//------------------------------// // I want to hear you talk // Story: Secure, Contain, Protect // by Teh_Zodiac //------------------------------// The mountain towering beside them was an ominous sight. It felt like something was locked in place and time, yet was ready to strike at any given moment, burying them under rubble and rocks of eons eternal. It did not help that the path on which the tracks ran was jagged, narrow and unstable-looking, so much they had to walk in couples, one behind the other, with Spike trailing and closing the line. Beside there was a cliff, where clouds and fog impeded vision, not allowing them to see on what they would be splattered against in case of a fall. There was silence everywhere, and not a single thing could be heard beside the hooves stamping the ground, breathes and the peak, murmuring above. Luna was first, and a stallion she didn’t know walked by her side. The tracks kept on going seemingly forever, and even if it had been just a day of march, it felt like a month. The mood was heavy and gloomy, and conversation was sparse and kept short, for fear of drawing unnecessary attention to the already large party, even if there weren’t Walkers in sight. Luna moved her eyes to take a glimpse at the pony beside her: he was a normal earth stallion. He looked average from any point of view. The only thing peculiar about him was the short, black scarf that was hugging his neck. This was going to be a long journey. Two months at least, and she wasn’t going to spend them walking beside an earth pony stallion she didn’t even know. As the words got out of her mouth and reached his ears, he seemed to animate: his eyes started moving around and his head locked on the alicorn beside her. Luna saw from the expression on his face, a genuinely surprised one, that he wasn’t thinking his Princess would actually be talking to him. He quickly realized how he had been looking, and his dumbfounded face changed, and became an emotionless mask, though Luna could see slipping facets of emotion leaking from his eyes: curiosity and carefulness. “What is your name, pray tell?” She asked with a warm smile, trying to break the ice with a pony that seemed made of the stuff. “It’s Field, your Grace.” He said plainly, returning his gaze to the path in front of him Field was the most common name among earth ponies, and even if this pony could have been blessed, for all she knew, with the most unoriginal parents in the world, his curious behavior made another option more plausible. “Just call me Luna.” She moved her head a bit to take a look at his cutie mark: a closed, stylized eye. A bit on the creepy side, but she was the goddess of night. She turned back and asked gently: “So, what is it that you do, dear Field?” “Garbage disposal” He answered mechanically, like he had given the same answer a lot of times in his life. He was still not looking at her in the face, something that back in her days would have been a grave offense to the majesties. But she had learned the hard way that it was not her time anymore, so she let it slip. “Garbage disposal, hmmm? Must be an interesting field…” She couldn’t resist a small chuckle. Humor wasn’t really her best talent. “Keeps one occupied.” Another telegraphic answer. Seemed like this stallion had conversations already planned ahead and designed to kill the small talk. Luna eyed him, scanning his features and looking for a clue that could tell her how to spark a chat. A drab olive coat and a dark grey mane that was cut really short, almost like a mohawk. His trot was edgy and contained, like he felt that every moment could happen something that required a sudden jump to the sides. “Why were you in Ponyville, dear Field?” Luna asked him with a small smirk. He tensed slightly when he heard the question, and his eyes darted for a second to the saddlebag he had been carrying all along on his back. He turned around again to face her, and Luna managed to take a good look at his face: she kept smiling warmly, yet his eyes were something that unnerved her greatly. Black pools that seemed to dig deep into her soul, absorbing every ray of light in their path. The same eyes that man possessed. “I was meeting with a business partner. We were discussing some details when everything happened… He didn’t make it in time.” He answered, and his gaze felt like a dagger of ice. There was something strange about this pony, something that Luna found enthralling and repulsive at the same time. She wanted to know more about him, and suddenly the fact that they were walking straight through the apocalypse seemed to occupy a distant place in her mind, as now the thing that interested her the most was to resolve the walking conundrum in front of her. Everything about him was suspicious and off putting, and that only interested more. Before she could ask him more, she heard a loud crack, and saw the stallion tilting slightly. He looked at her with surprised eyes, and his left hooves dangled limply in the air for a moment, before he started falling down into the void below. Luna heard screams in the background, and she was pushed aside as the ponies run beside her to watch the impending death of one of them with eyes wide with fear. She heard them, the slow, senseless muttering, and the legs slowly bending forward, pointing at the obvious. Her horn was already blazing with dark, swirling magic, and in a matter of seconds, the stunned stallion reappeared in front of the group, completely unscathed. It happened so fast, it took a moment for the majority to realize the poor pony wasn’t falling to his death anymore, and was in fact in front of them, alive and well, if a bit shocked. Luna massaged her head, as teleporting someone else with so little preparation was akin to eating a whole tub of ice cream in a matter of seconds, with migraines included. Nonetheless, she quickly turned back to face the still amazed crowd and urged them: “Please everypony, walk in a straight line, as near as you can to the wall. I’m not sure I can save another one within moments again. If you hear a part of the path loose on your hooves, alert me immediately.” They quickly got in line and started following the Princess, who knelt to reach Field, as he had ,understandably, pinpricked eyes and a pained, ragged breath. His head shot up as soon as the hoof of the princess made contact with his fur, and he asked her, with an angry voice: “Why… did you save me?” Luna walked back, surprised by such a peculiar question. She looked better at this stallion, and his mechanic, fearless movements, that at first she thought born out of confidence, now finally seemed much clearer. She knelt down again and whispered in his ear: “You just don’t care, right?” His eyes fell to the ground as he heard her, and she pressed on: “I don’t know why you think your life has no meaning. And you probably don’t want to tell me. That’s okay.” His gaze was stuck on the barren soil. “There was a time in my life I thought I had no reason to live too. I felt my sins, the death and pain I had caused, always behind me, like a void ready to swallow whatever fragment of happiness I could find. I tried to keep them, the old pieces of my life, and felt I could sustain myself with them. But you probably know better than me that you can’t live by picking up happy memories like marbles. That’s when I had an epiphany. Do you want to know what I realized?” His silence was the most eager she had ever heard. “You don’t need to be happy all the time, to be content with yourself, to live. You just need a purpose. My purpose right now is to get all of you back to the old Equestria. Alive. And if to take you back alive I’ll have to give you a purpose, then so be it.” He turned around to face her and she felt like he was trying to look for a misstep, for a reason not to believe in her. “You’re not allowed to die yet, dear Field.” She told him with a commanding tone “After we get Equestria back to normal, and that’s something that as certain as the sun and the moon, you are going to help me find somepony. We will find him eventually, because I will follow him even at the end of the Earth. And when we find him, we are going to pass judgment. Only after that, you’ll have my permission to die. Am I clear?” His shocked expression and the mouth agape were really amusing, but she resisted the urge to laugh at him and kept talking, trying really hard to keep a stern tone: “Of course, since he’s kind of slippery, it may take years, even decades to track him down. You might end up old when we’re finished, I’m sure you don’t mind.” He felt being engulfed in a blanket of black, velvety vapor as he was picked up by Luna’s magic and planted firmly on the tracks. “Come, come, we have much discuss and no time to dillydally!” She said with a smile, as she pushed the staggered earth pony with her head, careful not to poke him with her horn. Behind them, the crowd murmured animatedly, before they heard a harsh remark from their princess: “Are you coming or not?” And they hurried forward, walking slowly by the murmuring mountain.