to ask somepony else."
She raised her head. "Captain Bow!"
"What have you found, Captain Moth?"
I recognized the deep baritone of Captain Marble Bow, the leader of the Solar guards. But why he addressed Moth as an equal was beyond me.
"Noctus is our Captain," I mumbled underneath her hoof. "Why--"
"Noctus is dead," she replied harshly. "I lead the Lunar guards now. Those few that are left, at least."
"What--"
"A survivor?" I heard the frown in Bow's voice as he approached. His hoofsteps were much heavier than those of a Lunar guard. "I see you're Lunar, colt. Give us your name and any kin you wish contacted."
"I'm--"
"He is Poison Dart, and he is not quite a survivor, Marble," Moth said quietly. She reached for my face with her forehooves and lifted my head. I assumed she meant to give me a cushion, or take off my helmet. But she kept lifting, and turning, far past the point that my neck should have broken. And there was no resistance.
"Moth--" I snapped, terrified.
She said nothing, just settled me back to the ground. But this time, I was upright. I felt cold stone where my neck should have met my withers. My jaw locked, and I tasted blood as my fangs sank into my tongue.
Some part of my mind registered that we were in the palace. But it was ruined. Windows were shattered, and the walls were cracked, with chunks of debris on the floor. I spotted piles of golden and silver armor dotting the stone floor, and with another twist of agony inside my head, I realized that there were ponies within them.
"By Celestia's barrel!" Bow exclaimed, drawing my attention away from the bodies. I heard a clank as he pressed his forehoof to his breastplate, presumably tracing a crude Sun over his heart to ward off evil. "Sun protect us. He--what evil magic is this? How does a corpse speak and move?"
"Part of a corpse," Moth corrected at the same time that I said, in a weak voice, "I am not a corpse."
"What do we do with it?" Bow asked, leaning in to inspect me. My ears lowered automatically, though in truth, I was too dazed to really pay attention to what he was saying.
"We must take him to Celestia," Moth replied.
"I will not burden the Princess with this." Bow nudged my head--me--with a forehoof. I twisted on my neck and glared at him, almost toppling over in the process. Moth steadied me as Bow took a swift step backwards and marked the Sun again on his armor.
"Then what do you suggest we do?" Moth snapped. "I realize your Princess is strained, with what has happened, but none know more about magic than she."
What has happened? I wondered, somewhere in the part of my mind that wasn't preoccupied with wondering how I was alive.
"Our Princess," Bow said, in the tone of one correcting an errant pupil. "Your charge is gone, Captain Moth. Even if she were not, she would no longer be yours. You and your fellows have raised hoof and wing against her in the name of the Sun. The Moon and its regent are now lost to you."
Moth seemed to wilt at his words. I looked up at her, denying the fact that I was afraid, and just made all the more terrified by the fact that my own heartbeat was absent when it should have been accelerating.
"Luna is gone?" I asked quietly.
She glanced down at me, and nodded, her eyes filled with a grief that I would have found staggering. If, of course, I had had any legs.
"How?" My voice seemed to catch in my throat. "What has happened to her?" I cast my gaze downwards, to the stone floor that was so terrifyingly near. "What has happened to me?"
"I will explain as I take you to Celestia." Moth reached for me once again, and settled me onto her armored back, keeping me balanced with her wings. For the first time, I noticed hints of silver in the purple-black leather. Had my wings looked silver in the right light? If they had, I could have told mares that. Maybe it would have intrigued them.
I would never get the chance to examine my wings more closely. The thought hit me harder than expected, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
"What about the body?" Bow came up beside Moth. "Is there still life in it, as well? If so, then perhaps a surgeon could--"
"Check, then." She strode towards the palace doors, pressing her wings against the sides of my neck. "It shouldn't be too difficult to find a headless corpse."
Out in the sunlight, the pain in my head worsened. The fact that I could feel bone at the base of my neck scraping against the plates of her armor didn't help.
"The Princess's encampment is an afternoon's flight from here," Moth explained. "I cannot hold you during flight, Dart, unless you wish to ride between my hooves. You will have to bite the crest of my helmet in your mouth."
"I'll stay where I am." With something solid beneath my neck, it was so much easier not to panic. Cradled in Moth's forehooves, swinging free in the air, I would be forced to confront the fact that there was nothing left of me but my head.
Sacred Moon. I was nothing but a head.
I tried not to hyperventilate (or ponder how I was breathing), instead leaning forward and gripping Moth's crest between my teeth. It was rubbery, soft. I knew that her real crest would be folded beneath her helmet, but still, I tried not to bite too hard.
"Bow will join us soon." Moth's wings snapped against the air on either side of me, lifting her hooves a few inches off the ground. "Ah. Speak of the draconequus."
Bow cantered out of the palace, which I now saw was just as damaged on the outside as it was on the inside. He shook his head, trotting up beside us.
"The body is cold, as it should be," he reported. "The heart does not beat, the blood does not flow. It appears that only the head retains life."
"I thought as much," Moth nodded. "Stay and tend to the other corpses, Bow. I will be gentle with your Princess."
He turned away. "Be certain she knows that I did not wish her to learn of this abomination."
My teeth sank a little deeper into Moth's crest, but I said nothing.
"I plan to tell her." Her wings beat harder, and she flew south.