The Un-conquered Sun:
Chapter 1: Lunacy
The full moon alights softly in the sky, the clouds framing it like a half-lidded eye of some saturnine god. The pale silver light illuminating another becalmed evening in the land of Equestria, the domain of the immortal Diarchy of Princesses. This quiet night, with the sound of crickets spurring in the warm summer breeze, the Moon-princess, Luna, took refuge in the castle gardens. A leather bound tome inscribed in some ancient runic script rested upon a conjured dais in in front of her, as she paced.
“This is no good. A temporary measure for us at best.” She scowled, stopping before the book to re-read some obscure passage. “But this seems to be the only way we shall avert it. We shall simply have to clean up this mess before Sister finds out..” there is a brief thrumming sound, as the Keeper of the moon channeled her magic into some eldritch spell, her horn glowing with a pale blue light. “ We do so hope this works..”
A red streak hazes across the sky, and to the untrained, would seem to be just another shooting star. Glowing with malevolent streaks, the more sensitive among the magical creatures would view it as a powerful portent. Something was coming. The moon shimmered, as a wave of intense eldritch power choked the air all over Equestria. With a pale-blue shimmer, as though a mirage, the falling ember simply dissapeared.
Back in the castle gardens, the azure princess could barely stand, panting heavily as her forelegs buckled beneath her. “We... have done it. We can only hope it will be enough.” She spoke softly to herself.
----Nearly a thousand years later, and many worlds away...----
“Alright man, I gotta head out. I’ll see you in math tomorrow.” Says a plain looking boy with dark blonde hair, waving over his shoulder as he settles a messenger bag against his hip.
“A’ight, be careful going home. People drive crazy around here.” comes the response from his sedentary friend, the sound of some fighting game punctuating the blonde one’s exit.
The moon is full, it’s silver light the only thing that the blonde boy can see by. Living outside of the city has it’s disadvantages, although the ability to breath fresh air made it all the more worthwhile. His parents had moved out to the country following his birth, determined to raise him in a better fashion than they had been accustomed. His father, an avid nature fanatic, had taught him much about the art of naturalism. His mother had been an author, and a fairly successful one at that. Filling his head with stories of knights and kings and princesses and dragons, all spun with a mastery of language that had set his heart ablaze with wonder. Lost in his reverie, the boy wandered down the hard-packed road, smiling over the wonderful tales he spun in his mind. With him as the protaganist, of course. He had let his mind wander, having walked this path a hundred times before now, but this time was...somehow different. There was a crispness in the air. The smell of burning metal. Like the taste in the air just before lightning strikes. A pale blue shimmer along the edge of the wood caught his eye, and he stopped in his tracks.
Something did not feel natural about this. At all. In all his lessons, his father had taught him to trust his instinct. But his curiousity was piqued, and he wanted to assuage it. What on earth was that thing? Edging closer, the blonde boy checks his pocket for the spring knife he usually carries, just to hold it for assurance. He comes closer, and realizes that, it seems to be some sort of.. flat thing. Just floating in the air. Razor thin, like someone just tore a hole in the air. Coming around the edge of it, his breath hitches in his chest, and his heart freezes. Instead of staring into the woods, as he thought he might, he is staring into a patch of sky. Unfamiliar stars wink through a window in the air that shouldn’t be there. Backing away from the terrifying sight, the boy is brought out of his terrified stupor by the blaring of a car-horn. He’d backed into the street. The squeal of brakes and the swerving of the car, coupled with the boy’s mad scramble to not end up a smear, sends him stumbling back towards the window. Unfortunately for him, the hard-packed dirt edge of the road crumbled like dust beneath his weight. The shimmering window, yawning into reality like a hungry maw, is the last thing he’d see in this world.
The driver of the vehicle steps out of his car, parked a ways down the road, and casts the thin beam of a flashlight about in the dark. “ Kid? Hey, kid?!” He calls out. A jaunt up and down the road left the man puzzled. Had he seen anything at all? Because there was nothing there now. Shaken, he returned to his vehicle, and drove on.
The feeling of being ripped sideways through space is unnerving, best described as having your consciousness put into a tumble-dry cycle full of cinder blocks. The blonde boy reeled, his stomach in his throat, as he tried to get his bearings. Why was it so windy? Why was he feeling so...Oh. In the sudden realization, his vocal chords nearly split in his terrified scream. The boughs of an unknown forest spread out below him in the dark, illuminated by the soft moon. He was falling, plummetting towards the earth. Shrill terror clawed at his consciousness, and he struck the canopy at full force. Buffeted on all sides by thick foliage, sharp sticks cut into his flesh like wooden knives. Through the thinner top branches, the assault continued down into the lower, thicker boughs. slowed considerably by the fall through the tremendous tree-cover, it did little to soften the blow as the boy’s head slammed into a thigh-thick casting of wood. With a sickening crack, and the thump of impact, the boy knew no more.
----Several hours pass in darkness....----
It was still dark when he opened his eyes. He was warm, and something soft was huddled about his upper body. The effort to sit-up was wasted, as the bottom of his stomach dropped out, and the myriad of scrapes over his body cried out, letting their stinging be known. Resting back against the surprisingly soft pillow, he came to find he was in a bed. A dull headache plagued him, a pounding in his skull echoing his heartbeat.
“Ungh...” the young boy murmured, rubbing his eyes to try to stave off the worst of it. After some minutes, he opened his eyes, to gauge his surroundings. A small-ish bed. A book-shelf with titles he couldn’t recognize in the dark. A large window gazing out over a fenced-in yard. A tiny nightstand. It wasn’t much, but it seemed homely, if a bit spartan. Though his nose turned slightly, the smell of fur and wildlife in the air. It reminded him of a time when...when what? What was it he had remembered? He couldn’t think, through the merciless drumbeat inside his skull. He settled for checking himself out, after the headache had ceased being quite so insistent.
His skull was bandaged, a thick gauze wrapped around his head, with what felt like some thicker padding in the back. Had he struck his head? The thrumming of his pummeled skull seemed to agree. The rest of his wounds were primarily superficial, and appeared to have been slathered with some potent smelling ointment before they were bandaged. It smelled faintly of mint. Other than that, a few bruised ribs and a lightly sprained wrist seemed to be the worst of his issues.
It took a while, but he managed to push himself upright, sitting in the bed without dangling his feet over the side. After a few minutes, the vertigo ceased, and he felt a little better. Trailing his eyes to the window, he saw now that it was extremely dark.
“Must’ve been out for a while.. Looks like the sun should be coming up before long.” He affixes his gray eyes to the window, as faint reds begin to spread from the sky. Watching the moon sink below the horizon, the boy mutters a little sing-song. The cadence of a lullaby, though it’s origin eludes him. Soon forgoing the words, he continues to hum the foggy tune, as sprigs of gold and amber reach up into the sky beyond the woods, prisms of dim light cast across the morning grass, shining in the dew.
Like a thousand diamonds, mist on the grass becomes the vision of an elegantly gemmed floor. the tiny droplets hanging on the pines garland the forest in a hundred million brilliant topaz, crowned by a thousand rubies. As the sun peaks it’s face beyond the tops of the trees, the amber hue of dawn begins to burn off the fog in the distance. A tremendous mountain, like a pearlescent fire opal stands silent guardian above the forest, an elegant golden crown atop it. Alabaster and gold glint in the morning’s fiery gaze. The whole of the world looks as though carved from a beauteous gem, with the radiant sun holding it’s dominion in the rapidly cooling sky. Like the quenching of hot iron, the morning begins to fade to blue, and the illusion is shattered. But for a moment, the magnificence of that single dawn had dwarfed every he’d seen before. Living in the country all his life, he had known nature’s beauty from an infant, but this was different. Sacred, somehow. The peace lasted a while, as the young man sat in the small, comfortable bed, before it was broken by yet another strange, and stunning development.
His languid appreciation for the dawn was broken by the sound of a door latch. What he saw next very nearly made him scramble out the window. Without looking at him, a butter-colored pony with a pink mane and tail, and cream yellow wings stepped into the room, dragging a small leather sack with a red cross on it. She seemed to be carrying a roll of bandages in her mouth, and seemed to be distracted by something in the bag. Trotting over, she slipped the bag on the nearby nightstand, and opened it with deft hooves. How on earth she did it with hooves is completely beyond his ken, but nevertheless, she does it, before turning to face him. The tiny winged pony’s eyes are large as saucers for a moment, staring at the much larger human, before a tiny smile and a tiny voice greet him.
“Good morning!” says the tiny pony, shuffling her hooves nervously as the young man continues to stare incredulously. “ U-um. Let’s get your wounds l-looked at?” She says, although she seems to lack confidence, and it comes out more as a question than anything. Struck dumb, there’s little else for him to do but nod. Shaking some of her nervousness, the butter-yellow horse directs him to move to and fro so she can remove old bandages, and if necessary, apply new ones, with new ointment. It seems there’s painkiller in the liniment as well, as the new application dulls the sting of various scrapes and cuts. The whole time, she’s talking in that soft, soothing voice.
“Alright. There you go.. Don’t move if it hurts too much. Is this alright?” A string of platitudes and kind words, slowly winding down the mental fuse, even as he does as he told. After she finishes, she continues to look around the room shyly. “Uhm.. I suppose I’ll get you some b-breakfast. You must be...” she mutters something beneath her breath, and goes to retreat, that absolutely crushing shyness coming back to the forefront, before the boy interjects.
“W-Wait!” He says, swallowing slightly. The pony hides halfway behind her mane in surprise. Before they both speak almost simultaneously.
“How can you talk?”
“-You can talk?”
For a moment, there’s a heavy, pregnant pause, as the two stare at one another in shocked silence, before the tiny horse speaks up. If by speaking up, you mean a barely audible whisper. “Um. H-hi. I’m...” she squeaks, clapping her hooves to her mouth and breathing through them. “Fluttershy.”
The boy nodded his head in acceptance. “ I’m...” his features rearranged into a a confused, slightly pained look, before he put his fingers to his eyes.
Fluttershy, as the pony seemed to be called, stepped forward, speaking in a calming tone. “ D-don’t force it. You took a pretty bad bump on the noggin.” He shook his head as if to clear the headache.
“ I..I don’t know. I feel like there’s something that should be there. But it just doesn’t seem to be coming forward.” He says plaintively, gray eyes locking onto the tiny mare sadly. She responds by stepping closer, and putting a hoof on his hand, jolting him.
“ It’ll be alright. It happens sometimes when my friend Dash runs into stuff. But she generally gets it all back in a few days. A-are you okay?” She asks, giving his hand a kind pat.
The young human looks down at his hands, and then to the tiny talking pony, and reflects inwardly on the fact that he has no idea where, or who he is, and answers honestly.
“I don’t know.”