Someone is calling my name.
Groaning, I manage to slough off the all-too-comfortable covers of my bed and flop to the floor in a manner roughly equating to standing. Hollering a half-hearted "I'm coming!" I set about slowly grooming myself for the day. Maybe in another time and place, I could keep up with my preferred punctuality. The Princess runs me ragged, though. Not much time for rest at all. I'm lucky to catch more than five hours in a single sleep cycle.
With my appearance taken care of, I slouch down the stairs from my tower and into the disapproving eyes of Swift Quill, the royal pain in th—ahem, the royal secretary. Sighing at my posture, he wordlessly presents me with a letter. Though I'm disinterested to begin with, my eyes widen as I bring it closer to my face. It's sealed with golden wax only used by the Princess herself. Shaking off my lethargic manner, I open it hurriedly, quickly scanning the contents before charging straight past the poor stallion and towards the castle, nearly knocking him over.
I arrive at the enormous palace, huffing for air, in a minute or so. Catching my breath, I shake myself one more time and enter, making my way to the Solar Court. The princess is waiting for me, pacing in irritation.
She stops moving and shakes her head disapprovingly as she catches sight of me. "I've been waiting on you for nearly half an hour, Twilight. I expected better from you." I stammer an apology, and she spares one of her rare smiles. "That said, you likely needed the extra sleep. I trust you read my letter?"
I nod and hold out the piece of paper. "Yes, Princess. You mentioned something about some sort of confidential mission. What do you have for me?"
She begins pacing once more, clearly agitated. "We've received reports from our spies that the Chalice of Tannenwyl has been sighted in Lunar territory. Apparently, several enemy knights, two grievously wounded, were flying over the Chasmlands only one or two days ago. One of them—thank the Creator for Lunar carelessness—somehow managed to drop it into one of the magical fissures. They may have retrieved it, but as their comrades were in mortal danger, they chose instead to save them."
I mutter a swear under my breath. I could've seen where this was going if I'd been blindfolded after having my eyes gouged out. "Let me guess," I cut in, "you want me to infiltrate the enemy's territory and brave the long journey to the Chasmlands across many miles of hazardous land with enemies every inch, and even then, you want me to delve around a huge expanse of potentially deadly seepage cracks of raw magical fallout until I find a myth?"
Celestia fixes me with a steely gaze and I flinch. I shouldn't have let my tongue get the better of me.
"Just because you are my pupil," she begins, her voice laced with venom, "does not mean you may talk to me as an equal, Ms. Sparkle. I am by far your superior, and I will be addressed as such. Do not overstep your boundaries."
My eyes drop. "My apologies, Princess."
She continues glaring at me for a few more seconds, then sighs. "But you're not entirely wrong as to what I want you to do. I have it in good confidence, however, that the Chalice is very real, and extraordinarily powerful. My troops can escort you to the border of the Solar lands, but from then on, you are on your own."
With that, she turns her back to me and begins to trot away, calling back over her shoulder, "and don't forget to pack something. You won't be able to resupply for a very long time."
---
A few sullen minutes later, I find myself grousing and griping in my tower room, all while packing a pair of innocuous-looking brown canvas saddlebags. "Extraordinarily powerful, she says. Like Tartarus it is. She just wants to get me out of her hair for a while. Nobody can find something that's been lost in the Chasmlands anyway."
I won't need a weapon. It's not like I can get one past the Lunar border, and I shouldn't need one anyway. My magic can defend me from anything that comes upon me. [1]
I hastily pile various assorted objects into the bags, many of them books on the biomes, landscapes, climate, and anything else useful to know, about the lands of the Lunar Sovereignty. Past that, there are enchanted metal flasks that hold many times as much water as a normal one, and some small packets of a highly nutritious plant known as stipula. These rations will have to last me for quite a while, after all. I'm going to be alone in hostile, unforgiving lands. It'll be cold as well, but I know that I can't pack a jacket of any sort. Those in the Sovereignty have adapted a strong resistance to cold temperatures, and will know me instantly.
I've barely finished tossing everything in my bags as there's a loud, insistent knock at the door.
"Ms. Sparkle!" calls the rough voice of a pegasus guard, "we're here to ferry you to the border!"
Grimacing, I quickly toss on a long black cloak, buckle the saddlebags on, and rush myself downstairs. I've found myself rushing a lot today, haven't I? Giving my mane a final brush with a hoof, I open up the door
A pair of impatient-looking pegasi stand there, a small sky chariot designed for scouting runs perhaps ten, fifteen feet away. They nod at me, and begin walking. Standing still for a moment, I shake my head. Sometimes I wonder if being the Princess' student is good for anything if I can't have authority over some lowly pegasus guards. After my brief consideration of that thought closes, I drop my head theatrically and heave a heavy sigh before following them and clambering aboard the chariot as they hitch themselves in. With a rush of intense wind nearly powerful enough to blow me off if it wasn't for the negation field that surrounded the vehicle, they take to the sky, darting towards the border.
---
Given the speed of the sky chariot, I'm not surprised when we arrive at the borders of the swath of no pony's land that stretches the length of the border. Stepping shakily off of the golden frame, I resist the urge to empty my queasy stomach. I need to get to work now. Infiltrating the Sovereignty definitely won't be an easy task. Getting my urges to vomit under control, I spare a moment to look around.
I've grown up for my entire life in a beautiful city, interspersed with trees. The appearance of this place, then, rightly shocks me. It's devoid of all life, just rocks, gravel and dirt. Craters pockmark the ground, scorched black, and occasional sections of the ground still gleam red-hot from the last skirmish.
Swallowing nervously, I turn to bid the pegasi goodbye, only to find that they're already gone, barely visible in the distance. Grumbling in irritation, I swallow again—my throat is becoming increasingly dry—and begin to cobble together a spell.
See, I can't use a traditional invisibility spell, because then they would be able to detect the magic easily with unicorns. I need to use magic, otherwise I would just be a sitting purple duck. I can't use the invisibility spell while nullifying my magical presence, because that particular technique makes you glow like a dying sun. It takes a great deal of magical energy out of me, but I somehow pull off an extraordinarily complex spell that'll allow me to blind their entire guard patrol for an extended period of time.
Okay, so it's not complex at all. It's just a basic light cantrip ramped up to eleven. I may or may not end up permanently blinding them. You know what? I don't care all that much.
I cast the spell, charging it with far more magic than is usually funneled into it. When I reach the point where I can hardly contain it anymore, I release it and watch the intensely bright ball blaze off into the preternatural dark that heralds the Lunar Sovereignty that stretches before me.
Once I see an incredibly bright flash off in the distance, I begin to move, galloping as fast as I can bring myself up to. It takes considerably longer than I thought, and by the time I'm there, they're beginning to recover. Hissing in frustration, I press myself flat against the outside of the enormous wall that demarcates the beginning of Lunar land.
Closing my eyes warily, I begin to cast out my magic in waves, creating an invisible map of the surroundings. There are far more guards than I expected on this wall. At least four are situated directly above me, spitting curses about the pain in their eyes. Over to the right, though, there are far fewer. Only one. Then finally, searching out even farther, I hit the jackpot.
About a hundred and fifty feet down the wall, a small, nigh-invisible locked door it set into the wall. As far as I can tell, nopony is guarding it. As long as I play my cards right, I should be able to slip through without too much trouble.
Retracting my magical field, my knees nearly buckle. It's been so long since I've been in the field that I'd forgotten how much energy it takes to maintain that for any length of time, let alone expanding it to the size that I did. I really need to be more careful in the future. [2]
After nearly half an hour of stealthy movement, I manage to reach the door. A simple telekinetic spell serves to unlock it, and it opens without a sound. Slipping through, I smile. Flipping up the cloak's hood, I quickly and quietly move beyond the small outpost before hurrying off into the endless gloom.
Eventually, I reach a point where I can no longer see the lights of the wall. All is darkness in every direction, and I can take down the cloak's hood. While a serviceable disguise, I quite dislike how it limits my field of view.
No sooner have I removed it than an ominous sound comes from beside and slightly behind me. It's the sound of unicorn magic.
Slowly turning, I'm confronted with a very, very unfortunate sight.
A grim-faced Lunar marksmage is staring at me, her horn charged with magic and hostility obvious in her dull blue eyes. Her words are positively dripping with malice as she speaks in a grating, discordant voice:
"Move and you're dead."
---
[1]: As I would later discover, that was a really, really bad idea.
[2]: Oh, who am I kidding?
---
She's dressed in a shabby brown frock, badly moth-eaten and torn in several different places. Through the tears in it, I can pick out patches of a dull white coat, and her purple mane and tail are hardly distinguishable as such, there's so much dirt caked onto them. She's thin; even with the loose garment hanging around her, I can easily see that she's undernourished.
"Those saddlebags. Give them to me."
I jolt at hearing her voice again, especially like that. I thought I would be taken in for, well, trespassing on Luna lands. Not so, apparently. She just wants to rob me.
I slowly and carefully turn, looking her in the eyes. "I don't have anything valuable. Just books and some water."
She laughs scornfully. "Maybe water isn't valuable to you, princess, but out here, it's more precious than gold. Now," her voice dropped to a deadly serious hiss, "give me that water."
I chastise myself inwardly for being an idiot. Of course water would be in high demand. Everybody needs as much of it as they can get out in this part of the world. Sadly, that includes me. I can't afford to give her the water. I pity her for her unfortunate station in life, but that's how things go.
Of course, this would be a lot easier to talk to her about if she didn't still have a powerful magical blast contained within her horn, ready to be released outward at a moment's notice. Though my social skills aren't the greatest, I know enough about conversing with people that are threatening your life to know that antagonizing them is a terrible idea. [1]
My eyes quickly search her for any weakness and latch themselves onto her horn. If I can just disrupt it...
An idea begins to form in my mind. Opening up the saddlebags, I withdraw one of the metallic flasks that contains my water. With a quick flick of my already-active magic, I send it streaking over to her and, before she has time to react, it strikes her horn. As soon as her magic feedback kicks in, I'm there, my hoof shoved into her mouth as she screams against it. Arcs of blue lightning travel across her body and her muscles spasm repeatedly, resulting in some rather hefty kicks to me chest. Nevertheless, I grimly hold on until she goes limp.
As soon as I remove my hoof, she staggers to her feet and attempts to charge another blast. Snarling, I grasp her in my magic, bending her backwards nearly to the point of physical damage. Her eyes go wide and she lets out a gasp of pain.
"Don't. You. Dare." I growl, each word accentuated by another painful contortion. By the time I drop her, she can hardly stand, let alone cast any spells. Quickly reclaiming the thrown flask with my magic, I slip it back into the saddlebags and turn to leave.
"Wait..."
The thin croak rasps out from behind me, barely audible, and I grit my teeth as I turn around. "What do you want now, you insufferable peasant?"
She fixes me with a powerful stare. Those blue eyes, so dull just moments ago, are glittering with intrigue and a sense of adventure.
"Please...wherever you're going...take me with you."
Of course, this is ludicrous. No way I'm letting her come with me. "Absurd. Why should I?"
Her eyes no longer glitter, but burn, smoldering with an absolute purpose, and her voice solidifies itself into a powerfully resounding tone. "Because if you don't, I'm going to follow you, and the instant you let your guard down, I'm going to put a bolt of magic in through your neck."
I laugh in derision. "Well, we can't have that, now can we...?" I charge my own horn, preparing to end her. I can feel the bolt beginning to slip loose...
No.
I suddenly lose all desire to kill this pony, and my eyes see her properly, not through a haze of anger. Even as my horn glows an angry violet, she stands firm, refusing to let herself show any fear or pain. I've killed before, make no mistake. But never like this. Only in the heat of battle, when if I don't kill my attacker, I will die. This, though...she's helpless. And actually, now that I think about it...
I huff out a small sigh and let the thaumic energy in my horn dissipate to the smallest fraction of what they were, which I then use to toss her the same steel flask. Catching it in her magical grip, she casts an inquisitive look at me, to which I reply, "If you slow me down, I'm leaving you behind."
It takes her a moment, but as she understands, a small smile spreads across her face. "Thank you," she murmurs. I sigh. This is probably going to come back to bite me later. [2]
---
Only a day passes (relatively, given that the night is eternal here. Which brings up how they measure time. I wonder how they do that kind of thing if they don't have—right, I was going somewhere with this) before trouble begins to rear its ugly head. As I dig through my saddlebags, I realize something.
All but a few tiny leaves of my stipula was gone.
I march over to Marksmage (as I knew her. She refused to tell me her name) with fury in my stare. "So, I let you come along with me and this is how you repay me? Taking my stipula? This plant is rare!"
She snorts. "Rare? Are you kidding me? It's a weed! It grows everywhere!" She points to a bush nearby with a spare hoof and my face burns with embarrassment as I realize that we've been walking through veritable forests of stipula for nearly an hour and a half now. Throwing a dirty look at the smug-faced unicorn, I walk up and begin to munch on the plants. So that's why it was always in such short supply back home. It only grows in the Lunar Sovereignty!
Turning around, I grasp my saddlebags with my magic just as she begins to nose open the flap and shoot her a withering glare. "No. Stay out of my stuff." Inside, I'm nearly panicked. Many of those books are written by scholars from the Dominion, and clearly marked as such. No matter how much she owes me for not killing her, I still have no reason to reveal to her where I come from. That would lead to a whole host of problems.
She trots up behind me, munching on the last of my packed stipula. "So, where are we going, anyway?" Her voice is sounding better; it's not so raspy and discordant. The water is helping, I suppose. I wrinkle my snout as she nears me. Next time we find a river or something, we need to see about giving her a bath.
"The Chasmlands," I reply distractedly as I continue chomping down food at an impressive rate.
I hear a choking sound come from her, and then a shriek of disbelief: "The Chasmlands? Why in Luna's name would you ever go there?"
Now that my brain is more engaged, I can easily come up with an excuse on the fly. "I'm conducting research on the magical fallout down there. With the right conduit, it could be used as an incredibly potent power source."
There's a moment of sombre silence behind me, and she speaks quietly: "You don't know much about how the Chasmlands work, do you? All of that energy will go straight to your horn and you'll die almost immediately."
My eyes widen in shock and surprise.
Well, that's going to make things difficult.
---
[1]: Don't ask me how I found out about this. Not a story you want to hear.
[2]: Oh, absolutely.
---
After eating my fill and grilling the Marksmage (who will henceforth be referred to as Marks. I think it's a good nickname, no matter what she says, and I need something proper to call her) for information about the Chasmlands, which she knows quite a considerable amount, as it turns out, we continue moving. I'll cross the imminent death bridge when we're actually at the Chasmlands. Who knows, a Lunar soldier could discover me and then I'd never have to worry about it again!
Kinda sad that I'm avoiding thinking about death by thinking about different ways to die.
Shaking my head to bring me back to the land of the living, I begin to think about our next move. While we have plenty of water due to those enchanted flasks, and the stipula should keep us full for a long time as long as it holds out, we can't just sleep out in the open. Not here. Ponies aren't as trustworthy as they were back home, purely from how close we are to the border. It's entirely possible that there are more ponies like Marks hovering around, and I would rather avoid another of those debacles. This time, they might not be so easy to dissuade from killing me. They probably won't even ask. They'd just kill both of us and then take my stuff.
So, yeah. It's safe to say that we need to find somewhere to crash, because I've been awake for (roughly) forty or so hours, and I'm starting to feel a crash coming on. [1]
"Hey, Marks," I call to her as she trots onwards a few feet beside me, "you know this place, right? Is there anywhere around here to sleep where we won't have to worry about being either mugged or brutally murdered?"
At first I don't think she hears me, which would be somewhat odd, considering how loud I was (whoops), but I can see her rolling her eyes. Good, at least she's not deaf. She points in a direction a little bit to the east of where we were currently walking.
"Down that way is a town called Moonscry. It's small, but the folk there are friendly, and there's food, water and an inn. Sound good?"
I answer her by accelerating my pace into a canter. I need that bed soon. Within maybe thirty or forty minutes, I begin to see lights on the horizon. Grinning, I speed up into a full gallop, reaching a crude wooden wall set with a gate with quite a burst of speed and leaving Marks a ways behind me.
Turning the door lever, I find it locked, and a slot opens in the door. A pony's face is visible in it, and it looks anything but friendly. "What're ya be wantin', filly?"
Refraining myself from nit-picking his atrocious grammar, I wait for Marks to catch up before answering. "My...companion and I have been traveling for quite a ways. We could use a bed for the night."
He looks at me with suspicion, but his eyes go wide as he sees Marks and the shutter in the door slams shut. An instant later, the door creaks open.
The stallion bursts out, embracing Marks. "Oh, Miz Rares! Been too long, girl, too long!" She hisses at him to be quiet, and he looks like a snake just bit him. After a moment, his face falls and he lets go in a hurry, ushering us into the town. [2]
---
As towns go, it isn't bad, but more than anything, I need a place to sleep. Marks mentions needing to be somewhere else in town and excuses herself. The inn is close by, and I offer up some coins to the innkeeper, thanking the Sun that Celestia had kept the Lunar currency from captured spies. There's no real issue, and as soon as I fall into the crisply-made bed, I slip into a haven of dreams, thinking the whole time that I've never felt more comfortable.
That is, until I jolt awake upon hearing an explosion. [3]
I bolt up in bed, clambering quickly out and throwing on the cloak. The saddlebags come next, quickly buckling themselves, and I hurl myself out of the door.
The entire western side of the town's wall is gone, ravaged by flames. My body stiffens as I see a pony come trotting through that hole. I know that thing.
In order to spy on the Lunar society, Celestia once created five fiery aspects of herself known as Solar Effigies. On occasion, she uses them as fiery artillery, but it takes much out of her magic to control them. So why now, and why to just attack a small Lunar village?
I don't think I'll ever find out, because before I can blink, it's darted past me, leaving a trail of flames behind it as it careens through the town. Every building it touches explodes in a violent conflagration, and before I can do much else but blink, Moonscry is reduced to an enormous pyre.
As I feel the flames of the wreckage licking my coat, my self-preservation instinct kicks in and I gallop as fast as I can towards the hole in the wall, slipping through it with barely any room to spare. After that, the entire thing flares up, leaving no escape from the ever-expanding ring of smoke and fire.
Hearing a noise behind me, I turn to see Marks walking over, a grim look on her face. "That is the wrath of the Sun Tyrant. Pray that she never overtakes this land."
As we continue on our southward journey, with something close to a full night of rest, my mind is plagued with the visions of what I just saw. Those ponies were innocent, so why would Celestia do a thing like that?
This was becoming far more complicated than I imagined it would.
---
The next time we stop, it's to prepare ourselves for the next leg of our trip. Thus far, we've been traveling mostly through barren grasslands and meadows with an occasional sparse tree, twisted and mangled. In front of us, though, lies—no, lurks—an ancient, shadowy forest.
"Cullwood," murmurs Marks. I glance at her, asking for an explanation. She obliges. "During the first years of the war against the Dominion, we took more prisoners than we knew what to do with. So, given that those times were far more barbaric, we," she swallows, "took many of them to this wood when it was young and sacrificed them to the Moon. This practice was called the Culling, from which the wood takes its name. It's a common belief that their souls still inhabit these woods, and nobody ever goes in there.
I force down the fires of anger at her story. It was centuries ago, after all. No use getting mad now. "And we have to go through it to get to the Chasmlands? No way around?"
She snorts. "The only way to get around these woods is to cross the mountains to the west, and trust me, you don't want to do that. The pass takes you by the ruins of Canterlot. There is nothing but death waiting up there."
"What do you mean? What's at the ruins?"
She refuses to respond, instead lying down and quickly falling asleep. Running a quick magical check to ensure that she's well and truly out, I extract a book of geography from my saddlebag and, with a quick night-vision spell, set to reading about what lay ahead.
The Cullwood, also known as Black Forest, is an enormous forest that spans most of the southern part of the Lunar Sovereignty. While
superstition runs rampant, none of my wisps have ever reported sensing any spirits upon return. There is definitely something in the air,
however. There's a feeling of rotting life. Everything, even the air, feels dark and stagnant, but not malicious. One notable exception, reported by the only returning wisp of that group, is a great circle of stones in the perfect centre of the forest. As soon as one may step into that circle, an enormous force of malice rests on them, to the point where they cannot rise. They stay there as kneeling skeletons until their bones rot away. Thus, I have named this place the Circle of Bones, carpeted by the corpses of the unfortunate past.
Well, that's disquieting.
No sense fretting about it now, however. For a brief moment before I close my eyes, I feel a strange presence in the trees, but before I can think on it any further, I'm asleep. My dreams are of bones and fire. [4]
[1]: Though I stay up often for my work for the Princess, I rarely have to exert myself physically, and in the past forty hours, I've slipped through a security barrier, nearly been killed, nearly killed the killer, and then hiked quite a few miles. I'm allowed to be tired. Shut up.
[2]: See, this is the point where I need to realize that something important is happening, and not just stand idly by fantasizing about a bed.
[3]: Because Celestia forbid I could ever go anywhere without at least some sort of explosion.
[4]: You'd think that at this point, I could tell something is about to go horribly wrong. Sometimes I disappoint myself.