A spire of ashen silver loomed up above Twilight, glaring down at her as she trotted further into its territory. It rose to dizzying heights, eventually fading into the blackness past her sun-blinded vision. She stared up in awe at the underground mountain, her eyes darting at dizzying speeds to take in all of the structures that these ponies had carved into their home over the centuries, transforming a faceless boulder into a magnificent palace, grander than all the towers of Canterlot.
Over the years hundreds of steel-tipped hooves dug into the stone and imbued diamonds across its surface, weaving a pattern of stars that perfectly matched the patterns woven into the night sky. Additional towers of stone reached out of its sides like muscled limbs, their sheer faces and square corners clashing with the rough surface of the spire proper. Countless stairways zigzagged across its surface, some cracked and worn with age, some polished and gleaming in the dim light reflected by the jeweled stars. Hundreds of black dots speckled the surface as well—those must be windows…there are probably hundreds of ponies living down here! Hanging from the largest window that sat smack-dab in the center of the structure, facing the waterfall, was a black flag with a sickly-yellow crescent emblazoned on it.
Twilight gulped.
Staring up in awe at the beautiful structure, with a thousand questions bouncing around her mind, it was no wonder that Twilight did not hear the soft rush of bat wings until their owners flew up behind her and promptly smashed a pair of armor-plated hooves into the back of her head. A surprised gasp had barely escaped her mouth before her body crumpled against the stone.
The two guards who had knocked her unconscious nodded to Starlight before they each picked up two of Twilight’s legs and flew towards the peak of the spire. Starlight stood unmoving as she had before, feeling an unexpected twinge of guilt that she quickly suppressed. She’s just a prisoner. She’s just a Sunlover.
Moon Beam unceremoniously dumped the unconscious Sunlover’s body onto a rocky platform as he alighted on the highest tower of the Nocturnian Citadel—a tower hidden in the shadow of the spire itself—and glanced over to see the familiar eyes of Silver Comet staring into his own. The faint glow of milky white leaking out of the tower door trickled out and washed them in white as Comet’s gruff voice interrupted the silence:
“Now do we just leave her here? The Council has never told us what to do with Sunlovers…”
“No; no they have not,” Beam began, looking uneasily at the glowing cave entrance at the end of the platform, “but our orders regarding Sunlovers come directly from Lord Silent himself.”
Comet blanched, and the light of his glowing eyes flickered as he blinked uncertainly. “Can he even do that? The Council told us-”
“Do not question your orders, soldier,” continued Beam, shooting a glare at his companion. “Captured Sunlovers are to be taken to the doors of the Shaded Tower and placed in the holding cells, so that Lord Silent may attend to them himself.”
Comet hunched down and grabbed one of the Sunlover’s hooves, dragging her forward towards the cave entrance, but frowned as he saw that Beam had not moved. “What are you waiting for?”
“Only one conscious pony may enter the Tower at one time. That is his rule, not mine…although I do not begrudge you the chance to escort our guest to her chambers. I have been inside the Tower only once before, and…” Beam’s voice faltered. “Consider this as an opportunity to learn the importance of respect for authority, soldier.”
Silver Comet drew in a sharp breath, but it faded out into the freezing air as he found no words to respond with. He watched the form of the veteran guard disappear into the shadows as Moon Beam soared away from the Tower and back down to the lower levels of the Citadel, probably to deal with a much more boring task.
Boring or safe?
Comet frowned.
Soaring in through the entrance to her second-level cave, Starlight landed on the polished stone floor and pushed aside a thick stone door, slamming it shut with a hind leg. The luminescent moss in the ceiling light fixture pulsed faintly as it washed the room in a glow of pale sea-green, a glow that she could hardly see since Twilight—No, that Sunlover. She is a Sunlover—had blinded her earlier. Stupid Sunlover.
Ignorant, naïve, and disrespectful, abusing her powers at the drop of a hat…She continued walking, ignoring the half-eaten fern sandwich watching her from the kitchen table.
Yawning, Starlight trotted to the side of her bed and flopped over on the soft covers, smiling in bliss as the thoughts faded to a dull buzz in her mind. She grabbed the wind-up alarm clock on the shelf and fumbled with it for a moment before setting it to go off in six hours, when she would have to wake up late for the nightly Moonset Ceremony, and then stay up all hours of the day for the Graveyard Shift. That’s the worst part of being in the Guard…but then again, it does pay better than working in the mines or the Moonlight Gardens. Or the Shadow Garden. Starlight pushed the unpleasant memory from her mind, and sleep crashed over her in a wave of soothing darkness.
Applejack awoke to see a grinning face right in front of her, lying motionless within the darkness. Drawing in a sharp breath, she blinked once and stared at the face again, squinting past the veil of shadows…and exhaled a sigh of relief. It’s just a white shape on a banner.
Looking down, she suddenly noticed another tiny shape sitting on her leg, another insignia of the crescent moon, cast from the ceiling by a ray of moonlight. She looked up and around the room, taking in the faint glow of light hiding beneath the darkness. What is this place?
Standing up to her full height, Applejack immediately bumped her head on the ceiling and recoiled. Not because it was rocky and painful; no, it was…the bump barely felt like anything. She craned her neck up to look at the ceiling and saw that it was still rocky. So why didn’t it feel like anything?
Maybe this is all a dream.
Walking under the pure-black banner stained white with another crescent and out of the door, Applejack frowned and stopped immediately. Two doors confronted her as she stepped into a room of equal size, one door white and one black. Both doors had the same crescent moon in the center of their blank faces, one deep ebony atop the face of shining marble, and one brilliant white within a sea of deathly-black obsidian. The white door is probably a better idea.
She trotted through the door on the right, pushing aside the heavy marble door with her front hoof. Walking through it slowly and carefully, she craned her neck up to gaze into the void above her, a pit that extended to the heavens. A powerful beam of moonlight poured in through the crescent-shaped hole carved out of the ceiling that stared down at her from ten stories up, setting the cavern on fire with a milky-white glow that shimmered and reflecting off the faces of a thousand gems scattered across the coarse stone walls.
Applejack did not give even a passing glance to the gems, or the cavern ceiling, or back to the door as it closed quietly behind her and faded into the wall. Her eyes were transfixed by the dance of shadows and moonlight ablaze on the floor beneath her.
What are those?
Black shapes leapt across the smooth rock face, twirling around each other, exchanging partners as they floated over the stone with mesmerizing grace. Applejack’s eyes glazed over as she stared down at the elegant shapes, tracing the path of every four-limbed shape as it glided freely about. They’re so beautiful…
The mare suddenly snapped out of her trance and blinked twice, hard. Wrenching her eyes from the shadows, she spoke aloud, her voice echoing through the emptiness: “Who’s there?! Y’all better show yourselves!”
No one is here. Nothing is here but silence.
A chill raced down Applejack’s spine.
Luna watched carefully for rips in the fabric of the dreamscape as she drifted over the slumbering city of Ponyville, staring through the shimmering curtain of reality that had been distorted by the hundreds of minds sparking with new thoughts and new worlds. Every dream created a new world within the realm, a world that burst into existence only to collapse within minutes of its creation. And it was her job to gaze over all of the ever-changing worlds within the dreamscape, to search for the prowling nightmares that were usually created by the ponies’ own minds as a manifestation of repressed fear.
Swimming through the undulating threads of interwoven space and magic, the Princess of the Night gave naught but a tiny glance into every world, checking to make sure that none of the beasts were stalking their prey this night. Most of the time she could sense their presence, but some were better at hiding in the shadows of the mind than others.
Seeing none, Luna gave a nod of satisfaction and turned back towards Canterlot, taking the long way over the winding river that sliced through the edge of the Everfree Forest. Right before she turned east to head towards Appleloosa, she sensed something…odd.
Silence.
Twilight Sparkle lay asleep somewhere below her. This alone would not have been cause for alarm, but…something or someone had blocked her dreams.
Luna descended down, her hooves phasing in and out of the ground beneath her as she trotted closer to the noiseless mind. Suddenly, as she stepped forward and the wavering grass brushed softly against her hoof, she slammed into a wall of nothingness and a fierce high-pitched ringing echoed in her ears.
A thick frown crossed her muzzle as she trotted further into the silence, noting the lack of a visible barrier of any form where the magical barrier lay. She stopped, listening to the air around her for the barely audible undulations of magical energy. Reaching out with her magic, she took in a thick whiff of the magical energy, tasting the origin and properties of the spell which wove this barrier.
Why would anypony put up a stealth-barrier spell here? It doesn’t make sense…there’s nothing important in this place-
Suddenly the Princess paused and her eyes widened. Her mind exploding with new realizations, Luna swept up into the night sky, her wings slicing the wind as she flew towards the high and mighty City upon the Mountain of Canterlot.
On her flight over the nation of Equestria, the Princess had failed to notice one of her faithful subjects awaken from his rest. Squinting through the darkness, he looked at the clock and groaned. An incoherent string of words escaped his mouth as he stood up and stretched, taking one look around the room as he walked into the door-frame.
He stopped, his weary eyes shooting open at the sight before him. Not wasting a moment of time, he raced out the door, nearly tripping over himself as he ran out into darkness, not pausing for a second to gaze into the sky or into the shadows that trickled along the ground behind him, murmuring as the trees swayed with a frozen breeze.
The wind nipped at his sides as he flew across the road, but no spear of icy vapor could stop him. After a long run his sprint slowed down to an exhausted gait; finally he lifted his head and looked to the stars as he continued along the empty path, watching the Moon dip down towards the horizon and hide her face behind a building lit black by shadows.
After what seemed like an hour he arrived at his destination. Pounding at the door with frantic desperation, it took an equal eternity for somepony to actually respond. He suddenly perked up as he heard the tell-tale sound of hooves clomping down a stairway, and then trotting closer and closer to him until the door swung open. Staring in he suddenly jerked his head to the side, squinting through the harsh light that flooded out into the empty road. A young filly’s voice called out to him from within the house of rich warmth and blinding light:
“Oh, ha’ Spike. What’re ya doin’ here in the middle of the night?”