Chapter THREE
In the service of the moon
As I watched the sun go down, I began to prepare for my nightly duties. I carefully lifted my dark coated armor up with my magic and set it on my back, using the straps to secure it tautly against myself. Then, I lifted my helmet of the same dark metal with a dark blue plume on the top. Finally, I used another strap to attach a sheath with a plain, black handled sword inside it to the main body of the armor.
It was not common for a member of the Guard to use a sword, even if he was a unicorn and able to use magic to move it with appropriate speed and strength. Guards were more often armed with spears, such as the one I grab while on my way out the door. I had some skill with the sword before I entered the service of the guard, so they let me continue practice with it. That and the small fact of me not being an average Canterlot guard. I am the personal guard for Princess Luna herself.
My one and only purpose was to protect the princess! The idea was given by Princess Celestia when there was an assassination attempt on Princess Luna's life. That was the time we found information concerning a small organization that believed the Princess of the Night had never returned to her normal self and she was still Nightmare Moon.
That was fine at first, they were only worried about the welfare of Equestria and they never put those feelings into action. But as time went by they became more scared and their worry turned to hatred. Their group grew and they began to plan and then, they acted.
The attempted assassination failed and afterwards Princess Celestia insisted Princess Luna to take up a personal guard for protection. Princess Luna objected to the idea but in the end was convinced to have just one guard, and that guard just happened to be me.
I was chosen for several reasons, most of which were somehow connected to the fact that I fit the part. My black coat and dark gray mane and tail in addition to my cutie mark of a silver star made a nice touch to my new position.
There was another reason that nopony else knew, I was a great admirer of the night sky. I mastered a number of spells that were connected to the stars, gifting me my cutie mark. The darkness and the stars of the night sky have become weaved into my very self.
But that was all in the past, I’ve been the personal guard of Princess Luna for four months now and I have liked the time I’ve spent on duty, which was all night every night. During the day Princess Luna has a pair of the castle guards standing on guard in front of the entrance to her bed chamber as she slept. And once the sun sets, I hurry to her chamber and follow her all night till the sun is raised and I depart to get some food and sleep. That is till the sun begins to descend again and I find myself repeating the process all over again. It may sound plain and boring but sometimes it’s entertaining.
This brings me to my current state, hurrying down the hall to where the two guards were waiting outside a door. As I approached, they nodded their heads towards me, then departed down the hall.
I stopped at the door, raised my hoof and knocked three times.
“Come in, Star Spell”, came the answer.
At the sound of my name, I opened the door and walked in, scanning the room for anything that, as a guard, I should see. The last thing I needed was for harm to come upon the Princess at the very beginning of my shift.
There was nothing, just as it should have been.
The princess herself stood on the balcony attached to her room. It was the spot she stood on as she decorated the night sky with stars. Which happened to be the very reason she was standing on that spot right then. I walked to the balcony and stood off to the side and behind her and looked up. I once thought that I loved the night sky before I was a Night Guard, but I grew to love it even more once I began to see it during its creation. I loved everything about it, the number of the stars, how bright they shone, how they seemed to stretch on forever, and I even liked its decora-
“No!” I interrupted my own thoughts. “As Princess Luna's guard I have to keep my head straight! It’s not my place to think like that!”
I dragged my eyes away from the sky and began to scan the landscape. Like with my last scan, I looked for anything that would cause danger to the Princess. I kept this up till she finished and then allowed myself a quick glance at the newly finished sky. After that, I turned and followed Princess Luna out of the bed chamber.
Her first stop was the throne room, where she briefly spoke to her sister about the tasks that needed to be done for the day.
Finishing all the items on the list was the dullest and most boring part of any night I’ve spent following the princess. After we finished, Princess Luna would do basically anything she felt like. She would take a walk in the castle garden, watch a shower of falling stars, and often she would do something just to have fun. Like, joining a guard in a game of checkers or solitaire.
She always claimed that she did it because they offered, but I could see the difference in her when she played. It was something she enjoyed. Besides, I fail to see why they would mind if she didn’t play solitaire. It was a single player game, for crying out loud! But I didn’t say anything as I feared that if I did, she might stop playing and I didn’t want her to stop doing something she liked.
Off and on throughout the night we would exchange words, not enough to learn much about each other, although I learned a lot about her by her acts and deeds. From how she spoke to me, it seemed like she didn’t like me being there. What were I thinking, I knew she didn’t like me hanging around. She didn’t want any guards in the first place. That and the fact I was a unicorn, not a pegasus. Because I had to follow her everywhere, she could not take flight. It was because of me, she was stuck on the ground.
We were approaching the end of the list as we stopped to speak with Shining Armor, the Captain of the Guard. All the talk was about was the night time security in the castle grounds. Some new recruits were joining the Guard and their placement was just getting set. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the new recruits, the first couple of days, or in this case nights, are the hardest. I usually did all I could to help them out, but with my present post I could not.
Once we were finished, Shining Armor started to head home until he had to return to duty. I turned to the princess and asked.
“What would your highness want to do now?”
She took a glance my way before looking back and answered.
“I thought I would take a walk out in the landscape.”
“I don’t think Princess Cel-” I started before she cut my sentence short.
“Is it a problem if my sister doesn’t approve of everything I do?”
I sighed before returning a smile, “No, your highness, it’s not. I shall follow and protect you where ever you go and whatever you do.” I finished by bowing my head.
“Very well then”, she said as she started walking away. I followed behind her and kept my eyes on the move, just in case.
We walked through the door to the large garden. It was more like a small forest rather than a garden. The trees were always kept in a tidy manner, but it was large enough that a pony could be walking in it for a good half an hour while staying out of sight from the edge of the trees.
Princess Luna began to walk through the trees, but before she got too far in, she turned to me with a request. “I’d like to spend some time alone, Sergeant Star Spell.”
I sighed. I did expect this. She did prefer to go and rest in the garden, under a birch tree that marked the center of the trees. I nearly argued, that when there were ponies seeking to bring harm to her, there was no option of leaving her.
I would have said this, if I hadn't known I’d never win that argument. Take experiences from the past, mix them with the present situation, and you get the future. Besides, she was one of the Royal Sisters. There was no way to kill either of them, except maybe by extreme old age. On the other hoof, if that was true, why was Princess Celestia so insistent on her sister having a guard? I swallowed a lump in my throat as I watched Luna walk into the trees.
An owl hooted from a branch over my head as I walked through the trees. Luna would be resting in the center of the garden by now. All I was doing was patrolling the area, walking in a large counter-clockwise circle.
I could tell why Luna liked the garden so much. You can’t see the night sky, but the garden had its own beauty. I stopped for a moment to look at a plant.
Even this flower had its own wonders. It was a rose, but it didn’t grow in a rose bush. Instead, it grew straight from the ground. Its golden peddles seemed to stick out of the green and brown background of the ground. …brown? I stepped closer and looked over the flower to the grass… and dirt.
The dirt wasn’t just a spot where no grass grew, it was a light sprinkle of dirt on top of the grass.
This wasn’t too strange. The garden was full of animals digging holes in the ground. I lifted my head to glance around. Yes, over behind a tree I could see a small mound of dirt peeking over the roots. The last question was what animal dug it.
As I stepped forward, I began to get worried. The tree and its roots blocked much of the hole from view while I was further away. I estimated this hole to be about three hooves wide as I neared it.
This was not good…
I closed the distance to the hole and lowered my head to study the dirt. What I found was a trail of hoof prints leading out of the tunnel. I turned and ran straight for the center of the garden as fast as I could.
The longest run of my life, that was what it felt like. What did I find at the end of that run? I found Princess Luna lying under a birch tree, screaming in pain and growing weaker by the second.
Through the garden, across the castle ground, down a hall, up stairs and down another hall. The next thing I knew, I was using my magic to blow a hole into the door of the secret archives.
If there was a way one of the sisters could be killed, it would be inside this door. If I found out how they could be killed, I might be able to reverse it.
The door blasted inward with a bone rattling blast.
I rushed in as soon as the doorway was cleared. I’ve always been limited with spells that weren’t connected with the stars, but at that moment, I sent out every searching, locating, and revealing spells I knew.
Using a range of spells, I filtered out many books, magically scanning the books for key words, then casting out the ones that didn’t fit the requirements. Using this tactic I was left with one book, entitled as Immortal Life.
My mind seemed to zoom out as I opened the book and searched. Table of Contains, Alicorns, chapter five, page 53.
“Alicorns and dragons are the two oldest living intelligent life in Equestrian history. There are two types of Alicorns; one has the same life span as a pony, while with the other it is unknown if they will ever suffer the fate of age. There are only a few ways known that can kill an immortal Alicorn. A unicorn, or another Alicorn, with great power can summon a blade formed of magic in its purest form. This blade is one of the few ways that can stop the life of an immortal. Alicorns often have great magical strength in a certain area, often connected to their cutie mark, and if they were to be injected with a pure essence of the opposite of that power, it would painfully corrupt the Alicorn, taking away their energy, and ultimately it would completely undo the effects of immortality.”
After reading the first verse, I once again began to run. Out the door and down the hall. I think I might have nearly collided with Captain Shining Armor as I sped to the stairway. There was no time to stop. If I thought there was time then I’d have got him earlier, or I would have even got Princess Celestia. But to do that, I’d have had to explain the situation to a number of guards that would have been lined up outside her door, plus other tasks to get to that sector of the castle. It was just faster this way.
Shining Armor's POV
I finally located the source of the sound that echoed though half of the castle and what did I find? The guard that was trusted with the protection of Princess Luna, running from the scene.
After a moment of thought, I decided to check the archives. The door was blown inward and splinters lay everywhere. Books were thrown everywhere. It looked close to how Twilight's room looked most the time before she moved to Ponyville.
There was one book left open on a table. I stepped forward and glanced down to the pages. “...There are only a few ways known that can kill an immortal Alicorn...”
The question now was, why would the guard of Princess Luna be breaking down doors to read this, then run off, when he was supposed to be with the princess. The answer was all too clear.
“GUARDS!”
Star Spell's POV
It felt like an eternity, but yet only a single instant, till I was back at Princess Luna's side.
I was able to find a small light throbbing just below her coat, right over the heart. The hard part was getting a grip on it with an abstraction spell. Pulling at it seemed to cause even more pain, but I didn’t have another plan.
Sweat trickled down my face as I began to see a small orb, no, more of a crystal of pure light, start to stick part way out of her chest.
I leaned forward, putting more power into the spell as I sensed the end near.
I held my breath as the last of the crystal was slowly pulled out, but then the crystal suddenly changed the direction it was pulled to. Instead of trying to pull away from my spell it clanged onto it and shot straight for my horn, and in an instant it had seeped into my skull.
Luna's cries died as mine began to ring the air. “In the name of everything in Equestria, that HURTS!” was all I could manage in-between shouts.
The pain spread all over my body as my mind raced. What was happening? It seemed that the crystal of light had a mind of its own and that was strange, but what I didn’t get was why did it have this effect on me? I’m not an Alicorn, besides it was made to counter the power of Luna's night sky not… oh, horseapples!
My magic! I had sown the night sky into my very being. That was how I got my cutie mark. I mastered every spell I could find that had anything to do with the night sky. I even created a few new spells. If I were weary I could always step out into the night and I’d gain energy back from the light of the sky faster than if I were to just sit down. So the crystal was a perfect poison for me too! I wondered what would happen to me.
That’s when I felt something slam to my side, sending me toppling to the ground. I looked up to see Shining Armor and mentally thanked the skies for my luck. But then I saw his face and barely made out his words through my pain.
“Secure him.”
They I passed out.