Chapter 6
The Fire in Her Words
The courtyard path had been buried under the snow for so long that the only memory of it lived in the blueprints for the place, wherever they might be. Tall statues protruding through the drifts marked the way toward the door. The monolithic stones bore resemblance to strange creatures that even well-studied Sapphire Starlight could seldom recognize. A wolven snarling at the sky. Gryphons in shining armor suits. A sinister dragon was perched atop a massive fountain in the middle of the courtyard, it's loathsome grin was eternally preserved in dark granite. Neither the fountain nor its occupant had stood up well to the centuries. Cracks and chips had robbed it of its ability to hold water less solid than the snow that filled the bowls.
In the blink of an eye the courtyard was swarming with wolven. Sapphire had no time to react. Wolven were already around her, rushing by. Fur and scales brushed against her sides in the stampede away from the great citadel at the sanctuary's core. A blinding fog of snow had been kicked up by the stampede. Sapphire shook it from her eyes, trying to forge past the onslaught. Suddenly a particular wolven appeared before her, bearing down on her like a charging bull. She braced for impact, but the blow never came. The stampede vanished, blown away on the wispy arctic winds, obliterated like the hoofprints they'd left in the snow just moments ago. Nothing seemed to last on the temporal landscape of the courtyard.
Sapphire abruptly became aware that all of her companions were staring at her. Shocked and slack-jawed faces were warped out of proportion by the shimmering protective bubble that had sprung to life around her. A bright aura, blue as her cobalt eyes, still blazed on her horn.
"Woah there Sapphire, you okay? You nearly jumped right off your hooves there," Autumn said.
Sapphire's teeth were still set tight as a vice and her neck was so stiff it had begun to ache. Slowly she twisted her neck, looking from puzzled face to puzzled face. She nearly collapsed as she relaxed, letting the magic defenses fall.
"There were wolven!" she barked. But they were gone. No fur, no scales, not even tracks in the snow. The only evidence they'd ever existed was the furious pounding of the young mare's heart.
"Where? Which way?" Dawn shouted. He reared up on his hindlegs and boxed wildly at the air with his hooves.
"They're gone," Sapphire said. "There were dozens of them, running away from that." She raised a hoof toward the citadel at the end of the path.
"I thought I saw something for a moment," Ironfeather said. He was trembling like a leaf in the wind. "Out of the corner of my eye, but when I looked it was gone."
"Stay close together," Light said. “Keep your eyes peeled.”
"It was an echo," Brindolar said. He was looking up at the column of light rising from the citadel. "An echo of time, from all the magic coming off that light. The wolven aren't here now, but they were here before."
"Then we continue," Light said, moving down the path.
"Wait!" Brindolar called out. "We're not safe from the time flows. They're all out of alignment here. That's the strange aura in the air. Damaged magic."
"We’re more vulnerable from attack out in the open. Is there anything we can do about it?" Light said, looking up at the dragon.
Brindolar dug through his backpack for a moment and came up with a fistful of silver chains. He had three of them in all. The first he placed around Sapphire's neck.
"These are wards, against time disruption," he said. "They'll protect us from time slips, but they need a magic user to keep them active."
"...why did you bring these?" Light asked. He advanced toward Brindolar with the courage of a being thrice his size.
"I don't know," Brindolar barked back, meeting Light's furious gaze. "I saw them in my home, I thought they'd be useful."
"Wards against damaged time flows?" Light asked. He was practically screaming by then. "That's far too convenient. Just how far north of the sunline have you been dragon? You called this place a sanctuary. Why? Answer me now dragon."
"I don't remember," Brindolar said, not giving any ground. Sapphire quickly stepped between them.
"Light! Give it a rest. Just be glad we've got them," she said. She'd begun to stamp her hooves with almost every word.
"If he knows more-”
"He'd tell us!" Sapphire snapped, cutting him off. “He's here to help. Why else would he give us these?”
"My memories are not whole Light's Hope," Brindolar said. "I do not know why. I just felt strongly that we'd have need of these. There's a chance that I have been here before, and simply do not remember."
"How could you not remember a place like this?" Autumn Song asked. "Not saying you're lyin' or anything, but I gotta tell you Brindo. This is a place I don't think I'll soon forget, even if I did live a few hundred years or so."
"There are spells that can erase memories," Sapphire said. "Maybe somepony used one on Brindolar."
"But why?" the dragon asked, desperate for an answer.
"Perhaps something you saw was too terrible to remember?" Ironfeather said sullenly. His movements were unnaturally stiff and forced. The slightest shifting of shadows seemed to make the gryphon jump.
"Gather your courage," Light said, hurrying to the gryphon's side. He'd gone from zealous knight to even-tempered counselor in a few quick strides.
"Maybe it was important," Sapphire said, searching the bewildered dragon's face for clues that were not to be found. Brindolar shook his head, lost. Sapphire knew Light was right, Brindolar knew far too much about the sanctuary. It was hard to understand. If he wasn’t lying, it meant somepony had gone to the trouble of erasing his memory. She groped around for a reason but found none.
A magnificent foyer had once welcomed visitors to the sanctuary. What was left was a gaping cavern, strewn with stone debris and shed wolven scales. Tapestries, dimmed by centuries of exposure and neglect, hung in tatters from the walls and ceiling. Countless others had been torn down and reduced to stained shreds in the mess on the floor. In the center of the room a grand chandelier had fallen, its severed chain swaying in the breeze. The only light came from torches on the wall, eternally burning from the enchantment that gripped them. They cast an eery, flickering light across the room making tall shadows. The sighing whisper of the wind through the doors seemed to promise that each was home to some dire shade.
All eyes were drawn to the far corner of the room where the strangest sight of all resided. A unicorn mare seemingly fixed in place, bound by an unseen force. Her fur was light caramel and she had a dark brown mane and tail. An old leather-bound tome lay open on the floor before her with a writer's quill resting against the page. A picture of an open book with a quill put to it adorned her flanks.
"Is she... another echo?" Sapphire asked, carefully feeling her way through the debris.
"She's real," Autumn said. "I can see her too."
"Hey! You there! Are you okay?" Emberwind called out, crossing over the length of the room with a pump of her wings. The unicorn did not respond. Her eyes were shut tight, and she was still as the statues outside. Even her fur didn't seem to move, despite the wind.
"Is she... dead?" Ironfeather asked, timidly voicing the thought on every mind.
"She's frozen in some sort of spell," Light said. "Look closely, but don't touch. Watch how the crystal catches the light."
Everypony circled around the unicorn's crystalline prison. It was clear as glass. Only the imperfections along the jagged edges betrayed its presence.
"Looks like she might've been a writer or something," Autumn said, prodding at the spilled inkwell.
"It looks like she tried to keep writing even while the spell trapped her," Emberwind said, inspecting the fallen book. "The writing gets so frantic right before the end."
"This is awful," Sapphire said softly. Her stomach churned at the thought of being caught in such a trap, alone for all those years. "Light, please tell me you can save her."
"I can try..." he said, circling the crystal prison. Bright light flashed from his horn and crackled across the crystalline surface. The blinding intensity forced Sapphire back. When her vision finally cleared the crystal had begun to melt away, giving off a foul-smelling smoke. The unicorn hung limp like a puppet on strings. She collapsed to the dusty floor as soon as her legs were freed. She laid eerily still. Sapphire was the first to approach.
"Are you okay? Can you hear me?" she asked. "My name is Sapphire Starlight."
The unicorn suddenly sprang to life, gasping for air as though she'd just been pulled from a lake. Even as she coughed and choked on the bitter air she struggled to get her hooves beneath her.
"Take it easy," Emberwind warned. "You've been through quite a lot."
"My book, where is my book?" she asked, frantically searching the floor.
"Here it is," Autumn Song said, holding it up in her mouth. The unicorn snatched it away, up into the air. She flipped eagerly through the pages, listening to the soft rustle as they turned. The inkwell and quill quickly joined the book in the air. Both were renewed with the touch of her magic. Quill to ink and then to page and she was off, zealously scribbling into the old tome like a mare possessed.
"I am Lyric," she said, her quill still racing across the pages.
"Well, Lyric, I'm Emberwind, this is Sapphire, Light, Autumn, Ironfeather, Brindolar, and my husband Dawn Chaser," Emberwind said, gesturing to each of them in turn. "Now, what were you doing up here alone?"
"I am not alone," Lyric said. She paused to lick the tip of her quill. "There are two others with me: Brazen and Stardust. I assume you're here to help us fight the monster?"
"Not exactly," Sapphire said. "We're not particularly familiar with the area, and we haven't seen any monster."
"What? How can that be?" Lyric's book snapped shut. The confused faces around her were telling a different story than the one she'd just been writing.
"You may have been trapped in that crystal for a long time," Light said. He kicked a bit of the ruined prison toward Lyric. She stared down at it for a moment, trying to register the significance of it. Her fur bristled along her spine as a chilling memory came back, seeming almost like a dream, of said crystal crawling up her legs.
"Where is Brazen? Did Stardust ever return? If not for us then why have you come?" she asked.
"There's a big light coming out of the top of this place. It's driving hordes of monsters called wolven toward Glendale," Sapphire explained. "We came to find out why. What can you tell us about this place?"
"This is the Sanctuary of Light, a place of great tragedy," Lyric said. "When these lands were first discovered, there was day and night here, just as in the rest of Equestria. But in the absence of good, evil had flourished, our settlers were unprepared for the violence brought to bear against them. But a wonderful thing happens in the darkness."
"What's that?" Autumn asked, unconvinced.
Lyric's horn glowed softly and a flame sparked to life in the midst of her audience. "In the dark even the smallest light shines brightly. Brave and noble souls rose up to fight the monsters, and those weaker souls rallied beneath their light. Evil was prepared. They blighted the lands with an eternal night, so that the sun would never shine and darkness could rally under the bleak banner of night. That was where the great dragon first came to be. The Sanctuary of Light was our answer: a sacred place, in defiance of evil. A prison for her and her minions to last until the end of days."
"So the evil was beaten?" Dawn Chaser asked.
"For a time," Lyric said. "It recently tried to escape."
"But you said it was supposed to be trapped forever," Sapphire said. "What changed?"
"The land itself is cursed," Lyric said. "The sun cannot rise. Light was needed to keep the monster's power in check. Luna's Eye still shines down upon this place every night, and the light of it is harnessed by the sanctuary. But then there was an awful day, and our dear Princess was corrupted by the darkness. Her wrath grows each year, for centuries now, and taints the light needed to control the dragon's evil. One by one the defenses fell as the light grew weaker. Brazen and Stardust came to gauge the damage. A new source of light must be found."
"But Luna is free now,” Sapphire said. “Its been over a thousand years since she was banished to the moon. She returned for her vengeance, but found redemption in the ruins of a temple in the Everfree Forest. The moon doesn't even rise here anymore."
"A thousand years...?" Lyric asked. Her lips trembled and she fell to her knees as though her legs had been cut out from under her.
"I've been gone for six centuries," she said in a breathless voice that was barely audible. "Everypony I knew... my friends..."
For a moment the room was silent but for Lyric's soft sniffles and the uncaring scream of the wind picking up outside. At last Light's Hope spoke up.
"I'm sure this is a pretty big shock," Light said. "You can stay with us though."
"Did you say Luna's Eye doesn't light the Sanctuary anymore?" Lyric asked, wiping her nose.
"If you mean the moon then no, I don't think it did even when I was just a filly," Sapphire said. She looked to the others for feedback but got nothing but shrugs.
"It used to, but I cannot remember when that stopped," Brindolar said. "I believe it was over a century ago at least. Maybe two."
"Well that narrows it down," Emberwind said. "It's all moot anyway, the Sanctuary's standing up just fine on its own. The whole valley's lit up with the light it's throwing up into the night. Except for the parts sheltered under that storm."
"That is not good news at all," Lyric said. "The beacon's been lit... It was never lit before."
"Hey guys?" Ironfeather asked. His voice cracked, and his eyes had become wide as saucers.
"What is it?" Light asked.
"That! What is that?!" Ironfeather cowered, stretching a talon out toward a spot on the floor. A shimmering black puddle had formed, a viscous oily soup swirling with dark purple. Ominously it began to rise into the air. Without warning, the massive stone door slammed shut, trapping the adventurers inside.
"Everypony out!" Sapphire shouted, practically screaming. She hurried to Autumn Song, dipped her head under the pony's right foreleg, hoisted her up, and flicked out of existence. She returned a moment later, having dropped Autumn in the snow outside. The dark ooze was starting to take shape now. Orbs of magic whirled around it. Sapphire knew there wasn't much time left. Light was just leaving with Dawn when she came back. One by one the Sanctuary was evacuated. At last Sapphire returned to find only Emberwind and Lyric left.
"She can't warp," Emberwind said, answering the question already at the front of Sapphire's mind. Sapphire stole a glance at the figure forming in the middle of the room. It was a huge, hulking creature with spikes and wings. It felt very much like watching the last few grains of sand fall into the basin of an hourglass. All at once the torches around the walls went out, plunging the room into darkness.
"It's going to be both of you at once," Sapphire said, forced to make a decision. There was no time to wait for Light's Hope.
"But Sapphire!"
Unwilling to listen to the pegasus' complaints, Sapphire dove under Emberwind's belly. The frosty-maned unicorn had one goal: get outside. Remaining conscious afterward would be a welcome luxury, but not one she was expecting. In a flash the three vanished, but they never reached the air outside. Sapphire slammed into a barrier of dark magic, breaking her warp spell. There was a vague sense of being unburdened as Emberwind and Lyric tumbled off her.
Sapphire slouched to the ground, barely conscious. She wondered if she'd been struck, or come out of warp just in time to crash into the wall.
"D-did we make it?" Sapphire asked, her senses still reeling as she struggled to stand.
From behind, a cold growl answered. “No, you did not.”