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// 3 Limping Home 
// Story: The Luna Cypher 
// by iisaw 
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Chapter Three
Limping Home


"Rainbow Dash? Rainbow?" I started forward, but almost instantly there was a sharp impact on my peytral. I looked down to see Luna's armored wingtip resting across my chest. She didn't say anything, but when I turned to her there was a cautioning look on her face. She shook her head slightly.

I wanted to scream at her. Rainbow Dash needed me! My throat tightened and I felt the sting of tears beginning to well up in my eyes. Then I noticed that the rest of the ponies around were looking at me. Even the ones busy tending to the wounded glanced in my direction out of the corners of their eyes. They were looking to me—not just for direction, not for orders—they needed to know how to cope with this disaster.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened my eyes again, Luna lowered her wing and I stepped slowly forward.

"How is she?" I asked the pony with the medical saddlebags standing nearby. I kept my voice as low and calm as I could manage.

"She's alive," the medic told me. "I gave her something to keep her knocked out. She'll be in a lot of pain when she wakes up."

The wing I could see was bent in several places it shouldn't be. It was worse than the time she had clipped the big oak tree north of town. As I walked closer, I lost my calm façade for a second. "Oh, Sun and Moon! Her legs!"

Luna came up beside me and touched me gently, wing on wing. I took another deep breath and asked, "What happened to her?"

A different pony spoke up. He was having his ribs wrapped by another and wheezed a bit when he answered. "She outflew her wingponies. Got mobbed by a half-dozen flappers. She took out most of them before they broke her wing." He paused to wince and then continued, "Still managed to keep enough control to hit feet-first. That's why her legs are all busted up, but I guess that's better than her neck or back." He shook his head sadly and finished, "That is one heck of an amazing mare. I hope she makes it."

I bit my lip hard and breathed through my nose for a few seconds. I couldn't keep the tears from running down my cheeks, but I had to keep my voice level and calm.

I motioned Captain Speedwell over. "Captain, send a messenger to Dodge Junction and have them ready an express train and clear the tracks to Canterlot. That will be the fastest way to get the badly wounded to a hospital. We will load the casualties onto Evenstar while the crew repairs the fin and patches any leaks. The doctor in Dodge can do a secondary triage while we're making the transfer to the train."

"Yes, Highness." He saluted and trotted off.

It took a huge effort of will to tear myself away from Rainbow Dash, but there were other ponies that needed me. Luna and I walked among the wounded, using what magic we had left to ease their pain and encourage their wounds to close. There were several ponies who were hurt worse than Rainbow Dash, but none had gone beyond our help. I don't know what I would have done if... no, I don't even want to think about it.

Luna was by my side, silently helping. Her presence gave me emotional support but she also gave me somepony as a witness who had undoubtedly been through this before. She was a... what, exactly? Judge? No, nothing as harsh as that, but I'm sure she could not help but evaluate how I was doing. I didn't want to fail her any more than I would want to fail Celestia.

Ever since I took the throne, she'd been an incredible help to me, teaching me to be strong in difficult situations and a thousand other things that made up my daily life as a ruling monarch. I'd seen her much more often in the year since my trip with Jigsaw and I'd come to appreciate the subtleties of her character. I had learned many things from her, including, now, the realities of battle. I hoped it was knowledge I would rarely need to use.

I have no idea how I kept it together, and I suspect I might not have if Luna hadn't been by my side. I just went on putting one hoof in front of the other, doing what needed to be done, saying what needed to be said. I didn't have enough magic left to help carry the wounded, but I could use my height and earth pony strength to lift stretchers into the aft hatches. Then I helped scrape out what was left of the fried fliers in the bunkrooms and sort and stow armor and gear until Captain Zephyr came and told me that Evenstar was ready to lift.

I stood on the bridge as we headed north, watching the desert slip by below and the sun sliding down the sky. The battle had taken... what? An hour? Two? Surely no more than that. But the aftermath had stretched out all day. We wouldn't make Dodge until well after sunset. What would I do until then? Stand staring out into the dark, trying not to think about the wounded ponies? My ponies. My brash, reckless, beautiful Rainbow Dash lying crumpled in her bunk—

"Twilight, I need your help."

I didn't have enough energy left to start when Luna came silently up beside me and whispered in my ear.

I excused myself from the bridge. We walked aft together, but Luna didn't speak again until we went into my cabin and I closed the door. "What is it?" I asked.

"I fear I will not have enough strength to raise the moon when the time comes."

"How can I help with that? Won't Celestia take over if you don't do it?" I knew it was the wrong thing to say about a heartbeat after the stupid words had left my mouth.

"Yes." Luna looked away and sighed. "No doubt."

I was an idiot. What would Celestia think when the moon didn't rise at its appointed time? At best she'd assume something awful had happened to her sister. It would be a very good thing to avoid panicking the Goddess of the Sun. "I... If you want me to help, I'll do whatever you think best."

She looked up again. "Lend me your strength, as I once gave you mine. I would not ask this of you lightly, Twilight."

"I don't have much to give, but if you can make do with the dregs, they're yours."

We went to the stern gallery and waited. The wind of our passage carried back the horrible odors on board: sweat, blood, ichor, fear, and worse. Even the few ballads and ancient tales of war that mentioned the wounded on the field after battle never said anything about the smell. It was understandable.

I had watched Luna move and guide the Great Wheel of the Moon several times, but never so closely. The one time I had performed her duty for her in the past, I'd done it with pure force and about as much elegance as you might expect.[1] Now, as a part of the ceremony, I saw and felt how delicate a task it really was, despite the strength it took. I gathered up what magical energy was left to me and twined it with Luna's. 
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[1]  I.e., none whatsoever.
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Even at low ebb, her magic carried a solidity and power that amazed me. Under Luna's guidance, I managed to align the rays of starlight with their crystalline nodes, the least difficult of the series of tasks before us. Luna pushed, and the spheres of the stars and planets interlocked and turned, great epicycles driven to the rhythm of the celestial dance, intertwining to create the night. The rest of what tiny amount of energy I had left went simply to steadying Luna in her work. I touched the moon through her and felt its cold magic moving in my—our grasp. It was wonderful. 

It almost made up for fainting and tearing a big divot out of the deck with my horn when I collapsed.


= = =


Luna woke me at Dodge Junction. Two hours of semi-comatose sleep hardly refreshed me at all, but it was better than nothing.

The Dodge Junction ponies were frightened and confused, and we had to supervise them constantly to keep things moving at a decent pace. It didn't help that they were also jumpy and skittish around Luna. How there could be ponies that still thought of her as Nightmare Moon was beyond my understanding. There was an ungenerous part of me that wanted to flare my wings and shout "Boo!" at the next sweaty pony that tried to unobtrusively edge away from her.

Once the train with the wounded departed, I turned my attention to other tasks. Letting Rainbow Dash go without some sort of farewell twisted me up inside, but she was in no condition to appreciate any words. So I contented myself with a kiss on her cheek, even though she would have hated that sort of "mushiness" if she had been awake.

I made a speech to the crowd with the mayor and sheriff beside me, reassuring them that the monsters had been defeated and that they were in no danger. "For now," was the suffix to that assurance that I didn't speak aloud. The pit of dark magic in the Crook-Tail Canyon ruins was something that still needed to be dealt with, but my ship and crew were in no condition to pursue the issue at the moment.

So I sat at the mayor's desk and wrote letters. A few years earlier, the first one would have been to Celestia, but many things had changed since then. I wrote to the girls. I told them what had happened, trying to use the gentlest of terms to convey a grim meaning. Then I crumpled up the blobby, tear-stained paper and started over, holding the new scroll vertically, away from my face.

I wrote to Spike, my chamberlain, my captain of the guards, the airship yards at Canterlot, the Royal Hospital, and finally Celestia. I gave the scrolls to the fastest pegasus we had and told him to deliver them to my castle where Spike and messengers in my company of guards would forward them to the various recipients.

Evenstar's crew were making a more thorough inspection and evaluation of the damage, and I was headed to join them when Luna intercepted me.

"You must rest, Twilight."

It was true that I felt like gravity had doubled for some inexplicable reason, but there were still things that needed to be done. I pointed a hoof at a couple of pegasi crewponies hovering near a twisted control strut at Evenstar's tail. "They're not resting!" I said, more sharply than I had intended.

"Trust me in this, Twilight." Luna's voice took on a sterner tone. "Things will go well until the morrow. If you exhaust yourself in the small matters, you will not be fit when the larger ones need your attention."

"Just a couple of hours more. Then I'll get some sleep."

"'Twould be most unwise."

"'Unwise' is sort of the theme for the way I handled this whole expedition, so why shouldn't I keep on with it?" I snapped.

"Fie!" Luna actually began to sound angry. "Play not the foal, Twilight Sparkle! A child may wallow in self-blame and 'twill harm none. You are a princess of Equestria and there are ponies you must rule! Will you rule them well or badly?"

Okay... so her mentoring style was a bit different than Celestia's. None of that gentle, guiding, "What do you think would be best, Twilight Sparkle?" stuff. But I guess "snap out of it, and get over yourself" was what I needed to hear right then.

"I... Alright. You're right. I'll get some sleep." I turned toward the boarding ramp and trudged a few steps before Luna spoke again.

"Despite what you may think, you did very well today, Twilight."

"It doesn't feel like it. It feels like I was too slow, too stupid, too... overwhelmed."

Luna turned and walked by my side. "And yet, you led us to victory."

"Yeah. We won. There's that, at least."

Luna stopped and pointed at the roof of a nearby house. There was a young colt up there, crouched beside the chimney. It was long past bedtime for any pony that age. His eyes were wide and fixed on Evenstar. "He will dream of airships tonight, of flying to distant lands. His sleep will be free of monsters because we kept them away."

It was odd that such a small thing would make me feel better. But it did.


= = =


When I woke up in the morning, I stretched—and nearly screamed. My back and wings felt like they'd been soaked in acid. I was bruised and aching in many other places I hadn't noticed the day before, including a few stinging, shallow cuts, but nothing compared to the pain of my badly overworked flight muscles.

Luna was completely unsympathetic. "Yes, the weight of good armor is distributed such that it feels like no burden, but the whole of it still needs to be borne. Wings or hooves can't be fooled. The pain and stiffness will be worse tomorrow, but then it will fade."

At least my horn didn't hurt. A hot bath to soak in and some willow bark tea would have helped, but I had too many things to attend to. Wasting time on luxuries wasn't in my schedule.

Repairs had gone well, but there were a few engine parts that needed replacing that we couldn't get in Dodge Junction. I would have tried an object-specific teleport if I could have been certain of getting what we wanted from a warehouse in the Canterlot Yards, but I was just as likely to pull them out of another airship. Paying later for a "borrowed" part was something I was perfectly willing to do, but not if it crippled another craft. I tried mending them with my magic, but my fine control wasn't up to the level of accuracy needed for the precision machined parts.

"Can she make it to Canterlot?" I asked the chief engineer.

"Havin' to climb half-way up the Canterhorn, an' fightin' those thermals…" He grimaced, squinted, and sucked at his teeth.

"I'll take that as a 'probably not.'" I thought for a moment. "Could we get a tow from a locomotive?"

"Ah... no, Yer Highness," he said. "Sorry, but th' surface load on Evenstar could pull a train engine clear off th' tracks if she got hit with a strong crosswind."

"Alright, then." I sighed. "What about Ponyville Castle?"

"Mmm..." He cocked his head and squinted up at the patched steering fin. "I s'pose so, if we don't try any fancy flyin'. But I ain't making no guarantees."

Getting us back in shape for an assault on the pit in the desert city was going to take a lot longer than I liked, but I couldn't see any way around it. I left four pegasi in Dodge to fly alternating scouting sweeps over the badlands. If any more monsters crawled out of the desert, at least we'd have advance warning.

We headed north at half speed to put as little stress on our bad engine as possible, and I spent the first hour or so moving around the ship with the engineer, making sure that all the critical repairs were holding. As I headed back to my cabin to write more letters, Luna intercepted me.

"Have you stretched out your wings lately? They will stiffen unless you do."

Of course I hadn't. I'd avoided even thinking about my wings. I muttered something about being busy, and Luna gave me the stink-eye.

"Fine," I said, making a show of shifting my left wing in the narrow passageway. "I'll stre—ouch!"

"May I help? 'Twill be unpleasant now, but neglect will treble the pain and stiffness on the morrow."

I let Luna direct me to my bunk and settled in sideways, my legs tucked under me. She pressed her shoulder against mine and took hold of my wingtip with her magic. Then she slowly pulled until my wing was fully extended.

I am a royal princess of Equestria. I am a hero of the kingdom and its savior several times over. I am the unquestioned monarch of my own realm and sovereign ruler of thousands of ponies. I did not whimper like a little filly.

Luna gently guided my wing back to my side. And then she stretched it out again and moved it up and down.

"Bleeding stars! Are you trying to kill me, you malevolent moonbutt?"

Luna chuckled and kept on working, unperturbed. I gave up resisting and contented myself with muttering curses under my breath that even my friend Jigsaw[2] would have been proud of. Excruciating though the process was, I have to admit that Luna knew what exactly she was doing. She found every aching fiber of my physical being and mangled them all. Massage is good for bruises? I was going to look that up when I got home. I didn't believe it, and I strongly suspected that the Princess of the Moon was a closet sadist.
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[2] She's a pony of many admirable qualities, but she's got the foulest mouth I've ever heard when she's in a mood.
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Unbelievably, when Luna had finished torturing me, I felt worlds better. I still ached, but the hard tension I had been carrying was gone. I rolled onto my side, intending to just close my eyes for a minute, and fell fast asleep.


= = =


I had to reciprocate, of course. Making Luna hurt just as much as I had in revenge was not at all what I had in mind. Honestly.

It was dark and the few candles scattered around us barely gave enough light to see by. I had my shoulder firmly pressed against hers as I gently pulled on her wing with my magic. She took in sharp breaths that hissed between her teeth, but didn't yelp or curse like I had done. Maybe a little massage therapy would change that?

I shifted around on the dark purple cushions beneath us until I was facing her almost head-on, then I leaned forward and began probing her shoulders for knots and bruises. The thick muscles beneath her black coat yielded only slightly to my magic, so I pressed harder, working down the long muscles of her back. I scootched forward until I was pressing my chest against hers and added the strength of my hooves to my magic. Her scent was like moonflower and evening primrose blossoms, with something warm and strong and mysterious layered beneath. She moaned with a release of breath, but it didn't sound much like an expression of pain to me. Quite the opposite, in fact. Her wings swept forward, the long, sharp points of her primaries tracing cold lines down my sides as she pulled me into an embrace.

"Ah, Twilight," she breathed into my ear. "That feels so good."

It was her voice that made me realize that the mare I was entwined with wasn't Luna. I tried to pull away, but was held fast by the black wings encircling me. The Nightmare slowly opened her glowing dragon eyes and chuckled deep in her throat. "Pain for pain, pleasure for pleasure, Twilight Sparkle. I can show you the extremes of either... or both, if you wish." She leaned closer until her lips brushed the corner of my jaw and said, barely above a whisper, "You have only to ask."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to pull away. I wanted to say—something. But I froze, unable to move or speak or even breathe until the Nightmare released me and I woke up.


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