//------------------------------// // Arise // Story: Immortalus // by Imperator Chiashi Zane //------------------------------// ”My knights, my guardians for so many centuries. Do you understand the gift you will receive? It is within the power of the moon to grant you what has been gifted to myself. Power beyond imagining, life longer than you can imagine. You will be indestructible, Undying…You will be my Immortals.” A tear traced a single, pure black line down Nightmare Moon’s face as she looked at the five Guardsponies before her. The only five to remain loyal to her when she had claimed the mantle of the Lunar Ascended. But now, her sister was coming to take her on with the others to break their oaths of Eternal service to both princesses. She couldn’t allow them to win. The Nightmare’s horn began to glow, a menacing black that seemed to eat up the light of the flickering candles. It crept down to the floor and surrounded the blue steel boots her Knights wore. Darkness crept up plates of metal forged of fallen Iron, leaving behind nothing but cold in its wake. One of the Knights shuddered as the cold reached his cannon, and fell into the roiling blackness, consumed in an instant. The chill began to creep up haunches and over shoulders. A Pegasus was the next to fall, his body not ready for the cold to unexpectedly reach right through his feathers. A flick of one wing, and he too was consumed in the darkness. Three remained. Neck muscles fought against the urge to move as the chill climbed silent throats. A Unicorn blinked as her eyes glassed over. The corpse was gone before it even had the chance to fall. Two remained, staring blindly at their princess. A Pegasus mare and an Earth Pony Stallion. The doors split open behind them, but neither moved. Neither could. Everypony was gone, leaving two behind, waiting for orders that would never come. __ Princess Luna pushed on a pair of half-rotten doors in the old castle. She hadn’t been down there in over a thousand years. Not since that night. Not since she had lost herself. She carefully stepped around the dusty wreckage and looked at the three suits of almost completely rusted away armor on the floor, then her eyes rose up the rear legs of two armored statues. Beautifully carved. Her hoof, without touching them, gently traced over the individually carved hairs in the tail of the Pegasus. It lightly settled onto the smooth, almost shining flank of the barding. It chilled her hoof, like real metal. Probably marble. But who would have carved two Guardsponies in marble like that. She came around to the front and saw the armored visages. Fully enclosed in the armor, she could still see the little bits of unkempt mane poking through, carved out of something that she swore felt like real hair. That was impossible though. Anything soft enough to bend without breaking would have degraded after so long, but the layers of dust coating the sculptures was thick enough to show that these had been here at least as long as she had been gone. Her hooves gripped the sides of the helmet, wondering if there was another stone beneath the marble, carved into a face. It didn’t move more than a hair, but that was enough to tell her the helmet was not part of the underlying stone. She lit up her horn and reached into the helmet through the eye-slots, and gently held the stone to keep from breaking it as she removed the helmet. The helm touched down on the marble with a loud, reverberating clang, more akin to metal than stone, and with a glance, she saw the blue of traditional Night-Guard armor sitting there on the floor. The dust merely made it appear as stone. Her eyes shot back up to the now exposed face. A perfect stone replica of one of the mares from her dream. A Pegasus, loyal to the end. It couldn’t be her though. She had died, so many years before. Celestia had showed her the grave site of those who died when the Nightmare rose. How, then, was this here? Why had it been carved in this shape, with such detail? She breathed gently on the mare’s ear, whispering the name given to the long dead pony into the cold stone. “Why, Starlight. Why did you die for me?” A deep, gravelly male voice interrupted her before she could even turn to the other statue and find out whose face it had been carved with, “Starlight was allays in yer favor, Lady Lunari, but do I not deserve a pittance of tears as well? I been dead long as she has.” Luna’s head whipped around, looking for the source of the voice, but she was alone. Just the statues, the darkness, and herself still remained in the room. Not even an echo. Then she looked again. The other statue had moved closer, but was still at attention. “Whoever thou be, We demand that thou cease thine behavior before We hath a reason to banish thee!” The statue of the other guard moved suddenly, dust cascading off the blue steel as it approached her and raised a hoof to its brow in a salute. Luna’s jaw dropped, “Impossible!” The armored statue looked at the hoof, then shook it. The sound of dust sliding around and the clanking of bone on metal met her ears, “Prolly, Milady. But what hath happened, hath happened.” “Who art thou?” “Raedfaest, Milady, of Family Integra. Lupus sancti tui, simul.” Luna turned to the statue, gently peeling herself from the statue of Starlight, not noticing the dust and shards of stone in her mane and fur as she got a closer look at the dust covered statue. She placed her hoof on the boot, nail to cleats, and watched as it wiggled in an unnatural manner. After a moment of staring at it, she turned to the helm and looked into the eyes, “Raedfaest, Loyal and trustworthy. Wouldst that I had known sooner.” The stallion removed his helmet, shaking it out and revealing a sight that would have made the lunar princess keel over on the spot, had she not been acquainted with the corpses of the thousands of non-immortal ponies Celestia had banished to the moon over the years. With the exception of a pair of deep, tar black eye sockets, the skull was bare of any distinct markings, save one. A scar on the bone, beneath the left eye, where the cheekbone had been cleaved very nearly off. The scar had been a clear reminder to Raedfaest of both Duty and Instinct. He had taken a spear meant for Luna square in the face. The blade had very nearly taken him out, and would have left him blind in that eye for life, if not for Luna’s influence. “Thine eyes.” The stallion reached up and touched his bony face, then carefully pressed the tip of one armored boot into his damaged socket. With a kind of wheezing laugh, he pulled it back and picked up his helmet, shaking it more vigorously until a glass orb dropped out onto the floor. He picked the orb up, and with eyeless skull, appeared to examine it before holding it before his mouth for several seconds. “Raedfaest, what are thou doing?” “Damn. No breath. I got dust on my eye, and I can’t get it off.” Luna levitated the glass orb away from him and breathed gently on it, wiping the glass against her fur quickly before examining it. The orb stared back. She had ceased to be horrified by the astonishingly realistic iris inside the orb, but now, it amused her. That one preservation trick had worked so flawlessly, while another had failed spectacularly made her want to laugh, but she had more to do. She popped the orb back into the Earth Pony’s empty socket, watching as the blackness inside the socket seemed to catch it and hold it in place, even turning it in circles like the stallion had done when he was bored. She turned to the statue of Starlight and looked at the dust crumbling off another bare skull, “Starlight, please be alive in there. Or at least as alive as Raedfaest is.” The mare shook, and the sound of cracking stone falling to the metal and ricocheting off bone echoed out as the Pegasus shook herself. Her armored wings spread from her sides, bare bones exposed, but connected by a thin film of what looked like lunar magic. “Of course, Milady. Thou gave us very specific orders,” The muzzle was turned in a way that made it appear to be smiling. Luna remembered those orders very well. The last thing she remembered clearly about that night. Those two had been called to her room, and she had given them very specific orders to protect her from the wrath of Celestia, no matter what may come to pass, “I remember, my Guard. Not much after, but my sister tells me I became a monster when she confronted me.” Raedfaest was the first to speak up, “Thou didst indeed. Nightmare Moon, it declared itself. Ordered us around. Gave us…” he trailed off, hooves gesturing to himself “She made us immortal. Our reward for loyalty. Our curse.” “And them?” She pointed to the armor lying on the ground, covered in dust, rusting away. Starlight pressed her bony head to the princesses neck, cradling it against the back of her armor, “They were not…” her head moved like she was trying to find the right word, jaw undulating as a tongue that was no longer there mashed itself inquisitively against the inside of cheeks long since gone “They were weak. Unfit for duty in thine service. Maggots of the Daystar in it for power. Dishonest, Greedy, Unreasonable Bastards. With the exception of that one,” she pointed at the middle, a unicorn, judging by the rust-enlarged eye-slit that crawled up the crest, “She was a bitch. Only wanted the power to lord her immortality over stallions.” Luna stared at her guards. The two most loyal, most honest, kindest of her guard. They had given their own lives for her, literally. She could feel that her magic reserves had dropped far more than would have been necessary for the simple levitations, but not nearly enough for a reanimation protocol. If that was even possible. Even returning them from being made of stone was hard enough. It was why Starswirl the Bearded remained in the library, with a young mare dusting him off every few days and occasionally turning a page in one of the ancient texts she thought she was pretending he was reading. “But thou represented more than vice. Virtues that saved thou.” Raedfaest let out a sound that may have been intended to be a laugh, but without lungs, or a throat, it came out as a grinding sort of sound, “Always knew that vow of Celibacy would come back to bite me. Hey, Star, now that we’re, you know, dead?” “I told thou then, and will repeat mine self, Not if thou were the last stallion on Equuis. And clearly, thou art not.” “Guards. I will NOT tolerate fighting in my service. Now, Ready thyselves. Mine sister will be here soon. Thou will make a good impression on her and her student or I will find a way to end your unlives.” Bones clacked on steel as the two Night-Guards helmed themselves and stamped their hooves to attention. “Attend Us.” Luna trotted out of the room, dodging the rubble once more as her two Guard followed. On reaching the stairs, she reflected a moonbeam into the corridor to check that her millennia old guards were still presentable. They were. Impeccably so, despite the dust. “Remember thine orders. They still stand, though my sister is no longer a threat to me.” Hooves clacked a salute, “Yes, Lady Luna.”