Chapter 30: First Blood
Most of the mares smiled as Rarity and her two bipedal companions stepped through the oaken door to Twilight’s library. The only exception was Rainbow Dash. She was not looking in the Miner’s direction, but made no active move to express displeasure at being there in the first place. Disgruntled Applejack and timid Fluttershy, the other two mares that had expressed other typical forms of displeasure, were actively enthused and smiling, although the latter was looking at the ground.
“Before we continue girls, I would like to borrow Twilight’s bathroom for a chance to freshen up,” Rarity said. As she entered, a trio of ponies followed and sat in the corner. Two were Night Guard, while the third was one of the magi who followed Rarity and the Miner on their subterranean adventure.
“Sure. Bathroom is all yours, Rarity,” Twilight replied. Rarity pranced through an archway and out of sight. The group could hear the squeak of an unoiled hinge, something that made Twilight’s eyelid twitch, and the sound of running water. The sudden onset of musk exuded from the Miner was enough to fill the room in minutes, but among residents with an active lifestyle like Big Mac and the rambunctious Pinkie, it was not unbearably unpleasant.
The Miner picked a corner that gave him a clear line of site of the rest of the room and the door. He slid down the wall and sat, yawning all the while. He conjured a loaf of bread and eagerly ate it in front of the ground. He seemed to gain some of his lost vitality and he stretched, pops coursing down his arms and back.
“So, Miner, I take it Rarity told you why she brought you here?”
He perked up at Twilight’s statement. He nodded, his face a mixture of curiosity and anticipation. Twilight found it hard to believe she once regarded him as a cypher. Despite lacking a voice, he was one of the most expressive individuals she knew. She just had to know what to look for.
“Hey, first things first,” Applejack interjected and nudged Rainbow Dash with an elbow. The mare huffed and faced him with an unwilling look. “Come on, sugarcube. Get it over with.”
Rainbow Dash did her best to wipe the discomfort off her face and stood. “Listen big guy, I...”
“Yes...?” Twilight prodded. The Miner was looking at her curiously now.
“I said and did some things I shouldn’t. Like yelling at you for looking like the guy after Fluttershy and all that. It was totally uncool and... and I’m sorry.”
“Awwwww, good for you, Dashie!” Pinkie lept and embraced Rainbow. The momentum caused the two to topple over into a compromising heap. Rainbow blushed at the position of their bodies, but Pinkie did not seem the wiser as she happily nuzzled her.
“Miner...?” squeaked a voice. Fluttershy had advanced a few steps. “I’ve got something to say to.” Her eyes darted to him and her friends as she suddenly had the floor and spotlight. The sudden increase and eyes made her twirl a lock of hair and hide her face from sight for a few moments. “I’msorryIwasscaredofyouandIhopeyouwillforgivemetoo,” she whispered in a rush.
He cocked his head to the side in his go-to signal of confusion. He scratched his beard and thought, going over the Twilight’s lessons in his mind in a hope to clarify what she had muttered.
“What she is trying to say is that she’s sorry for avoiding you,” Twilight clarified.
“Yes,” the cream-colored mare said, this time with a little more volume to her voice. “It’s just that you, um, were a little scary.”
The Miner understood that. He was learning words and expressions at an astonishing rate, even if it did take several tries sometimes. He conjured a sign and a piece of charcoal to write a message for the shy pony.
NO HARM PHLUTERSHY
“Pffft, ha ha ha ha ha!” Rainbow Dash and Pinkie and had removed themselves from each other, only to clutch their gut in mirth and fall down once again.
Applejack chuckled as well. “Good try, hun. Still gotta work on them words.”
The Miner only looked on in bafflement.
Twilight chuckled a little more before calling the meeting to order. “Alright, girls. I know we’ve come here to give the Miner a name, but I want to hear about this trip of yours.”
“Yeah! Heh, did you find any mole ponies?”
Smiles and anticipation were abound. Through unkempt and often clumsy words, the Miner relayed the last several hours of trauma, fun, and adventure. Halfway through his unspoken soliloquy, Rarity exited the bathroom and helped him with her own side of the story. In awe they stood when the pair described the enormous cavern filled with vegetation and a mansion fit for a baron.
Pinkie displayed her usual boundless enthusiasm and looked as if she were prepared to vibrate straight through the floor with her eager trembling. Twilight took notes for future reference. Although she had volunteered for the assignment, other duties demanded her attention. To see the total impact, the maximum the Crafter could accomplish, would have been a memorable experience indeed. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were both open mouthed and awestruck ever since he got to the Diamond Dog Battle.
After they finished, Twilight was again the first to speak, “Wow... I never had any idea you were so talented. You know, after everything gets cleared up, you could probably just build your own house here in Ponyville in a few hours. We’re already getting used to you being here, and I’m sure Ambrosia’s construction company can give you a job.”
He seemed very uncomfortable at the mention of the mare’s name.
“But that’s for another time.” He sighed in relief. “Miner, we have been teaching you for almost a week now and some of us here are comfortable calling you friend.”
“New friend! Wahoo!” Pinkie exclaimed. She reared onto her hind legs and a shower of confetti ejected from her hair. No one else but the Miner seemed to question that. He stared at her blankly, brain attempting to discover how it could possibly happen.
“Later, Pinkie,” Twilight chided. “However, we can’t just keep calling you some placeholder forever, so for everypony’s benefit, we are to think up a name for you. You still get to choose what you want for a name, so don’t worry about that. I spoke to Mayor Mare and she agreed to help completing a certificate of citizenship.
“Okay,” she rubbed her hooves together. The Miner had ejected himself from thinking about Pinkie any further and nodded in agreement. “Let us begin, girls.”
Twilight’s horn lit us and pulled several tomes off the shelves. Not a single one displayed even the slightest hint of dust, unlike earlier the previous day. Spike had been lax in his duties due to the increased fuss in town. “It’s a good thing I ordered these from Canterlot Library. Never thought these would be useful. Let’s take a look.”
Twilight flipped to a random page, coming up on a monochromatic picture of an old unicorn standing next to a stained glass window. “This one crafted most of the stained glass windows in Canterlot Castle. He – ”
“Oh, come on, Twilight,” Rainbow interrupted. She had taken to the air in unconscious instinct. “He needs something way cooler than some lame old guy’s name from way back. He needs something cool, something modern. We gotta give him show him the most awesome names first.”
Rarity was the first to her defense. She flung her hair over her shoulder with a flick of her head, spreading the light scent of Twilight’s aloe shampoo. “Go easy on Twilight and our dear Miner, Rainbow. Twilight is merely offering her graciously selected input and he is most capable of choosing his own name.”
Rainbow folder her legs to her chest. It would have looked much more impressive if she was hovering in the air like an imp. “Still, he’s got an awesome chance to choose his own name, not some lame name his parents give him.”
“Oh! Oh oh, I got one!” Pinkie balanced on her hind hooves. The ponies stared at her, waiting for whatever hairbrained name she may have conjured from her hyperstimulated mind. After a few moments, she still hadn’t said anything and was losing her precarious balance.
Twilight pointed a hoof at the mare and called, “Pinkie.”
“Ya know, Pinks, this isn’t a classroom.”
“I say we call him – drumroll please,” she stomped her hooves on the floor for added emphasis. The Miner looked like he was seriously contemplating running from her. “Tall Guy.”
It took them a moment to process those two words. “That was reasonable by her standards. Ah’m kinda worried.”
“Me too,” Rarity agreed.
“How about just Miner?” Fluttershy offered.
“Yeah, why not? It’s not like we haven’t been calling him that forever already.” Rainbow Dash finally sat down on the ground. “For my nomination... I got nothing.”
“What do you think so far, Miner?” Rarity asked. He was still staring at Pinkie but an elbow from her snapped him out of it. He conjured a sign once again and wrote:
THINKING. MORE NAMES.
“How about these ones here?” Everyone jumped in surprise. Pinkie somehow managed to do a somersault in mid air. Behind several volumes, Spike’s spine frill waved back and forth. He brought the book Twilight was reading in the center of the six so they all could read. “This guy here built the Canterlot Gardens, designed the castle, and it says here he theorized airships two hundred years before one was actually built. Guy got around and builds as much as this guy does.”
The Miner recognized the book and the name. He learned over from his sitting position on the wall and put a finger on his name. His face was scrunched up in concentration to try and pronounce the name.
“Daedelus. Day-Da-Lus,” Twilight said to help him sound it out. His lips copied her own. Her ears perked; for just a fraction of a second, she swore more than breath brushed past his lips. “The other pony in the book was a mason and artisan named I – ”
Once again, she was interrupted, but this time by Applejack. “What about a last name? We’re only lookin’ into first names here.”
“We can work on that when we get to that point, dearie. For now, let us focus on what is most pertinent”, Rarity countered. The fashionista had been quiet since the naming process began. “How about just ‘Crafter’? You do not solely build, but combine and create.”
He held a hand to his chin in thought and nodded in agreement.
THINKING. MORE?
She nodded politely with a comforting smile on her face. Neither had revealed the private conversation they had on the mansion roof. Rarity still felt the gnawings to share the juicier bits of gossip, but those impulses were reigned in for now. More important matters were being discussed.
A quartet of knocks sounded upon the door and interrupted whatever new names the pony friends might have produced. “Come in!” Twilight called to the new visitor.
The door opened to a quartet of Night Guards, all looking dead on their hooves due to lack of sleep but awake enough to continue whatever further work was required of them. One stepped forward. “Miss Twilight?”
Twilight cocked her head to the side, a habit she had started to adopt from the Miner. “Yes?”
“Private Frost, member of Princess Luna’s personal guard.” Frost bowed low. Even among the Night Guard, Twilight’s status demanded respect. “I apologize to everyone here, including you,” he directed at the Miner, “but I have been ordered to escort your friend to the princess herself. “She has business with him that needs to be taken care of as soon as possible.”
“Well, I guess a break from everything won’t hurt. We didn’t get too far, but at least we got enough names out for you to consider.” The Miner nodded, got up, and reached out a hand to shake Twilight’s offered hoof.
“Remember,” Rarity began, “This is your life. You get to choose how you run it. How it begins, how it ends, you choose.”
Princess Luna sat on a collection of embroidered pillows over a plush rug. She always had a preference of finery over simplicity, a remnant of a bygone era over a thousand years in the past. She could smell myrrh incense burning from somewhere in the tent, but she did not care where.
The tent was designed so she could receive guests as necessary, just like the recently departed Magus Diamond Solitaire with his report of the Miner’s venture. It was circular, allowing guards to line the tent walls as they currently were and observe all directions at all times. The two dozen soldiers, led by Captain Hawk and a recently discharge Lieutenant Lightning Chaser, acted as her personal guard. She was not scheduled to receive anypony, until a good four hours from now, but she did have an engagement to attend to.
The tent flap parted. A small collection of guards escorted the large biped before her. Clad in his usual set of blue pants and green shirt, he had not physically changed since they first met at the border of the Everfree Forest eight days earlier. That made her surprised when he walked in with a smile that stretched his beard across his face.
“Greetings.” The Miner made a very rough attempt at a bow. He had been seeing her subjects perform the exact same courtesy in her presence and thought a reproduction was in order. It was sloppy, jerky, and it was clear he was not used to the movement, but she appreciated the gesture all the same. “Rise, Miner.”
He did so. His guards removed themselves from the tent to give them privacy.
“You have no doubt wondered why I have summoned you here.” He nodded. “I will make it simple. You know that another creature came with you into our world.”
He nodded again and conjured a sign to write.
AETHER GATE
Luna ‘hmmm’ to herself and filed the word away for later. It was a good as name as any for the official archives. “Simply put, I fear that the creature may make a move that we will not be able to predict and hurt a pony. Your mind and memories are the key to defeating this creature. I request your permission to perform a magic to exped–” she paused. She wasn’t sure he knew that word. “...to hasten – the process of our understanding its motives.”
It was not the entire truth, but it was a truth. Dismantling the Farlander Portal wouldn’t be too difficult, but it was not wise to do so until they knew its motives. She was unsure if the Miner had any knowledge concerning the White Eyes or Shadow Pony, but that was not the point of this meeting. This was just a proof of concept, an experiment to see if her mentalism could be used on his kind as well as ponies.
He looked thoughtful. It was a promising start; he was not outright against the idea of helping, but she still needed to get over one more hurdle before she began. To her relief, he nodded and started writing once again, this time with a glyph remarkably like the face of the Farlander.
END–
He seemed like he wanted to write more than the single word, but either changed his mind or couldn’t find the correct words to express himself. He erased both the word and the glyph with the back of his hand and nodded for her to continue.
“What I request of you is simple, but requires great consideration on your part. I know a spell called the Mind Delve that will allow me to see you memories.” He blanched in awe and disbelief. After recovering, he shook his head. “I assure you such a spell is well within my power. I wish to see your own thoughts in order to find data on this creature, but not today. I have brought you to me only for a test to see if the spell will work on you. I assure you I will be gentle, quick, and you will not be harmed.”
The Miner did not speak, of course, or communicate at all his thoughts about her proposal. Incredulity, wonder, contemplation, and a sliver of fear came and went. Luna gave him his time to think. Despite the pressure for this experiment to succeed, she wouldn’t force him to accept her proposal.
CONTINUE
Luna smiled. Step one was over. “I do have a question before we begin, and this is important. I know you spoke of monsters and this tall creature’s ability to teleport. Were any capable of magic or mental attacks?”
He took a moment and shook his head. He was putting pressure on his legs back and forth. She knew he didn’t get tired as quickly as ponies, especially with his ability to heal wounds by eating. The fear he was contemplating running struck her.
“Fear not, dear Miner. If you are uncomfortable with this idea, we can stop right here, right now. Do you wish to stop?”
Motherly tones always worked the best magic. After her emotions raged on the moon in an ocean of ice, the simple and wondrous ability to empathize and care had blossomed within her heart. Although she hated to admit it to others, she had developed a love of kids. After she started her dream warden schedules after a long hiatus, fillies and colts were terrified of her. More than once did she have to vanquish a nightmare bearing her own similarities. It took work, and a lot of patience, but they had come to love her in the world of dreams. Warmth and tender love flooded her heart whenever kids would run and embrace her after she had heroically defeat their own inner demons.
The motherly instincts were rearing up once more. As strange and exotic as he was, he was a child in a sense. Only eight days familiar with the world, he was still grasping and scrambling to understand basic concepts. Patiently she sat. Rushing the conversation would achieve nothing.
He met her eyes with his own blue eyes and shook his head. Luna sighed in relief. “Very well, Miner, we will continue. Again, are your monsters capable of attacking your mind?” He shook his head once again.
“That is good.” She stood. Her hooves crushed blades of grass as she walked towards him. Her silver slippers, molded perfectly to her body, didn’t even make a whisper as they slid through the light foliage.
Concern and worry were still the two dominant emotions raging across his face. He had ceased fidgeting and held his ground until she met him eye to eye. “This is a privilege, I am certain. It will be an honor to see what grand creations you have made.”
A touch of pride tugged at his smile. If a mansion is what he could accomplish with meager materials in a day, she eagerly awaited what this brief trip would give her. She closed her eyes as she brought her horn down to his head. He did the same. After only a few sands down the hourglass, her horn touched his tender skin.
Luna awoke to a cacophony of color, light and sensation, and the feeling she was rushing towards an inevitable destination. The feeling was not dissimilar to a thousand other times she had used her magic to enter a pony’s dreams to alleviate nightmares. With enough practice, she could identify a pony solely by the mental stream alone. His mind was unexpectedly similar to a pony’s, if a little strange. She couldn’t quite describe it in words other than it just felt different. Ponies had a specific tenor to their mind; his just felt a little off, like the wrong flower in a bouquet.
As quick as it started, it was over. The flooding light was reduced to a bright flicker and she her hooves were firmly settled on something hard. That was good. As the mental haze cleared, it turned out that her surrounding were... odd, to say the least. She was in a very long stone corridor, the walls and ceilings built at perfect right angles. The tunnel stretched endlessly before her and a single iron door was to her rear. She normally didn’t need to see in a pony’s mindscape, but this one was intermittently lit by pairs of flickering torches.
“How appropriate.”
She felt the barest warmth on his skin. They didn’t give off much in terms of heat, but it would matter little. Her body was nothing more than a psychic projection, a shadow upon the wall. Luna’s hooves echoed softly down the corridor. There was dead silence, but it was a silence she was familiar with. The silence of a clear mind, of an empty mind. This was the doorway between cognitive functions, and thus untouched by consciousness. The silence was beautiful to her.
She looked down. The stone was perfectly smooth and composed of a light mix of gradient grays. It took her a moment to realize that the stone was the same cube of stone repeated endlessly into the far away darkness. Seeing nothing else of interest in the tunnel, not even an unusual sound or smell, Luna continued to walk until she came across the first set of torches. A wooden door lay under each torch. It was unremarkable in of itself, but it bore the mark of an object created by the Miner.
It was perfectly square with absolutely no flair or flourish. Simple and efficient, the mark of a simple builder. Everypony had their own unique headspace. Some had decadent elegance to their mindscape, while others had some representation of their own homes or towns. She had once seen an endless cave system that held ravines into darkness rather than doors and another where houses and areas stood upon a wide, open field.
She put a hoof to the door. It was the moment of truth, a memory on the other side of the door. She gave it a little shove and made the wood creak in protest. Reverently and carefully, the princess walked into territory only seen by one.
The world was wide and vast. A great, green plain stretched for miles on all sides until it touched a clear blue ocean in the distance under a lightly cloudy noon day. She was on an island, and a small one by most standard. The grass crunched underneath her slippered hooves. Luna bent down to sniff at the earth, only to realize what she expected to be the scent of crisp, clean grass emitted only the most marginal fragrance of flora; she could barely smell anything at all.
Curiosity stronger than anything, she nibbled at some grass, only to spit it back out. It tasted completely bland and devoid of sustenance. Odd indeed. She had heard reports of the Miner finding great satisfaction in simple bodily senses. She may have discovered a reason why. The world he lived in, this Overworld, was like a mirror shard that only showed a fragment of the larger picture.
Standing tall and flexing her wings alongside a slight breeze, she took a closer look at the island. It truly was a giant field, although she concluded the shores did look like a substance close to sand. She saw blurred images on the horizon, but that was natural in a memory; she wouldn’t be able to identify anything the Miner had not done or seen himself. The Mind Delve would only construct images for her of things the Miner had seen himself. If he hadn’t seen it, it would appear blurry like a picture of a rapidly moving pony.
Turning towards the island’s epicenter, she couldn’t help but hum curiously. The land was... misshapen. Instead of the indents, curves, burrows, and general uneven terrain one would expect from grasslands, the land was perfectly flat, save for a hole near the center. It was mathematically perfect, and Luna couldn’t believe it. She had seen the Crafter’s conjuring experiments first hoof, along with the Aether Gate’s unique ninety degree dimensions, but that was nothing compared to the island. It was an entire island, an entire environment composed out of cubical blocks. Luna wasn’t sure if she should laugh or marvel at the absurdity.
She continued towards the hole in the field. There were sporadic clusters of roses and dandelions amongst tall grasses that brushed against her knees. As she came closer, the sound of striking stone became louder and louder.
As she peared from the hole’s outer rim, she saw the entire pit was not cut like a natural depression. Just like the Miner’s conjured cubes, the pit had square meter cubes of stone or dirt defining the pit’s extremities. It was a cubist’s greatest dream, an entire world made out of blocks. Seeing the land either run horizontally or rise vertically produced a bubbling giggle from her throat. The Overworld was just so wondrous and fascinating, just like how the Miner saw Equestria.
She spread her wings and descended into the pit. Even though there were cubic steps for her to walk down, the decline quickly proved too sharp and required wings to traverse. The bottom of the pit was not too deep, but she appreciated the chance to fly, even if her body was nothing but a mental projection of her physical form.
The light dimmed as she dropped lower and lower into the Overworld depths. The darkness induced by lack of direct sunlight soon lifted; a new source of light was below. Her hooves settled onto cold stone cavern. Her environment was illuminated by simple and familiar torches, one of the callsigns of the Miner. The being in question was standing against the far wall, hammering away with an iron pickaxe and dressed in his usual green shirt and worn blue pants. A tunnel into darkness lay to his left and was intermittently lit by torches. Did he burrow underneath the great ocean to get here?
His back was to her and she saw him striking smooth gray stone cubes with his tool. The familiar ripple of power coursed across the cube as it lost molecular cohesion before a few more strikes made it burst. The stone liquified into ribbon of energy and snaked into his body in a flash.
He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, still not facing her. Now that he had ceased his labor, she could see several block of stone contaminated with some type of brown or orange ore, likely copper or iron like his pickaxe. He was mining around them in order to better gauge the extent of the mineral vein.
Done with his momentary respite, he continued, only now mining for the ore. Luna unfurled her wings. The rustling of fur and feather did not even make him flinch. She did not expect it, for this was only a memory and she was all but invisible to his senses. Rising out of the hole, she returned to the door and shut it with a soft click and the groan of wood.
Luna smiled. It really was a fascinating world he lived in. She had the sneaking suspicion he carved that pit himself in order to search for ore. If he had made the tunnel, it was a distinct possibility. She had heard the report concerning the mansion underground. If reports were to be believed, he had built and carved the entire underground in a day. He did not have the versatility of a normal unicorn magician, but his building, crafting, and architectural skills were absolutely unparalleled by all but the most staunch savants.
She cantered down the hallway some more and shuddered from a drafty chill. Normally the corridor would be aligned to present newest memories to oldest or vice versa, but today’s experiment was for testing purposes only; there would be no pattern to the Miner’s mind. One more memory should do before she called the experiment a success or failure. She was doing well enough to consider the former.
Luna shivered from anticipation and selected another door at random. It was identical to all other doors in every way right down to the flickering torch light marking its presence. Pushing open the door, she gasped in delight; it was snowing.
The door opened to a snowy vale. It was night, but the surrounding landscape was well lit with hundreds of torches. She was at the base of a large mountain on a well-lit brick pathway. The snow had long melted within the area of torchlight, even though the heat they exuded was not enough to remove the chill from the air or melt snow.
The white mountains were drenched in a thick layer of white and were dotted with evergreens. Luna blinked in confusion. The tree trunks were all perfectly square, as were the leaves. The canopies were all composed of the same meter blocks of foliage, just like the wood, and the items he could conjure in Equestria. It gave her the feeling the entire world was constructed by his hands.
In a fit of the same childish curiosity, Luna stuck out her tongue to catch one of the lazily drifting snowflakes descending from the heavens. It tasted as bland and uninteresting as the grass. It was just wet.
Brow furrowing in contemplation and irritation, she walked down the lit brick path. The nearest mountain had a very long set of steps leading up to the peak and was surrounded by a stout stone wall with battlements. A structure was carefully nestled at the top, an impossibly precarious mountain home. Rather than climb the entire mountain, even under the comfort of good light and and sturdy steps, she desired a little haste in her search despite her admiration of the scenery. The house was a good place to start.
Unfurling her wings once again, she took to the air and beat her wings. Only then did she realize the utter scope of the world at large. He must have visited this place often, for the world was defined in stunning detail. Although made entirely of cubical blocks, the mountains stretched for miles, like claws reaching out of the earth. Wedged in between two mountains to the right of the vale was a lake fed by a waterfall protruding from a mountain cliff face, complete with a shack and dock. She could see creatures swimming underneath the surface, but were too far away and too dark to be identified.
Her ears perked. She hears a noise akin to a grumble and a growl. Only then did she realize she and the Crafter were not alone. Shadows lingered and lurched in the night outside the wall. Given that this was a dream and subjective to personal experience, they were all undefined masses of darkness. Shadowy constructs likem were built when the recipient knew what the object was, but not exactly where it was. The Miner knew what they were, but did not know their exact location, only that they were somewhere nearby; they had to be the Overworld monsters he spoke about. One shadow creature lurched back and forth on four legs, while a group of another collected in a group and limped as if severely wounded. She recalled Captain Barricade made him promise to describe his world’s monsters in better detail. She made a mental note to ask about that herself when the details were compiled.
The mountain top was crowned by a winter lodge. A small stone courtyard containing tables, a fire pit, and chairs filled the immediate area. It seemed a little half hazardly slapped together, lacking the grace and aesthetic duality seen in the underground mansion report. What she thought were street lamps... well, they were street lamps. A symmetrical set of eight street lamps lined the courtyard. Instead of a torch or gas lantern, a single stone cube hung from the top of a wooden streetlamp and radiated comforting light. It looked similar to cobblestone but was composed of dull yellows and light browns. Luna rose onto her hind legs and nuzzled the stone. It was very smooth and felt like glass, but was cool to the touch despite the outpouring light.
His world grew more fascinating every moment.
As she approached, she heard a deep bass sound coming from the structure before a few additional moments identified it as a series of beats. It was a song, although an albeit mechanical and lifeless one.
The house itself was quite grand, if much smaller than the mansion. The base was composed entirely of cobblestone, while the remaining materials were largely wood. The steps lead to a deck jutting out several meters from the wood walls. Above the iron doors was a large glass window stretching both floors and stopping just short of the cross-gabled roof. The wooden divider separating the first and second floor was lined with torches. Come to think of it, the Miner was quite obsessed with good lighting, but with monsters pawing outside the walls, Luna supposed she couldn’t blame him.
Luna continued up the steps and teleported inside. The first floor was quite a fine place. Bookshelves lined the far walls while a stone hearth crackled on the far right. Rather than burning wood, some type of reddish stone burned without any recognizable source of fuel or kindling. Even more odd.
Some small workshop was tucked under the stairs to the left, right next to a set of windows on the back wall. Several stone furnaces stood cold yet stuffed with charcoal kindling. Some type of chemistry set lie next to a pair of chests, the same the magus described in the report.
A soft snoring caught her attention. She had missed it during her pan, but a bed with woolen sheets tucked right next to the hearth was the architect himself. The Miner lay sprawled across its surface, not even bothering to remove a pair of iron boots or a shirt that looked like it hadn’t been washed in many days. His brown hair was unkempt and a pickaxe showing signs of use and damage had been carelessly set at the foot of the bed. He looked so peaceful by himself, so without care or worry. So happy.
Luna knew that she could not wake him even if she tried. As quietly as she came she left through the very same door. She had seen enough for a test run, and she agreed she would not go any further than she had already. She spread her wings and glided to the battlement walls. It was a very sturdy defense, very much like the walls securing Canterlot itself. She knew he claimed his world had monsters, but the only one confirmed was the Farlander. Scanning the darkness, she didn’t see anything truly definable. Normally she could see through the night with unerring accuracy, but they may have been something about the Miner’s mind that prevented her from seeing clearly beyond the first thirty or forty feet. She could still see, but shapes were ill-defined at best. That, or it was something more than darkness; physics and basic structure governing the Miner and his powers varied greatly between him and ponies. It could very well be that something as simple as light worked differently in the Overworld, as strange a concept as that sounded.
The shadows did not give her much to accurately gauge their body or shape. The groaners appeared to be bipedal like the Miner, but were still slow enough to outrun at a brisk canter. The quadruped did not make the slightest noise and had short stubby legs, very unlike her own long, slender form. Yet another creature had many more legs and hissed. The shadows clinging to its body were too numerous for an accurate number, but it was as large as a pony, if very short.
“Well, well, well...” Luna whispered with satisfaction. She had spotted another monster, this one also undefined due to the Miner’s sleepy recollection. What made this one different was the shape. Close to ten feet tall and thin as a rail, a monster growled and gurgled under an evergreen on the far side of the vale. Tall, thin, and black as night. The exact description of a Farlander. “Hello, Farlander.”
It turned around. It couldn't possible have heard her from that distance; it had to be at least a quarter mile away. Unlike the other monsters who were still vague and undefined, this one had a detail the others didn’t, one the Miner had yet to describe: eyes made of a bright, deep violet.
“Uuuuuuuuuuhhh...”
She heard something on the wind, a low, deep growl that was a mix between a thousand lamenting screams and the the hiss of an angry Changeling. Luna tensed in surprise and worry; nightmares and dream projections normally ignored her... Except when a dreamer felt so passionately about something, those traits transfer to the dream and all who view it. She recalled a memory from what seemed like so long ago.
“Our initial estimates believe that this creature is capable of teleportation in addition to a high stealth quotient. He also expressed a deep desire to not look the creature in the eyes.”
Never look it in the eyes, or anywhere near its face for that matter; she had forgotten that fact. Luna blinked to better focus.
BAMF!
It was gone.
It couldn’t have disappeared so fast. Then again, Farlanders could teleport. Never blink, never lose eye contact, lest you wish the fiend to strike. It was an intimidating deterrence to be sure.
“Hhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....”
Luna’s ears flattened against her skull and her wings flared. She had faced nightmares before. This one should not be different.
Should not.
She darted her head to the side upon hearing the creature’s phantasmal scream. It was much closer now, now only just outside the gate. Magic would not work in a dreamscape, only her own force of will to temporarily change the dream or memory. The memory would eventually revert to its original state, but it would give her precious time. She focused her mind on the shadow creature, forcing it to banish itself from existence.
BAMF!
It was already gone and the energy dissipated into nothingness.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagghh...”
Luna had enough. Rather than fight the creature, she spread her wings and flew for the wooden door on the other side of the wall. Pain laced up her flank as something dank and foul touched her skin. Though only a memory, the pain felt very real and she fought the hiss building in her throat.
She reared up on her forelegs and bucked. Her hooves sizzled at the creature’s touch and partially melted, but the creature let go. She braced herself and launched into the air, that did not stop the creature from teleporting and continuing its horrid din. It was right behind her. It had to be. She knew it had to be.
BAMF!
A little closer. She turned on a bit and launched another attack.
BAMF!
“Blasted creature! We understand the Miner’s distaste for thee!”
She had reverted to her familiar tongue under the stress. Something hissed through the air, barely missing her hindquarters. She put on a blast of speed. It was right behind her. That scream was in her ears and its eyes on her neck. It kept crescendoing, growing louder and louder until it clawed at her soul.
“GGGGRRRRAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”
Luna flung the door open with her magic and shut it behind her. She huffed in irritation and relief. The Farlander couldn’t kill her in the dreamscape, but that was a small comfort. The Miner’s memories of the creature were intimidating indeed. Memory was notoriously fallible, but if this was anywhere close to the truth, she would hate to have her ponies face one in real life. Her flanks ached at the thought.
She didn’t want to admit it, but the Farlander and its scream unnerved her. It couldn’t get through the door and outside the Miner’s memory cortex, but she couldn’t help but back away from the door.
“Vile beast,” she hissed. She winced and turned her head to her flank. Where there should have been a chemical burn was nothing but carefully groomed fur and flawless skin. Outside the memory, the damage inflicted by the Farlander vanished. She could still feel the phantom pain in her hooves and flank. In normal circumstances, fighting such a creature wouldn’t be so problematic, but it was not possible to destroy or capture a memory in such a manner. She was not as of yet prepared for such an encounter.
“Thank you for the awakening, Farlander.” Her gratitude was genuine. As embarrassing as running away from a mental fragment was, the sobering experience was enough to teach her how dangerous the Miner’s monsters truly were. “I will not make the same mistake twice.”
She shivered under the chill once more. The recurring draft in conjunction with the sudden drop in adrenaline required a small price to be payed. She took a few moments to catch her breath and collect her thoughts. Save for the recent hiccup, it was quite the enlightening experience in terms of knowledge and cultural understanding. It was easier to understand how the Miner felt in his early days in Equestria, trapped and alone. Those were only two memories of countless, but both had impressed the sense of isolation and loneliness, two emotions she understood all too well.
...
Draft...?
Luna looked up. She was coasting inside the Miner’s memory cortex. She was inside the buffer between conscious and unconscious thought. The space should be a reflection of the mind, and the mind only. The doors along the corridor accomplished that. How could there possibly be a draft?
Luna turned herself perpendicular. The increased surface area on her abdomen and hindquarters would better allow her to discover which direction the draft was coming from. His mind was an enclosed tunnel. No other mind in Luna’s experienced such additional traits. She felt the slightest breath of wind on her flank indicating it was coming further down the corridor, not from the direction of the iron door. Curious and cautious, yet worried how the new development bode for the Miner, she walked forward.
Her recent experience with the Farlander and the new development had her on edge. She could handle big divergences from the norm, but not the little ones. Little ones looked normal at face value, but contained just enough variety to keep her off balance. She did not like that.
Slowly she walked down the stone corridor, ears open, mouth closed, and guided by nothing but the slight wind. What felt like an hour was but a few minutes of dragging suspense. She had found the source of the draft.
Wedged between the safe light of two torches on the left wall was a rupture in the wall. As it was a physical representation of the Miner’s mind, that certainly wasn’t good. The stone was cracked and cubic rubble lay on the floor. Through the opening was nothing except a vast endless blackness devoid of anything. No light, no stone, no memory, no nothing, just an empty gateway into the Miner’s own raw subconscious. What could possible cause such damage to his own mind? The Farlander, although violent upon eye contact, did not display behavior typical of a cognitohazard threat. The Miner even insisted no monster he has ever seen was capable of mental warfare, at least not that he was aware of. Could another monster have done the deed?
She took to the air and cautiously entered the void. The rupture was placed inside an impossibly tall stone wall that stretched in all directions. Where she expected doors to be on the other side of the wall was nothing but smooth stone; an impossibility brought on by something going wrong outside of her spell’s capabilities and area of influence. Nothing was present in the darkness and only the slow thudding of her own heartbeat kept her company. Looking at the damage, the mar was rather precise. No exterior damage other than the hole itself. At least it was a clean wound in his subconscious.
Luna almost missed the ultrathin thread brush past her snout. A single black strand as dark as the void floated past her eye and lead deeper into nothingness. This was a phenomenon she was not familiar with. It was extremely rare to see damage to the subconscious, but she had seen it enough to know it should not conjure something like the in somepony’s mind.
Well, it had to lead to something.
There was no definite ground, ceiling, wall, or any point of reference other than the light streaming through the unfathomable wall. The chill was coming from everywhere and nowhere. Luna drifted down further and further into the dark guided by nothing but the thread. She made extra care to not touch it, at least not yet. It was better to see where it led first.
There was no gravity there, so she needed careful maneuvering with her wings in order to find purchase against the weightlessness. The deeper she drifted, the harder pressure on her head and horn began to build. She was going deeper than she should or had a right to traverse. It was dangerous to enter the mind in the manner she currently used. Down in the dark, in the core of a person’s mind, she could easily be overwhelmed. If she got stuck in a memory or the subconscious, she could be trapped forever, stuck in limbo while her body became a shell without a soul.
Reluctantly, she beat her wings and rose to the pinprick of light far above her. She still did not wish to touch the thread, although doing so now looked like the only way to discover its purpose. Before she made any hasty decisions, she flew higher and higher until the hole in the wall was within hoof’s reach.
She swerved around to look at the black thread. It moved back and forth like a cloud or balloon lazily moving in the wind. Back and forth, no direction or pattern whatsoever. It was not long enough to enter the corridor... but it was just long enough to touch it.
“Were you connected to his mind?” she asked the thread.
She waited for a response. Just in case.
She sighed and rubbed her head with her hooves. “I am talking to thread...” she lamented. Sighing again, she made up her mind. She would will the other end of the thread to come forth to her rather than trying to find it herself. If nothing in the Overworld was capable of mentalism, she wanted to find out what was. As the corridor was not desirable for maneuverability, she remained in the unconscious void. At least there, she could fly and had the advantage of being able to see in the dark. Whatever darkness present in the Overworld was not present in the unconscious mind. Slowly, excruciatingly slow, she reached for the black thread. She prepared a ball of mental energy in case it came to a fight, one separate from the one used to summon whatever was on the other end of the thread. It was represented as a shimmering orb right next to her shoulder. Somehow she had a feeling it would come to that. Closer and closer her hoof came to the thread. It radiated nothing. No light, no heat, no energy, no magic.
They touched.
WIth a sudden and rapid hiss, the thread recoiled away from her into the darkness before she had a chance to cast her magic. Luna’s ears flattened against her skull once more, ready for a fight. She waited. And waited. Seconds became minutes. Minutes stretched on and on. The tension in the air was thick and Luna’s body screamed for a reason to pounce rather than stay coiled without cause. She fluttered her wings to hover in place, waiting to see what would happen.
Nothing.
Luna sighed as softly as she could. She didn’t know what it was, but it was gone and not coming back it seemed. Muscles tensed, she twirled in place to enter the corridor.
The light was gone.
“Not possible!” Luna exclaimed. She rushed to where the corridor once was, frantically searching for the fissure. It was smooth stone. Everything was smooth. She raced along the wall in both directions. Her hooves came into contact with nothing but cold stone. “What devilry is this!?”
No one responded and the silence was deafening. It was quiet and the silence was no longer comforting. She was trapped in the Miner’s subconscious with no possible way out. Well, she could try her hoof at bashing through the cobblestone, but that might do more harm than good.
Luna fluttered around a little more. She needed to think. She touched the thread. The next thing she knew, her only exit had vanished. The easiest answer was that the first caused the second. She hovered in the air, carefully beating her wings to keep them ready for movement. She needed the chance to fight back if it was needed.
Something caught her eyes, a tiny flicker of light in the darkness. It couldn’t be the resurgence of the corridor fissure; she had kept a limb or tail next to the stone at all times in order to remember its position at all times. She could still see in the dark, but the mind was an unpredictable place and risks were best to be minimized.
Another light flickered. Luna felt the impulse to pursue, but reign in her usual brash behavior. Now was not the time to make a foalish move. Her ears flattened against her skull yet again and she grit her teeth. Her volatile temper was reigned in, but she could feel it boiling to the surface along with the first shreds of anxiety. It was quiet, so quiet. What was that light?
She panned her head across the darkness. Another flicker of light shone and died in her peripheral vision but was gone before her eyes could catch it. Another flashed deeper in the dark. Then another. Then another. She turned around, discovering the flickers of light were appearing in all directions and depths. Luna backed her rump against the stone in order to not give anything a chance to outflank and surprise her.
A particularly close flash of dull light almost hit her on the nose. She blinked. Somehow, that one event pointed to something deeper in her mind. Another one came on her left and she could not help but turn to face it. She knew it was familiar somehow. Something about it tickled a memory...
At ten o’clock, the civilian encountered a pair of oddities dissimilar to Subject One. The first was a dense black fog containing solid particles.
Particles in fog... Fluttershy was chased by a creature heralded by a black fog...
Further questioning deduced that Subject Two was a bipedal entity identical to the recently captured “Miner”, save for a pair of eyes that glowed bright white in the darkness.
Chains... Loud and clear, she heard the distinct sound of rattling chains. “Oh no...”
Luna turned around and prepared her ball of energy to destroy a portion of the stone wall. It rose from her shoulder—
Hands were at her throat, crushing her trachea in a death grip. A pair of bright white orbs were inches from her own eyes.
“I... see... you...”
Its voice sounded like a gallows rope constructed from rusty chains. Its face was exactly like the Miner’s. Brick-shaped head, brown hair, slight semblance of a beard. Only the eyes differed. Any other differences were lost on her given the circumstances.
Luna gasped a retort, only to have the creature’s grasp on her throat tighten even more. It hurt. Gather her remaining focus with whatever air remained in her lungs and thrust the ball of energy at its face. It kept one hand on her neck, but the other caught the ball before it could do any damage. It hissed in its palm, although the creature did not shift in the slightest. Perfectly immobile save for its death grip, it almost looked curious with its head tilted to the side as if it were observing an insect.
Her hoof connected to the side of its face. She threw another, but it caught it with its other hand, finally freeing its grasp on her neck. Wrenching her leg out of its grasp, she gusted backwards to gain some distance. She hacked and coughed to recover from the damage to her own throat. The creature glided towards her. The majority of its body was obfuscated behind thick curtains of black fog, but its eyes shone bright and pierced the darkness. Even through the cloud, it could see her. She knew it could.
“What... *cough* are you?” It didn’t answer.
Although there was no air in the Miner’s mind, some unseen force shifted, drawing her towards the creature. She used her own magic to fight the draw. Regular magic would be useless in the mind. Dreamwalking was a cousin of the Mind Delve, but required more than just willing a spell to work. Mental magic depended on the state of mind as much as dexterity and skill. All she needed was a desire for a barrier, and her own mind built it from scratch. She would be fine, as long as her will and concentration were not broken.
Barrier up, Luna backed away from the creature. It tilted its head to the other side, its emotions and motivations wiped from its face. The drawing sensation started thrumming as if in laughter. The unseen force willing her forward doubled in strength. Some great black wind ripped at her shield, forcing her to draw even more magic to hold it still.
Luna didn’t know what it was, but an awful, bone-chilling cold crept through her shield and froze her to her core. It was colder than the most bone-biting gale. Colder the the most voracious blizzard. She knew such a feeling. She commanded such feelings once before for a few brief months in Equestria and a thousand years on a desolate, cratered moon. It was the feeling that all light, warmth, and happiness was leached from her soul; she had done the same to others herself. How could she delude herself into believing she could be amongst ponykind? Who could possibly forgive her of her numerous sins? Was a royal decree by Celestia herself enough to wash away her past, the lives she had taken? Fillies and colts of every age, mothers and fathers, she watched with a smile as their lives drained from empty husks and the light within them died. She recalled covering the lands in darkness, withering plants and ponies alike. It was slow. It was a slow death, and she knew it. Every time she watched her crimes so long ago, she always did the same thing. Ohhhhh, it was so glorious.
She smiled.
“NO!” Luna screamed into the darkness. The cold receded with her sudden explosion of magic and wrath. The anger clouded her mind, but lit a fire to allow her to continue.
She looked up; she had dipped her head once the onslaught begin. This was certainly not some aspect of the Miner’s own mind or a psychic defense. It was the White Eyes himself. It was the body of a creature so very like the biped within her good graces, and yet being in the White Eyes’ astral presence made her feel threatened and sick. The Miner never produced such feelings of danger.
She coughed once more to clear her throat. She was not prepared for a fight, but it may just come to that. If it were any ordinary battlefield, she could fight to her heart’s content. She was in someone else’s mindscape now. A mental battle could incur irrevocable damage on the Miner’s mind and trap her forever in the process. Then again, Luna did not like the idea the creature was so close to the Miner’s mind to begin with. She would deal with that line of thought later. She had bigger concerns.
Luna charged the creature with a primal battle cry. It drifted backwards and the fog gathered to hide his body. The sound of chains softly echoed once again. Its body was wrapped in thin links of chain made out of light and sound. Great spikes made from the same sorcery pierced the creature’s flesh, binding it in an eternal prison. Portions of the fog seemed bound by the magic chains; several clouds seemed incapable of moving beyond a certain distance from its body. Gathering more power, she condensed it as thin a possible with a tapering point. She threw her spear of light with all her might at the mass of shadows. Like a light in the darkness, the fog parted under the force of her blow. She charged for a followup attack, but the creature had vanished. Upon reviewing her meager mental list of its tactics so far, she whirled around to fight off a potential flanking attack.
Her guess proved correct. The creature had copied her own attack and thrust a spear right between her eyes. For a moment, just a moment, Luna fully believed the creature could kill her at that moment. The eyes were the most expressive part of a pony’s face, yet she could gleam a sliver of... something behind its eyes of light. Irritation. A fight with an alicorn was nothing but an inconvenience to the creature.
Luna had the sense to parry the blow with a conjured shield of a different design. She did not want to risk the creature adapting to her techniques. The safest bet would be to use several different tactics to keep it off balance. The spear deflected off her shield and pierced the stone corridor’s outside wall.
She took the opportune lapse in the creature’s defense. Despite being a quadruped and not used to fighting a biped by any means, she knew she needed to fight, but it had been a long time since she had dusted off her fighting skills. It had been a long thousand years on the moon. Every second was spent preparing for an eventual battle with her sister, but a thousand years of loneliness and hate was a far cry from a real fight. She placed a hoof to the creature’s arm and snaked her left hoof across the back of its neck.
She heaved her weight into the creature and smashed his head against the stone wall. The strength of two dueling entities was enough to blast open the wall in a spray of stone and shrapnel. She had gotten her aim right and the dull glow of torch fire bleed through the newly made fissure. There was just enough room to weasel through, so Luna took the chance to throw the creature back into the void and enter the corridor.
As soon as her hooves touched the stone, her body was launched backwards. Her forehooves grasped the side of the hole for purchase against the force. They held fast, but stone was cracking under the strain. It would not hold long.
“There is only one killer today... and I have many names.”
The creature’s hiss in her ear felt like a thousand centipedes crawling down her neck. Luna’s anger had not dwindled and was crushing her fear. She heaved against whatever bonds pulled at her but only gained small ground against the creature’s pull. “Name thyself, damned beast!”
The creature hissed something else. It was not some word or an attack but Luna could not help but feel as if some great knowledge was being forced onto her overburdened mind. Sooner than naught, she found her will buckling under the stress and it took all her reserved strength to not let go and succumb to the darkness creeping at the edge of her vision.
“So pitiful you are upon hearing my name.” The creature made a sound. She wasn’t sure what it was. Her mind was still reeling from the pain. “Your tongue once knew me as Era’doth...”
A arm bound by gleaming chains snaked across her chest. Turquoise globules of energy hardened into a sword in his hand, the same type of gleaming diamond sword she had seen the Miner produce on multiple occasions. Right now the blade was pointed directly at her heart.
“You may call me Herobrine.”
Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Happy th–
Pain.
Herobrine ripped through the shield and the blade plunged into her chest. Warm blood hemorrhaged down the crystalline blade and Luna screamed. The blade slunk an inch into her chest and stopped. It was stuck on her ribs; it was mere luck that equine ribs ran vertical while bipeds ran horizontal.
Luna’s shriek heightened as Herobrine twisted the blade. She felt the pressure on her ribs compound as it sought purchase beyond the bones. Bones cracked. Her chest felt warm and oh so cold. In a fit of panic, she let go of the wall and the pair were flung into the void. Luna’s hooves clamped around his hands in a desperate fight to prevent the sword from sinking any deeper.
Gathering her magic once more, she blasted an omnidirectional bubble to force him away from her. The monster-made-flesh was thrown backwards. Luna extracted the blade from her chest and bit back a whimper. She threw the blade into darkness. What would become of the object was not her concern.
She beat her wings as hard as possible for the newly made hole. Adrenaline kept her mind awake and dimmed the pain. The bitter tang of iron and bile flooded her dry mouth. She licked her lips to give them whatever precious little moisture remained.
Shadows danced at the corners of her eyes. Great black clouds billowed from within the void with only a pair of eyes to command them. Her body collided with the far wall of the corridor and vanquished the nearby torches with the pressure. Little tendrils of darkness snaked through, seeking out their quarry.
“Run, little god...”
Luna did exactly that and bolted down the corridor, trailing a surge of crimson. If she was to fight, it would be on her terms and now they certainly weren’t in her favor. Shadows clung to her legs and flank. She shook them off and spread her wings.
“It does not matter how far...”
Shadows clung tighter to her wings and brought her crashing to the hard stone. She bucked the tendrils, only to get her legs firmly wedged in darkness. They felt like tar if tar had the power to think for itself.
“For I will find you even in your safest bastion...”
She launched another blast of power followed by a spear aimed right between the white lights hiding within the fog. The shadows momentarily loosened their grasp on her body, but Herobrine’s eyes continued to advance. The shadows ate the spear plunged between his eyes until nothing was left but vaporous mirk.
“By your blood or assistance... I will end my suffering all the same....”
Another burst of magic gave her what time she needed to get to her hooves and stampede towards the iron door. She had to get out now. Her head felt like it was stuffed from fuzz due to the stress and blood loss. By the command of her magic, the door flung upon. Endless chaos and subconscious thought lay before her in the usually expanse of light and sound. The shadows were upon her, nipping at her heels. If she could only escape...
An idea struck her. One of her specialties was illusionary magic. Normal magic wouldn’t work in a mindscape, but there was an interesting concept to borrow. Gathering her strength, she commanded her body to copy every muscle and tendon. She tied it tight to create a firm and solid copy and designed another thread to act as the necessary trigger. She yanked the thread as all four of her hooves struck solid stone.
Luna continued towards the door at full gallop. A copy of her body parted from her own, turned, and charged Herobrine. The shadows clung around the copy in seconds and rendered her immobile. Bones snapped and limbs contorted under otherworldly pressure, yet she did not scream; she had no true consciousness, sense of self preservation, or soul to recognize pain. Luna did not care, for her trap was set. She yanked on the thread once more. Rather than dissipating like it should, the inelegant solution to dissipating her copy had the side effect of collapsing the energy giving her locomotion. The stone corridor shook with a thunderous roar. Torchlight died and stone cracked, but the destruction had forced the shadows to recede and bought her enough time to reach the door.
“It matters little to me...”
The sweet release of light and sound enveloped her and she disappeared into the throbbing miasma. Darkness hung in the Miner’s mind for several long minutes. Tendril shadows stroked the door but did not enter. Although the Void Fog snuffed out the torchlight, Herobrine’s pair of eyes still shined bright. It stared at the door with his body in the comforting embrace of night. It was not the same radiance and beauty as Luna’s perfect nights. As carefully as they protected him, they also radiated the same unpleasant aura of distaste and horror as the monster himself.
His eyes did not remove themselves from the door, but the shadows receded back into the rupture and into darkness. The Void Fog carried him with it and was silent save for the sound of rattling chains. It rattled off one final warning as it slunk back into the hole from which it came with a voice unused from countless eons of sleep.
“Sweet dreams...”
Luna collapsed in a heap. The Miner seemed dazed by the experience as well. His eyes were glazed over with half-conscious thought.
“Return him to his quarters. Increase the guard,” Luna huffed. She managed to stand, even if her knees wobbled. She coughed several times to clear her throat while she carefully held a hoof to her chest. She pulled it away; it was covered in cold sweat and nothing else.
Sense returned to the Miner and he looked at her confused. He conjured a sign to ask a question, causing her wings to twitch. Captain Hawk sensed his mistress’ distress. Clicking his tongue, his escort swiftly put themselves in a defensive circle around the biped.
Luna shook her head as he desperately tried to wrap his head around the sudden shift in mood. “Not now, Miner. I will deal with you later. Everyone else, leave us. Captain Hawk and I have business to discuss.”
Deal? Hawk had caught the unusual choice of words. “You heard the princess. Out,” he ordered with added incentive. The Miner had no idea what was going on and tried to write a response or question. His eyes were full of confusion.
As the Miner and the remaining guards shuffled out the door, Hawk approached his mistress. Luna’s demeanor had returned to its former stoicness. Hawk knew better than to believe she was fine. He always knew.
“How bad?”
Luna eyed him coolly. While most stallions would have looked away under the intensity, Hawk firmly stood his ground under her gaze. She sighed, softened, and replied, “Very... The White Eyes has a broken connection to his mind.”
Hawk’s raised his eyebrows, the equivalent to inarticulate gasps of shock form any other pony. Before he could find a way to voice his thoughts, Luna added, “Broken, I am certain. I drew him to me unknowingly. For whatever the reason, the two have a broken connection between their minds. Not thought sharing, just... an awareness of presence. I summoned the creature, but now that I am gone, he cannot affect the Miner.”
Luna was raked with another wave of hacking coughs. A hoof went to her throat and gingerly soothed the phantom pains on her neck. For the first time in a very long time, Hawk’s face was plastered with concern for his mistress. “Not to overstep my grounds, princess, but... are you well?”
Luna shook her head. “No, I am not. Our encounter was brief, but it was enough to know we have severely underscored this creature’s abilities. Send a report to every captain and general there is. The White Eyes creature is not to be engaged under any circumstance. Any and all instances of black fog are to be reported and not explored or touched. The two are classified as both extremely dangerous and hostile threats.” She sighed. “I am... diminished.”
Hawk’s mind struggled to keep up with the outpouring information. “This... creature, how are we supposed to defend against it if the danger is so severe?”
“Send word to myself, or my sister. The incorporation of the Elements of Harmony may be required as well.” Luna scanned her tent to check if any soldier had disobeyed her order or returned to the tent. True to the order, none had entered. “No normal pony can face a creature capable of such dangerous magnitudes.”
Luna took the chance and sat down on her pillows and comforters. Resting her head on her forehooves, she closed her eyes to ease the burden on her mind. She would never dare display herself in such a position of weakness under normal circumstances, but Hawk was a faithful veteran to her service and trusted confidant. “I will report my discoveries to my sister myself...”
She trailed off. Hawk almost thought she had fallen asleep if it wasn’t for twitching abdomen. She didn’t put much weight on it. “However, I did discover something of note. The creature bears some kind of seal. He mentioned a restriction on his power and his body was bound in chains. I sensed something great from his bonds, a power far greater than he.”
“Could it be from this third party? This Shadow Pony you called for in your speech earlier today?”
“Unknown.” Luna wished to speak with the pony or creature that had a hoof involved with saving Fluttershy’s life from the White Eyes. The only problem was nopony could find hide nor hair of the rescuer. The only words it payed Fluttershy were: ‘Stay in the light.’ Hardly much, but after incorporating it into her speech, she hoped to draw it out of hiding. It was a possible, if tenuous, hope. “He also carried the same abilities as they Miner, only I suspect he is infinitely more powerful.”
Hawk was contemplative. If he was reading in between the lines correctly, Luna was in a mental duel with the creature and either conceded to a draw or a loss. Either way, it was the only explanation for her exhaustion and tender skin. It was not his place to ask further.
“One more item of note, captain. A name. His name is Herobrine.”
Princess Luna returned to her quarters two hours after dusk. The waxing moon was already rising over the mountainous horizon. She did not want to admire her work. All she wanted was a hot bath and a rest. Maybe a nap, but it was too early for that.
The back of her quarters was sectioned off from her main office and living quarters. Even though it was a tent, if a large one filled with more than generous commodities, it suited her needs well enough. The room was saturated with sandalwood incense, her favorite. Two buckets sat next to a large copper tub. Her earlier business had spent much more time than anticipated and a quick dip of her hoof confirmed that both were little better than lukewarm after such an extended absence. Rather than call for servants to fetch fresh buckets, her fatigue and desire for a bath was enough that she warmed them with her own magic.
The warmth soothed her aching muscles and tired mind as she settled under the water. She was not sure why she felt so emotionally taxed in such a relatively short time.
“Herobrine...” The name felt strange on her lips. Why would a creature possibly choose such a name?
It had been a long time since she had a taxing fight. A few Changeling straglers at the royal wedding were not even worth a footnote. Discord’s twisted machinations over a thousand years ago and that was the last time her strength was required more for self preservation than justice. It was a long millenia. Too long. Those old skills needed to be brushed off if she ever hoped to be a match in a real battle with the monster.
Luna continued to scrub her body clean of the loose hairs and greasy sweat that accumulated on her skin over the first few hours. She had awoken far earlier than normal in order to deliver her speech and now required a bath now that her more strenuous activities were complete. Six o’clock, three hours before dusk, was the prime time to catch the most attention even among her own guards. The Royal Guard was getting off duty, while the Night Guard was just starting. Civilian ponies in Ponyville would be be finishing their jobs as well.
“Let us just hope it succeeds,” Luna wished. She really wanted to meet with the Shadow Pony, especially after her rendezvous with Herobrine. The black, bottomless mass of hate and cruelty he displayed was utterly astounding. Information would be worth its weight in gold at her current venture.
Steam flooded the confined space, filling the air with humidity and slowly clouding the mirror. She opened a small wooden chest with her magic just outside the small chamber. She extracted a bottle containing a deep burgundy liquid from the container, aged brandy from her own private stock. She would normally choose wine or something not nearly so strong, but it had been a stressful evening and she felt it was about to get worse.
The bottle uncorked itself. After letting it breathe as all aged liquor should, she fetched a glass and poured herself a drink on the rocks. It was quite the fruity bouquet and tasted faintly of raspberries. She sighed and finished the glass in a gulp.
Luna continued using her magic to clean herself. It was easier than manually doing the task. Calling for one of her hoofmaidens seemed like a hassle and she was thus content with washing herself. As she removed the suds from her body, she used the second bucket to carefully wash, groom, and preen her wings. It was never a good idea to use suds and soap on feathers.
She poured herself another, but almost dropped the glass. Words were printed onto the mirror in a very flowery script. The author had wrote them on the cold surface of the mirror knowing full well that a hot bath would produce the steam necessary to reveal them.
If you see him, he sees you.
His wrath comes with blindness.
Blind his eyes, save the Bearers.
-The Shadow
“Shadow Pony... thank you.” Her words were heard. She hoped for a face-to-face confrontation, but this would do.
“If you see me, Herobrine, you see nothing else...” She had a way to circumvent his unnatural sight and the fog that heralded him. Herobrine displayed the ability to control the unnatural fog at will. If what the Shadow Pony provided proved true, as vast as Herobrine’s perception may be, he could only focus on one item at a time. If she could keep him occupied long enough, she could blind him to everything else. She could isolate the threat he posed.
It also hinted at something else: Shadow Pony believed the Elements of Harmony had a reasonable chance to defeat him. She agreed, but between now and her duel with Herobrine, a lingering doubt had arisen in her mind. But another believed they might work. That was good and reassuring. With a little luck, they could beat him. They could win.
“Princess?” A voice was at the door, Second Lieutenant Skylar’s voice.
“A moment, second lieutenant.” She quickly wiped the mirror clean with a towel. She would be hard pressed to explain the words, and made a mental note to request the duty roster for everypony with access to her quarters. Given the recent revelations, she wanted to send Skylar away, but it was eleven o’clock and he was not scheduled to work so late. Something pressing was needed in order to bring him to her tent when he should be tending to his own business or sleeping.
A quick spell cleansed her body of moisture and she stepped out of the tub. Parting the tent flaps to her quarters, she opened the outer doors with her own magic and let the soldier in. Skylar certainly looked as if he had just gotten out of bed. He was devoid of armor, which only served to emphasize his hastily groomed red roan fur and mane.
“Enter, second lieutenant.”
He nodded in thanks. “Obliged, princess.” His hoofsteps were muffled by the grass and soft rugs.
She summoned her brandy and another glass for the soldier. She had a feeling she and the bottle would be good friends tonight. “Can I interest you in a drink?”
“No thank you, highness. Obliged, but no thank you.” Nevertheless, he eyed the bottle longingly. “I have news you need to hear. Immediately, if possible.”
Luna set the bottle on the table and poured herself a glass. “Very well. Continue.”
He nodded. “We received a full report of the Miner’s venture. Besides a run in with some Diamond Dogs, the trip was uneventful and it provided the magi involved a perfect chance to research a large scale structure constructed by his hands.”
Luna took a short draft. It was what she expected given her expectations and the magus’ own brief report. She noticed he was rushing through it as quickly as possible. Something more pressing was ahead. “However, we received viable intel from a magus involved. With visual and audio clues given from the Miner, along with added contextual clues, he was able to deduce what we have been looking for the entire time: the identity of his attacker.
Oh, it was going to be a bad night. “Name him.”
Skylar pawed at the ground nervously. “Sergeant Jetstream, 229th Arial Division.”
So... the pony who located the Farlander Portal. The time could very well match. It was tricky, but doable.
Luna set down her glass. “Bring him to me.”
She didn’t know if it was her tone or the barely contained snarl on her lips that made Skylar shiver.
“That... cannot be done, highness.”
“Explain,” she hissed. This time he flinched underneath the intensity.
“Once Professor Incantus and myself were made aware of the situation, we mobilized immediately lest the sergeant discover the revelation of his treachery and flee. We...” He pawed at the ground again. Something had gotten under his skin and it certainly wasn’t her. “Something happened in his quarters, something I am not capable of explaining. It is something you need to see.”
Minecraft/MLP:FIM crossover
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Chapter Commentary: LINK
Edited by: Cor Thunder, Material Defender
