//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: Fledging // Story: All The Way Back // by Jordan179 //------------------------------// Some three months had passed since Princess Luna had returned from the Moon. Bad dreams disturbed her less now, or at least she had stopped remembering them. She rarely woke up screaming in the middle of the day, or found herself on the floor at the end of the afternoon, after having thrashed her way completely off her bed. She knew she was still far from emotionally well-balanced, but she felt far better than she had at first. The mere presence of other ponies no longer made her want to fly into a berserker rage, or hide under furniture. Day by day, week by week, she could feel the madness slowly receding. Sanity, sleep and regular meals had begun to restore her body. She no longer had to tap her self to avoid wobbling when she walked; her coat was glossy and her muscles firm. The love of her sister, and of her Night Guard, worked a similar restoration on her essence. It was not the intense empowerment Celestia received from the adoration of all Equestria, but it was significant. Nor was it the dark infernal might she had been granted by the Nightshadow, but it was truly her own: the only cost it came with was that of loyalty toward those who put their trust in her. That was a price she paid gladly. Her form was growing back toward normal. Her body was now of full stature for a normal mare, though still far less impressive than that of any but a young Alicorn. Her mane and tail rippled with subtle energies, and moved occasionally by her will rather than the vagaries of wind. She was no longer so weak that anypony could kill her; she was starting to feel again less like a helpless foal and more like a warrior Princess. As her strength returned, she felt new urges. She wanted to put her body and mind to use. The Night Guards were honored when she wanted to use their one of their training rooms, though she felt a bit bemused when they termed it a salle d'armes. That had been a new term in her last previous century on Earth, the sort of phrase which would be used by fops like Blueblood rather than by tough professional soldiery. Some arms had changed. Others remained familiar. Spears, swords, lances, wing-blades, wing-darts, hoof-daggers. She relearned the dances of death with these basic weapons, and found the memories came back swiftly to her. Then her special weapons -- the originals were long-lost, of course, but there were both modern versions and functional replicas. The battle-axe she had used in those decades she had called herself Monasdrommir, among the Northern barbarians of a time forgotten now save in legends. The twin crescent-swords from the Southlands, that she seized and spun into wheels of razor-steel, in an almost effortless use of her aura. The little target shields that, wielded with her reflexes, could pluck arrows out of the air. The twin swords of the traditional Neighponese unicorn-samurai, the katana and wakizashi. All so familiar, and she felt more than one kind of strength returning to her as she exercised with them. She played with some of the newer weapons, too. Firearms had come back, but they were still largely a curiosity. Single-shot muzzle-loaders took many seconds even for a unicorn to load and were utterly impractical for an earth pony or pegasus to reload in the middle of melee. Given the speed of a charge or swoop, they were too inaccurate for any but the most skilled shots to hope to hit anything with them. They really need at least semi-automatic action, Moondreamer said within her, if not fully-automatic. Equestrian technology may be up to the task, but Sunny never cared much for weapons work. She added this to her list of things to do, when she was fully-healed. She was a bit puzzled by the long, sharp and thin rapier. It was clearly meant to be used to impale through the chinks in an opponent's armor, but she didn't see many ponies training with it that way. When she visited a fencing-academy she realized that it was a relic weapon, once effective but now become a sport. There had been a phase in which it had been used for serious dueling, but that custom had long since faded among the ponies of this new kind world. Some of the nobles still dueled, but with blunted and sometimes even capped tips. The saber pleased her, though she didn't think she'd trade her crescents for them. There was a curve and flexibility to the blade which would have been impossible to the swordsmiths of a millennium past, and it could be held in the aura or the mouth, used to deliver deadly slashing attacks in passing -- which the arms masters now called en passant, for no apparent reason that they could explain. Why had Prench and Istallion become the languages of melee weapons training? She supposed there was some history there, which she reminded herself to read. Other weapons had gone through minor and incremental improvements. Bows and crossbows had reached a point of perfection. They now incorporated metal frames and cabling into their construction, allowing bows to be drawn with much force. Crossbows were powerful enough to shoot right through any plate armor any pony could bear -- she thought she knew now why the Guards seemed so lightly-mailed by the standards of past ages -- and some expensive ones were sprung to allow semi-automatic shooting, though the force of these was of necessity weaker. The artillery park frankly amazed her. It was nowhere near that of the Age of Wonders -- it was all smoothbore muzzle-loader cannons and tension and torsion mechanical arbalests and catapults of varying types -- but it was far superior to anything she had seen a thousand years ago. She supposed that, lacking a Dark Princess, her sister had needed a new "ultimate reason of sovereigns" with which to convince recalcitrant nobles, in the chaos that had no doubt come more than once before reaching this current ideal of hyper-civilization. There were so much else, so many things that she did not yet have time to master. She frequently saw air-yachts and larger air-merchants in the skies about Canterlot, sometimes briefly by day, sometimes piercing the night with their powerful running-lanterns. Sometimes she saw sleeker, deadlier-looking skyships which bore ports which looked to be cut for some of the artillery she had examined. Steamboats plied the river, and in her ventures to the coast steamships the seas, and some of these too were Equestrian naval craft. She realized yet again that the silk of her sister's new realm hid definite steel -- as was only right and reasonable. Luna wanted to once again become part of that steel. Her sister was the Princess of Peace; her own job was to be the Princess of War. Her desire and duty were to defend the realm. But through that long summer no foe presented itself, at least none worthy of her spells or steel. There were no invaders, no rebels, not even any brigands beyond the easy capacity of the ordinary authorities to suppress. Sometimes she uncovered crime in the course of her private dream patrols, but never meriting more than a discreet word to the local guards. It was not that she wanted to see the land swathed in smoke, drenched in blood. Still less did she want to lose the lives of her beloved Night Guards. She had seen enough of that in the centuries over a millennium ago to suit her for many mortal lifetimes. That fight at Trottingham -- dead griffons and guardsponies everywhere, the streets running red: big, bluff kindly Little Seed, standing with a vacant stare amidst a heap of corpses; sweet young Red Lute dying cradled in her own forelegs, his songs forever stilled -- she shuddered at the memory, though that battlefield had fallen silent fourteen centuries ago. The smell! That was one part the minstrels never mentioned in their heroic sagas ... All she wanted was to be once again be useful. To serve the realm again, instead of merely relaxing on its bounty. To be once again the Warrior Princess, in more than mere name. Was that too much to ask? *** In the late afternoons she would awake and spend some time with her sister. Celestia would tell her of the day's events, major and minor, and in this wise educate her regarding the new Equestrian world. Sometimes, Celestia would read her one of the "friendship reports" her young vassal-in-training was writing her from Ponyville. These ranged from the funny to the insightful to the boringly-mundane. Some were so awesomely-innocent that Luna wondered if Twilight Sparkle had even known playmates growing up. "Not really," Celestia told her once, when Luna asked this aloud. "She's a very driven filly -- well, young mare, now -- and aside from her brothers, she grew up pretty much alone." "That is sad," Luna said sincerely. She remembered how Dusk had been as a young colt, when Moondreamer and Sundreamer had first met him -- smart and brave and strong -- but utterly friendless. She and Sunny had taught him the meaning of friendship back then, in the vanished Age of Wonders. She wished she could teach him ... her, again today. "She's not alone any more," said Celestia, smiling. Luna tensed. "She's become good friends with her sister Element Bearers," Celestia explained. "As I hoped: she needs to learn how to get along with others, before she can become really great." Luna relaxed. "I know you have given her this post to raise her for higher ones to come," Luna said. "It is a good design: she can learn best by doing." "Exactly," said Celestia. "To help me in the future, she must master the ways of leadership, both social and otherwise." "I wish I might help her learn this lore," mused Luna. "You are not my prisoner, dear sister," said Celestia. "You may visit Ponyville whenever you desire." "But no," said Luna. "She must master this on her own. I am ... lost ... in this time. What could I teach her?" "Whatever you wish," suggested Celestia. But Luna made no reply to this. *** Another afternoon, Luna learned that Twilight had overcome an Ursa Minor. By herself, and with magic alone. "How was that done?" Luna asked, impressed. Even an Ursa Minor was the size of a large whale. "She charmed it with magical music, gave it a whole dairy farm's worth of milk, and then picked it up and carried it back home," Celestia explained, beaming with pride. "Zounds!" Luna reflected. "She really is mighty -- and deft!" Manipulating that much mass, and doing it gently, would have required some effort for Luna even at her best. In her current state, she wasn't sure if she would be capable of the feat. "And wise," added Celestia, "in that she did not attempt to actually fight the creature. Had she hurt it, its bawling would probably have brought its mother to its defense." Luna blanched at the thought of an angry bear the size of a small castle, running rampant among ordinary townsfolk. "That would have been ... bad." Something remained unexplained, though. "How did an Ursa Minor wind up wandering into Ponyville?" "Two very foolish colts went looking for it." "Foolish, and foalish, indeed!" commented Luna. "To what end?" "A magician had come to town. They wanted to see her defeat it," her sister explained. "They thought this magician could defeat an Ursa?" "To be fair to them, she had boasted that she had done just that before." "Ah ..." Luna considered the situation. "I would wager she was displeased when the beast showed up on her doorstep!" "You ... would win that wager," Celestia commented. "Her best efforts at defense merely annoyed the creature. It crushed her wagon. Twilight had the two colts clean up the mess afterward." "The poor foals," Luna laughed. "Their luck that they lived through the adventure. Some times it's as if a good spirit watches over the foolish and innocent!" "This time," said Celestia, "the name of that spirit was 'Twilight Sparkle.'" She looked contemplative. "Did a good job of it, too. No one died. No one even took much harm, not even the magician, who was last seen galloping off toward the Whitetails." Luna snickered. "I guess that magician wasn't too loved around Ponyville any more." "Indeed," said Celestia. "I feel rather sorry for that magician. She lost most of her possessions with her wagon. Twilight's keeping those which survived safe for her, when she returns. Which might not be for a long time -- she was rather thoroughly humiliated." "Well, she deserved it," scoffed Luna. "She made stupid boasts!" "Yes," admitted Celestia. "The boasts were stupid. Her name was Trixie -- the 'Great and Powerful,' she styled herself." "She was clearly neither," Luna said. "But she wanted to be," said Celestia. "And she seems to have been skilled, from the accounts." "Neither skilled enough. Nor wise enough," was Luna's verdict. "As events showed," agreed Celestia. "Still, I wish she might not have so suffered." *** It was the end of September. Autumn was stealing upon the land, and the leaves were starting to turn red and golden, when the crisis came. It was still relatively early in the afternoon one day, when she was woken by Celestia. Luna looked blearily and a bit accusingly at her sister, before her eyes fully focused and she saw the tense expression on Celestia's face. "Dragons," was the terse explanation. Luna came fully awake and alert, ears up at attention. "An invasion?" she asked. "Not quite. Not yet. Come," said Celestia. "I'll explain it on the way." They made their way through the halls toward a spiral ramp. The ramp led down deep, below the cellars. "There are reports of dragons all over the realm," Celestia said. "No attacks on ponies -- yet -- but they're making no effort to hide their presence. They seem to be establishing themselves in caves, and they've brought their hoards with them." "They're claiming territory," said Luna. She snorted in anger. "In Equestria." "Exactly," said Celestia. "And it's obviously no coincidence that the first reports are coming in from all over, this morning. This is a coordinated movement, which means this is the work of at least a significant faction." They reached the bottom of the ramp. Several doors led from the chamber at its base. Two Day Guards, saluted, opened a thick bronze-plated door for the Royal Sisters. A corridor lay behind. The walls and ceiling formed a single barrel vault, braced by what looked like armored-steel arches. The corridor curved gently, so that there was no direct line-of-sight from one end to the other. "Their Royal Family?" asked Luna. "I don't think so," replied Celestia. "They've been relatively friendly for the last century -- and we have common foes. But --" they reached the door, "I doubt that they are exactly discouraging it." Luna thought a moment. "We're being tested," was her conclusion. "I concur," said Celestia. The door at the end of the corridor was also heavy, also guarded. It opened to reveal a huge conference chamber, crowded with high-ranking officers of the Royal armed forces. In the center of the room was a large table, on which was spread a great map of Equestria and the area immediately surrounding. On that map were arranged many small models, of ponies and ships and airships and other creatures. Unicorn aides stayed by speaking-tubes, frequently stepping forth to adjust the positions of the figurines. "My new War Room," said Celestia, proudly. "I don't think I've shown you this before -- it's less than a hundred years old. It'll be even nicer in another century or so, when we've gotten back up to electronics. Do you like it?" "Yes!" Luna's eyes lit up at the possibilities of such a place. "It's wonderful!" Celestia faintly blushed, then got back to business. "We've been getting reports for several hours now, and we're plotting them on the map with these ..." she made a little dragon figurine glow. "Blue for unconfirmed, yellow for confirmed, orange for confirmed and urgent -- those are the ones near settlements, or otherwise making a nuisance of themselves." "Not many of those last," Luna said, scanning the map. "Too many of the yellows, though. Is each piece one dragon?" "Yes," said Celestia. "They've come in singly, rather than as mated pairs or with young. You see what that means, of course?" "They don't really expect us to let them stay," said Luna. "Even dragons would rather chance losing part of their hoards than their children." "Precisely," said Celestia. "So this really is a test," Luna continued. "I wonder why they're testing us now, though? Slaking their young bloods' thirst for adventure? Or has something changed here, to make them think we've weakened, or will soon grow ..." Celestia looked away. Luna's mind caught up to her mouth. "...Oh," she gasped. "Oh. Oh, sister, I'm so sorry to have ..." "It's not your fault," said Celestia. "Or if it was, it was your fault a thousand years ago, and you've already suffered enough for that." "But they think you may be weak because you ..." "And what am I supposed to do?" asked Celestia. "Harm my own sister to conform to the prejudices of another species? I wouldn't treat any of my little ponies that way just to please others. Least of all would I do that to you." There was a dangerously protective tone to her voice, a tone which (Luna knew well) had been the last thing some of Equestria's enemies had ever heard. "It's not all about that, anyway," Celestia continued, relaxing slightly. "Part of it is almost certainly that they want to see if you will show up to help evict them. It's been over a thousand years since you -- as yourself -- acted in affairs on Earth. That's a long time by incarnate standards, even for dragons. They don't know if you've grown stronger -- or weaker -- or just changed, in some way that affects the power of our Realm. They want to find out if you're still ... you." Luna drew herself up straight and looked Celestia right in the eye. "I am, still and once again, myself. Luna Selena Nyx, Ruling Princess of Equestria, Princess of the Night, High Lady of War, your loyal supporter." Her voice was confident and clear, rising as she spoke to that of the ancient Royal Voice of Canterlot. She seemed to subtly grow in stature. Her mane and tail began to shimmer, to fill with the light of a thousand stars, to wave as if in the wind, though the air was calm inside the War Room. There was no sound save her voice, but there was something now in that chamber that made all present imagine that they heard trumpets sounding, calling back to them from ancient forgotten wars. Some nearby officers winced, others looked on in awe. Everyone in the room paid attention. "Princess of the Day, I stand ready and willing to accept and obey your commands!" Her great blue eyes shone with emotion, but she kept her gaze straight forward. "Very good," said Princess Celestia, her face lighting in satisfaction. "Welcome back, Princess Luna. "Now here's what you are to do ..."