The Monster in the Twilight
Sundown
The long shadows of twilight were drawing across the thatched roofs of Ponyville, coiling and twisting as if they were alive while slowly filling the alleyways and streets with darkness. The fleeting sunset highlit the nonstop flow of pegasi bringing wounded changelings to the small hospital, or their part done, just returning to their loved ones to shake off the nightmare of body parts and green blood.
The rescue effort had been an epic undertaking of unprecedented scale. The Summer Sun Celebration’s pomp and pageantry had been quickly cast aside in trade for bandages and care in a muddy crater. In the end, wounded changelings had been digging through piles of bodies with their own hooves for the last survivors in the growing darkness, even as the area small-town volunteers refused to leave until the last semi-conscious body was loaded. Too many of the ponies had lost ancestors to the carnivorous denizens of the Everfree, and even though the changelings were a strange and exotic race, a certain bond had been established in the bloody rescue effort. More than one pony home would welcome a tired visitor tonight, and the doors to the celebration had been flung wide open to welcome the changelings who still were able to attend.
In the courtyard in front of the Ponyville town hall, a chariot pulled by two Royal Guard landed almost unnoticed in the tumult. Almost.
“You can’t park that thing here, Ma’am — Princess Cadence!” The rainbow tailed pegasus who had been directing traffic before dropping down from a nearby cloud froze, uncertain whether to bow or salute.
“No time, Rainbow Dash,” snapped Shining Armor, with an uneasy glance at the setting sun. “Find Trixie and bring her to us.”
“Ahh… What if she’s drunk?” Rainbow Dash looked curiously guilty, as if the question was not entirely theoretical.
“Then drag her,” snarled Shining Armor, with an uncharacteristic glower.
“No need, Your Highnessess,” came a slurred voice as a familiar blue-coated unicorn strolled out of town hall, just ever so slightly leaning to one side to counter an unexpected shift in her local gravitational field. Her peaked hat adorned with stars was cocked jauntily over one eye and her starry cloak waved behind her in a nonexistent breeze, showing off her sparkling wand-and-star-trail cutie mark that looked suspiciously sparkley, as if it had been recently touched up. There was a distinct moon-shape to the shiny sparkles today, which went well with the amount of moonshine tucked just a few feet away in her belly.
“You,” declared Cadence angrily, “are drunk!”
“I beg your pardon, pretty pony princess.” Trixie carefully adjusted her hat to a more jaunty angle which almost resulted in it falling off. “I am only presently partly plastererd. By dawn, when we all perish, I shall be positivally permanently pithethed and potted. Besides, isn’t you supposed t’be somewhere else tonight?” The blue unicorn turned her back on Princess Cadence and squinted at the setting sun skeptically. “I’m going to miss that.”
“Shining.” There was a hint of iron in the normally light and fluffy princess’ voice that struck a note of warning in Trixie, but before she could even turn around, she felt a well-practiced spell slap against her side. Then began the pain.
Shining Armor had a practiced military edge to his voice that cut through the boosted hangover like a razor. “Just in case you’re wondering, you little snipe. That’s one of the Guard’s sober-up spells. We use it on trainees who decide to go out and celebrate a little too close to their duty time.”
“ow!”
“It’s fairly simple. All of the hangover, in about ten minutes.”
“kill me.”
“Or two minutes, if the caster is a little rushed, like us.”
“you bastard.”
“Since I know you can hear me now, and are paying attention,” said Cadence in a flat, level tone, “I’m going to say this exactly once. Aunt Celestia is coming to town at dawn. I don’t know what she’s going to do, but you’re going to support her in any way you can. Sober. My guards are going to back you up every step of the way.”
“Good luck with that, princess. My guards abandoned me the minute they had an excuse to go play hero in the woods.” Trixie’s voice was very quiet, but all four legs were splayed out for support and she did not waver in her bloodshot gaze.
“Made any friends?” When Trixie did not respond, Princess Cadence looked up at where Rainbow Dash was directing traffic. “Oh, Rainbow. How has my aunt’s little student been behaving this year? Honestly,” she added as the pegasus squirmed in discomfort.
“All right,” grumbled Trixie quietly, as if not to disturb her head for fear it might fall off. “I scared the birds, criticised the decorations to the point where the fashion fanatic locked herself in her creative cave, got the old apple baker so upset she dropped her false teeth in one of the pies and we still don’t know which one. I think the arrival of those wounded weird bug ponies was an actual improvement.”
“The fire wasn’t as bad as last year,” added Rainbow Dash in a doomed attempt to be helpful. “It’s really been pretty quiet all afternoon right up until the boom.” A pink glow surrounded the cloud, and Rainbow was lifted up to an altitude more appropriate for traffic control and less suited for eavesdropping. Cadence dropped her voice and leaned in close to her aunt’s student.
“Trixie, please listen to me. I know Aunt Celestia, and I trust her. She made me promise to go to Cavillia tonight, just as she had you come here. She must still hold out hope that somewhere deep, deep, deep inside of you there is a tiny spark. A very tiny spark, mostly drowned in bourbon.”
“Hey!” Trixie managed a weak smile. “I’m not that deep.”
Cadence gave the little blue unicorn a soft hug while Shining Armor looked away with a sour grimace. “I don’t know how she does it. Everypony Aunt Celestia touches seems to light up like the sun. I never thought you would ever survive being her student this long, with all the partying and showing off you did. But you always came back to her, every single time.”
“Anything she can do, I can do better.” The small smile that emerged onto Trixie’s face like the sun coming out from an overcast sky vanished into a shudder. With a very small voice, she asked, “What if we die?”
“Everypony dies.” Cadence rested a hoof on Trixie’s shoulder and smiled. “Even alicorns. What matters is how we live.”
“Yeah, right. If this works, alive or dead, I want that statue.” Trixie gently poked Princess Cadence on the shoulder.
Cadence smiled despite herself. “This will work. And I’ll get you that statue. Thirty feet high in alabaster and marble.”
“Forty,” responded Trixie reflexively before looking with bloodshot eyes at the setting sun. “Look. You and Shining Blockhead should get going. You did promise, and the last thing you want to do around this town is break a promise.”
“I’m not talking to you until you apologize to Gummy!” sounded a distant voice.
“This place is crazy,” muttered Trixie, continuing with a scowl at the serious look from Princess Cadence. “I promise I will be a good little obedient student, and do what Princess Celestia told me to do. Cross my heart with frosting and hope to something, stuff a cupcake somewhere uncomfortable or whatever.”
“Good. Start with apologizing to everypony you insulted this afternoon.” Ignoring Trixie’s outraged expression, Princess Cadence produced a small piece of cellophane and floated it over. “And one last thing.”
“Gee, thanks Your Highness,” said Trixie, holding the wrapper in her magic as if it were a dead fish. “You could have at least left the candy inside.”
“We found it next to a place where Twilight was,” said Cadence with a sniff, her wing clutched tightly around some unseen object. “She has friends.”
“Wonderful.” Trixie rolled her eyes and sighed. ”So you think Little Miss Skybreaker has a sugar source, and you want me to track them down while making five unsuspecting friends while waiting for a thousand year old possessed evil goddess to return while staying sober. Piece of cake.”
Princess Cadence seemed to walk as if the entire country rested on her back when she returned to the chariot, barely dragging herself onboard alongside a similarly tired-looking Shining Armor with little of her usual royal grace. She did not even look back when their guards swooped them up into the air and headed away from the small town, leaving Trixie all alone again, as usual.
Well, almost alone.
“Any ideas, guys?” she asked the three identical Royal Guard pegasi who stood back at a respectful distance. “We’ve got a little over eight hours for me to make friends or the world ends. Where’s Spike?”
* * *
The sun lay close to the horizon before Princess Celestia took wing, launching herself out of the Royal Throne Room window in a maneuver that had earned her some seriously cross looks from her guards over the centuries. As the hour drew near, the crushing despair that had slowly crept up on her over the last few years was beginning to fade. Gold and silver wreathed the Solarium in glorious fire from the setting sun, a benefit to not having the evening clouds brought out to paint the sunset in pastel shades. Beauty beyond any planned painting brought by tragedy and death, a dichotomy of logic that held her thoughts while waiting to put her beloved sun down for the last time.
She watched the sky while the last of her pegasi returned, flying with tired, shaking wings as they brought the last few chariots and carts loaded with wounded back to the scattered manors and estates who had opened their doors to the strange ponies. It was disturbing to think of how the changelings had infiltrated her own beloved ponies, even so far as to have a presence within her own castle. Seven times tonight, various servants or bureaucrats had timidly begged permission to speak privately with her, only to reveal themselves as changelings and beg for forgiveness while prostrated face-down before her hooves.
The first time had been a cold shock, by the third she had begun to recognize the signs and by the last, she had simply embraced the startled changeling and ordered a blanket amnesty. There was a world of difference between knowing of a race, and feeling the soft crinkle of thin chitin as they leaned into an embrace, feeling as warm and loving as her beloved sun. There was little room left in her mind for the regret of not being able to learn about them before… oblivion.
Will my sun welcome us into its embrace as I carry the Nightmare and hold us both forever, or will it simply burn us to ashes? If there is any tiny fragment of Luna inside, will she forgive me for my actions? At least the two of us can be finally together, forever.
The sky had been clear of her pegasi for several minutes now, and she could feel the impatient itching of her sun to rest after the long day. With a weight in her heart like lead, Celestia touched her magic to the sun for the last time, holding it gently until it was below the horizon.
Then it was time for the moon. Even before she raised her will, the smooth curve of Luna’s moon eased up above the horizon, gliding into its proper place.
Good evening, my sister. I’m looking forward to our meeting.
“You are not my sister.” Celestia looked calmly at the risen moon, with the weight on her heart lessening by the minute while her destiny approached. “You are a monster who only deserves destruction. Come to me at dawn, and I will see you get what you deserve.”
* * *
The halls of the Ponyville Hospital were buzzing with activity, from the low buzz of sedated changelings in beds to the quiet buzzing of the occasional ambulate changeling assisting the doctors and nurses as best they could. Picking her way through the cluttered hallways, Trixie could barely suppress a shudder at the streaks of green blood that clung to far too many disposed bandages and flaked in dry smears along the floors. After asking⁽*⁾ directions several times, eventually she opened the door to a room to find her little dragon with a pair of nurses attending to a badly injured changeling patient lying on its belly on the bed. Or at least it looked like they were attending to a patient.
(*) Asked, demanded, same thing.
It took a few minutes of gape-jawed amazement to realize one of the yellow pegasi nurses had to be a changeling, even after it spit a blob of green goo across the fractured chitinous back of the changeling patient lying sprawled out across a hospital bed. She had to choke back a startled cry as Spike then leaned forward and gently blew a faint green fire across the gooey mess, which promptly hardened and charred into a black material while the bedridden changeling gave a sigh of relief.
“Is that better now?” The soft voice of the other changeling even sounded like Fluttershy in a creepy way as it gently patted the blackened goo, which gave a thumping noise like rubber. The wounded changeling nodded, and the two changelings exchanged nuzzles, making Trixie’s stomach churn even worse.
Three bugs, one dragon. Time to subtract a dragon from the equation and get to work.
“Come on, Spike,” she grumbled, trying not to look at the battered and bizarrely bandaged changeling or the two identical nurses. “We’ve got a job to do. Any idea where we can find the real Fluttershy so I can apologize for whatever I did to make her run away crying this afternoon?”
“Apologize?” The little dragon’s eyes narrowed and he peered at Trixie intently. “Who are you and what have you done with my Trixie?”
“I’m serious, Spike! Cadence ordered me to go apologize to everypony I insulted this afternoon.”
“That could take weeks,” said the dragon with a smirk. “Or we could just tie you up in front of town hall, and sell pies. You can apologize while they throw, and I can build up my hoard. We might even be able to find that set of teeth.”
“Spike! Look, ditch your little bug buddies and let’s get moving. We haven’t got much time.”
The little dragon crossed his arms and sat down firmly on his chair. “You can start right here. Fluttershy, I don’t believe you’ve ever been properly introduced to my bossy boss, Trixie. Trixie, this is Tallgrass and Fluttershy. Or maybe that’s Tallgrass and that’s Fluttershy?” The flare of green as one of the two yellow pegasi transformed into a changeling with a slightly-twisted wing made the real Fluttershy ‘Eeep’ in surprise and try to hide in her own mane.
“Uh. Hello, Fluttershy?” Trixie fidgeted before launching into a quick apology. “I’m sorry for making your birds fly away. Now come on, Spike. I’ve got a lot more of these to do.”
“What about last year?” asked the dragon, tapping one claw.
“Oh. And scaring them last year too. And the year before last,” she quickly added as the dragon opened his mouth. The thought of Princess Celestia standing at the Solarium, tears streaming from her eyes as she looked into the sky seemed to somehow overlay across the sad-looking pegasus, and Trixie added without thinking, “Can you forgive me?”
“Well. Yes.” The words were almost inaudible, but the tiny smile that came with them made Trixie feel warm inside her heart. Probably a side-effect of that darned sober-up spell.
* * *
In the Everfree, the sounds of pounding hooves echoed through the trees along the path where a fuzzy purple unicorn fled her memories. Little pebbles scattered in all directions as she clattered down a slope and through a small stream before flinging herself under a thick bush at the sound of pegasus wings from above. Close behind galloped a zebra and five little ponies, all of whom panted to a halt outside the bush.
“Monster?” Apple Bloom poked her face into the bush, only to recoil as a blue spark snapped across her nose. “Ow! I just wanna see if you’re hurt.”
“Maybe if we snuck up on the other side of the bush?” offered Scootaloo. An attempt to follow her own advice ended quickly in another electrical zap.
“Pony pile!” shouted Featherweight, folding his wings up from his hovering spot above the bush at the same time the rest of his friends pounced into the bush. Various grunting and struggling sounds came from behind the green leafy obstruction while the zebra fidgeted nervously outside, until the rustle of hugging small ponies died down into a soft mutual, “Aaaawwwww. She’s so soft and fuzzy now.”
The sound of the flying pegasi far above the forest canopy died off into the distance before Monster spoke. “Sorry.”
Apple Bloom’s voice whispered, “That’s okay. You’re just skeered.”
“Scared.” There was more rustling from inside the bush, and some sniffing. “Sorry.”
The sky continued to grow darker as time passed. It was nearly black before Monster slowly plodded out of the bush. “Sorry, mom.”
The zebra smiled while patting the fuzzy unicorn on her shoulder. “My daughter, I love you without reservation, but these little ones we must return without hesitation. Come out, young ones, and let us make haste. We have a long ways to go and little time to waste.”
The bush remained silent while Monster looked innocently up into the darkening sky, only eventually turning to look into the zebra’s eyes. “Sleeping.” At the continuing stare from her adoptive mother, she floated out the five sleeping little ponies from the bush and placed them gently on the grass. “Sorry.”
Above in the sky, the sun finally finished its trip below the horizon and darkness embraced the Everfree Forest.
* * *
In a ruined castle in the middle of the Everfree Forest, a faint light began to shine out of long-broken windows. Despite the long absence of living beings, the cavernous room was almost clean of dust or cobwebs, merely empty and waiting as it had been since centuries ago, except for some stones.
It was time.
Darkness was rising.
Five ordinary stones glowed faintly, with less light than a firefly. Although titanic forces could be focused through their crystalline structure, the Elements themselves were nearly powerless. Only when connected to their counterparts could they be unleashed.
They began to call.
Hundreds of creatures across Equestria stopped what they were doing momentarily as the call went out, then returned to their activities as if nothing happened. Most of them were ponies. A few were not.
The Elements were not complete. One of their number had not called. It remained, silent as always, lurking in places unseen. Waiting. It had been betrayed before. It would not be fooled again.