i
Though Luna had persistently begged me for answers as we weaved our way through the claustrophobic network of streets in Cyclosa’s slums, I did not stop to offer any explanation until we were a considerable distance from our home. After fifteen minutes of moving briskly through the night, I ushered Luna into a back alley which reeked of trash and urine but was at least a far enough distance from any of the silent houses that I did not have to worry about anypony overhearing what I was about to tell her.
“What are we doing?” Luna groggily questioned as we came to a sudden stop.
“I told you. We’re leaving Cyclosa.”
“Are you running away?” she asked.
“No, I’m not,” I sighed. I cast a wary glance at the filthy dirt road beneath my hooves, and slowly sat down as Luna did the same. The cloak I had donned before leaving had successfully hidden my wings from sight, but I pointed to them anyways as I explained.
“Luna, the wings on my back...you do know what I am, right?”
She didn’t say the word aloud, but shook her head in fearful assurance that she indeed did know.
“Mom and Dad are worried that I might be a threat, or that I at least might attract the attention of the guards and put you three in danger. I’m not running away, I’m fleeing. Fleeing Erisia. If anypony finds out I’m an alicorn, there’s no way they’d let me live. Remember those celebrations six years ago when that one alicorn was captured and executed?”
“But that alicorn was bad! It tried to attack the capital!” Luna protested, flinging her hooves in the air. “You haven’t done anything wrong!”
“I doubt Discord cares about that,” I spitefully mumbled. For the first time in my life, and without any other choice, I looked at the treatment of alicorns by Erisia’s Royal Guard not through the lens shoved in front of us by Discord, but through the unsullied view my own personal perspective provided me. I knew that I hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet I had been forced to flee like a criminal. I had not asked for anything, I had been perfectly content with my dull, repetitious life in the scrapyard. Whatever it was that had caused me to grow wings, were I given a choice I would gladly have rejected it.
If that had been all, however, then I would not have any reason to be anymore than afraid. As it was, I was not only terrified, I was furious. Not for myself, and not due to the actions of anypony in particular, but due to the fact that I had no control over the situation I had found myself in, and no ability whatsoever to change the circumstances.
“There’s another thing...” I continued. “You might be an alicorn too, Luna.”
“What?!”
“I’m not sure. It’s possible. And if you do grow a horn in the same way I grew wings, I don’t want you to be all alone. So what do you say? Will you come with me?”
“Yes.” Her answer was quick and certain, spoken in a firm tone even for a young filly. I was slightly taken aback by the swiftness of her answer which was expressed without so much as a thought but without a trace of uncertainty. “Where are we going?”
I did not provide an immediate answer. It was a question I had not yet answered myself, for I saw no reason to provide one. Where did not matter, so much as the destination was someplace beyond the borders of Erisia. All nations outside of Discord’s rule were said to be populated by brutes and barbarians, unrepentant monsters who would kill ponies for sheer amusement and without guilt or second-thought. I had never met anything other than ponies in my relatively short life, but I had always carried with me curiosity of what the inhabitants of the other nations were like, as well as my doubts that they were as malicious and terrifying as we were told.
Regardless of the pathetic amount of knowledge I possessed of Erisia’s surrounding nations, they would still be where I was headed, one way or another. I had seen a map of Erisia only once in my life, and it was of only the nation itself with none of the surrounding ones labelled. Perhaps this was done with ulterior motives, to deter ponies from doing exactly as Luna and I were attempting. One fear that seems to be consistent amongst everypony I have seen is the fear of the unknown, and it seemed as though this fear was easy to intensify by keeping the population as uneducated about their surroundings as possible.
“Celestia…?” Luna said after awhile, prompting me to finally reply.
“North, I think,” I said. “Maybe we should look for a map of Erisia...”
Luna perked up suddenly and a noticeable grin cracked across her face, as if she had just thought of something which greatly pleased her.
“I think I saw one in the marketplace! Mom sent me to buy some bread earlier today and I think I saw one while I was looking around!”
I did not necessarily share in Luna’s instant enthusiasm, for the marketplace was past the slums in the opposite direction we had come. My intention had been to flee Cyclosa as swiftly as possible before dawn, but to divert our route back into the heart of the city would potentially place us in a vulnerable position. I’d needed to wait until late at night in order to double-back to the slum to get Luna, and as a result I had already spent far too long in the streets with nothing but a cloak between me and capture by the Erisian Guards. If we were to return back to where we had come then it would perhaps be dawn before we even had a chance to leave Cyclosa.
But to venture into the Grey Wastelands without direction seemed equally as suicidal. True, we had no set destination in mind, but simply wandering in a random compass direction and hoping for the best could not have decent repercussions. There was more than likely only dirt, stretching for too many miles for us to reach anything beyond. We were venturing into the unknown, like explorers sailing towards the great waterfalls at the ocean’s end. Beyond Erisia would always be the unknown, but within its borders lay two things exclusively: life in the cities, and death everywhere else. And while the life that the slums provided was hardly sustainable, it was at least possible.
I did not want to turn back out of fear of being discovered, but if I was then at least Luna would perhaps be safe still. If I blindly led us into the wastelands and we both got lost, I wouldn’t only be dooming myself but my poor sister as well. Besides, the map wasn’t the only thing we could grab in the marketplace. Food, clothing, perhaps a compass or more maps, or even a weapon of some sorts would be greatly helpful to our precarious cause, considering I had little more than a dozen bits to buy the resources myself anyways.
“Alright, Luna,” I conceded reluctantly, “Let’s go back to the marketplace. But we need to be quick and quiet, do you understand?”
“Yes, Celly!” she cheerfully saluted.
I felt a terrible tug in my heart as I witnessed her seemingly-oblivious joy. I was forcibly pulling her from everything she had ever known, and putting the two of us in immeasurable danger, and there was no way she did not know it herself. But instead of lashing out in bitter frustration and anger at my parents, as I had done, Luna carried a smile and added a skip to her walk, joyful at the very thought of something different in her monotonous life of meaningless chores in a city with nothing but filth below and bleak, featureless grey skies above. Even in the face of the unknown, and against the possibility of some terrible judgement the Erisian Guards had in store pending we were discovered as refugees, she wore an optimistic smile and walked with a playful bounce in her step.
In many ways, I believe Luna’s joyful confidence was the only thing that salvaged my dwindling equinity on our journey, and stopped me from being twisted into everything else under Discord’s rule; corrupt, hopeless, bleak, and entirely without fate.
ii
Traces of undesired sunlight would already have been swelling beyond the grey clouds, but they would not be strong enough to actually lighten the starless sky for at least another hour, and gradually at that. There were no seasons in Erisia, although the night and day lasted the same varying hours even then. When Luna and I fled Cyclosa, I believe the month would have been August or September by Equestria’s current calendar, but I am only guessing.
We traveled swiftly to the marketplace of Cyclosa as I led the way at a brisk gallop, one which we only broke when I thought I heard another pony or perhaps a guard out at the same early morning hours. We stuck to back streets that I knew they did not to dwell in too frequently, and even if we did not often venture too far from our ramshackle home, almost twenty years in Cyclosa had rendered the layout of the town quite familiar in my head. There wasn’t an actual curfew in Cyclosa, but two fillies quite literally running about in the dead of night was bound to raise questions I could not afford to stop and answer.
The marketplace was, surprisingly, deserted. I had never been in the marketplace at such an early hour even when I worked well into the night in the scrapyard and did not return home until well after midnight, but I had always presumed shopkeepers would occasionally stay. Hunger, greed, and despair had rendered the city's residents desperate, and thievery had always been something I’d expected them to carry out very frequently.
It seemed like the shopkeepers had greater faith in ponykind than I did, for save for a few glowing lanterns the entire sprawl of stands was deserted.
Luna and I did not emerge from the shadows of the alleyways until I had swept the entire area under my meticulous gaze, and even so we did so as stealthily as possible. The few lanterns I’d seen glowing belonged to shops we had no need to visit anyways. I reluctantly let Luna lead the way ahead, for we were here due to her claim of seeing the map we needed.
“Celestia!” she suddenly stopped and turned around to face me, her voice a hissing whisper, “Why don’t we split up? I’ll go get the map and you can get something else we need! I just need a few bits for the map—”
“No way, Luna.”
“Why not?” she pouted, “We’d be quieter that way anyways! And we’d be out of here faster! Please, Celly?”
“You’re too young to understand why,” I said, ignoring her accusing glare. “I can’t risk losing you, alright?”
She kept her judging eyes on me for a few more seconds, before letting out an annoyed snort and continuing on forwards. We ducked in the shadows of stacked boxes, barrels, and wooden planks that come day would be stands or shops, stopping every few seconds to listen for patrolling hoofprints or to look for peering eyes which had glimpsed movement in their peripheral.
I could somewhat understand why the marketplace was deserted when I saw the stands, relatively clear of the wares that had clustered them during the day. With disdain I noted that some of the crates next to the stands were kept sealed with rusty, pathetic looking locks. I greatly hoped the map that we needed was not kept in such a crate, although the more stands we passed the more I noticed it seemed to be the norm amongst them all.
Along the way, I passed one such stand, whose wares had vanished but curiously had a heavy looking bag stacked atop one of the crates. Hesitantly, I let Luna carry on ahead while I stopped to peer into the bag, hardly able to restrain an exclamation of joy when I saw what was within.
It was a coinpurse, one which was considerably heavy as I lifted it in my telekinetic grasp. In fact, it was so heavy that my weak and untrained horn actually wavered while I was placing in my saddlebag, causing it to clumsily fall the remaining precious inches and slam against the fabric. To any calm pony it would have meant nothing, but to a mare as desperate for silence and secrecy as I, the sound was deafening.
I was worried Luna would hear the tell-tale shaking of coins as I trotted to catch up to her, but thankfully she seemingly did not. I did not want to explain to Luna why her older sister was a thieving rat, especially when she had evidently built such a strong view of me being a strong, hardworking, and compassionate mare. Her notion might not have been incorrect, but I knew that regardless of whether or not what I was doing to survive was justified, it still was not right.
After what seemed like an eternity of our creeping transit, Luna stopped and pointed in the direction of a specific stand. With growing dread we both realized it was across a large clearing in the marketplace, one that we would have to leave our cover of shadows to cross. This in itself would not have been too much of an issue, if an Erisian Guard would not have been milling about directly in our way.
There was a derelict fountain full of water and urine that probably predated Luna and I ten times over, and it was against this that the guard was lounging. He thankfully did not seem to be looking in our direction, instead his focus seemed to be diverted elsewhere.
I suppose a description is in order for Discord’s loyal guard. The draconequus did not seem to have any preference, anypony stupid enough to actually wish to serve him seemed to suffice. From what I could understand from what little I was shown, life for the guards was an improvement to that of citizens, although to what extent I cannot tell for certain. They most definitely did not have the misfortune of living in the slums like Luna and I and millions of others, but I do not believe they had any family anyways. If they did, they carried no memory of them. I suppose it was a sacrifice they had been willing to make in order to escape the squabble they’d have to endure otherwise. A better life, at the cost of all memory of their friends and family. This was the choice they would have made. With this knowledge, I did not have any reason whatsoever to pity them if this had indeed been a conscious choice they had made.
Their actual physical description was that of ferocious, harsh looking spiked armour which carried a relatively consistent design and colouring but was fashioned from just about anything. This gave it a chaotic feel most certainly reflective of the actual creature they served to protect. The helmets traditionally carried with them white antlers sharpened like razors, very much like the identical horn on Discord’s own head.
This guard was nothing beyond the norm, right down to the exact same horns on his helmet. Cautiously I pointed him out to Luna, but her hushed silence as she nodded frantically told me she had already seen for herself. It seemed like, if we were to avoid attention, we would have to travel the long and tedious circumference of the pointless clearing in order to get our map. I would have groaned in frustration if I was not utterly paranoid of every sound we made.
“Celestia…” Luna tugged on my cloak to get my attention, her voice as quiet as mouse. “I can go around...I’m smaller, so I can be sneakier.”
“No. What did I just tell you, Luna?”
“Please! Just trust me! I can do this.”
I looked back at the guard, still lounging senselessly about. Luna was not necessarily wrong, and the chance of her making it around without attracting attention was perhaps greater than the two of us. I was hardly a small mare even if I had just left my adolescence, and Luna was quite a bit shorter even for a filly of twelve years. Her eyes were nothing if not pleading, and her logic was difficult to argue.
To my surprise and horror, Luna did not wait for a further response. Instead, she continued heading forwards around the perimeter of the clearing.
“Luna!” I hissed angrily. “Get back here!”
She either did not hear me or refused to show that she did, for she continued moving forwards without turning around to acknowledge my furious but near-silent voice. I did not dare call again, for the distance between us was too great for my voice to reach her without reaching the guard also. Instead of calling out, I crept after her, moving both as silently and as swiftly as I could manage. Nevertheless, Luna was still much faster, her smaller stature indeed helping her greatly.
In my rush, I did not actually see what had brushed against my side, but the sound of it falling and striking the cracked cobblestone was more than enough to instantly slice through my anger at my sister and replace it with fury at my own foolishness. I saw Luna instantly stop and duck for cover in the shadows of one of the tall crates, while I did the same behind the stand closest to me.
There was to be no mercy on the end of the guard, either. A quick glance showed me that he was now looking in our direction in shock, doubtlessly aware of the presence of somepony lurking about in the dark, wishing not to be seen. My frustration became terror when he began advancing towards Luna, but even despite my frantically beating heart I motioned for Luna to keep moving ahead.
“Go!” I whispered, “Meet me at the marketplace entrance!”
While she scrambled onwards with far greater purpose than before, I picked up a heavy looking rock off the cracked cobblestone street. Floating it in my telekinesis, I carefully took aim with one eye closed. Before fear further intensified the wavering of my magic, I flung the stone directly at the approaching guard.
I did not see it strike, but the sound of rock hitting his steel helmet, followed by a furious and surprised cry, was more than enough to keep me informed of my success. Wasting no more time, I turned and started sprinting in the direction of the alleyways, kicking crates and barrels directly in the path of my pursuer. The moonless and starless night was enough to keep me rendered as no more than a silhouette to anypony not directly beside me, and I took this to my advantage as I fled. The sound of rushing hooves on cobblestone told me the guard had indeed given chase, which would at least allow for Luna’s safety.
“Stop! By the order of Discord, this is your first and last warning!” he barked between heavy breaths.
Order of Discord. The irony of the words almost could have made me chuckle if the urgency of my situation was not so rich. His heavy breathing was hardly surprising; with everypony living in a state of perpetual fear, any actual activity that would warrant the guards having a purpose was kept to a significant minimum. As a result, they did little else other than lounge about. I imagine the guards in larger cities had a far more important purpose, but in Cyclosa their need was quite minimal beyond the fear of Discord that they invoked throughout the squalor.
A few lanterns sprung to life across the shantytown I was sprinting through, undoubtedly awoken by the guard’s scream. I ran as quickly as I could, ducking through the endless maze of houses and trying to keep my frantic breathing silent. Where the guard was weakened through a lifetime of doing nothing, I was for the first time thankful for the hard, grueling strain of work in the scrapyards, for it allowed me to evade him with ease. He shouted several more times, but every time it seemed further and further away. Eventually, I reversed the direction of my run and did my best to navigate back towards the marketplace, which was considerably more terrifying now that half the neighboring houses were beginning to awaken thanks to the guard screaming like a fool.
Soon, I heard other loud voices shouting, too. They sounded just as harsh and purposeful, leading me to believe that other guards or perhaps even awakened ponies had joined the cause of hunting me down. I cursed bitterly as I tore through the streets. If a single pony were to get a glimpse of me now, then it would not be long before every guard in Cyclosa had a clear and pronounced troublemaker whose identity could be whittled down enough to put me in considerable danger. I wouldn’t have been the first to speak or act against Discord’s order, although if I actually managed to do so and then get away with it, I certainly would be the first at something.
I had been sneaking around at times no doubt apt to cause suspicion, and then I had assaulted a guard and promptly fled, ignoring his orders to stop. This was more than enough to get me killed even despite my youthful age, and I’d seen it more times than I could even remember. Any sensible pony played things safe and did not so much as look at the Erisian Guards, let alone lug rocks at their heads and steal bits and maps. I needed no motivation to escape beyond what had already been drilled in my head across two decades of eternal fear, but there was plenty more motivation to spare anyways.
I tore back into the marketplace clearing where the whole damned business had begun, taking care to stick to the shadows as I sped towards the entranceway, in the opposite direction of where Luna and I had previously been heading. I whispered a prayer that she had made it through alright, all the while cursing myself for letting her be alone for even a moment.
Luna was not waiting in the alleyway like I’d been desperately hoping, which meant she was either unable to get there, or simply had not arrived yet. The wild chase I had led the guards on had taken all but ten minutes, so it was with only a tiny bit of doubt that I settled on the latter, more comforting option.
I was in the middle of contemplating heading back into the marketplace to search for her despite what I had said before, when she came running down the cobblestone street at a brisk pace, a large parchment bulging from beyond her black hooded jacket.
“Luna, you idiot!” I scolded her the moment she arrived. Her beaming smile vanished in a moment when she saw how furious I was. “What were you thinking?”
Her mouth opened a little, but no actual response was made. Her lip quivered a little and her eyes grew wide with regretful sorrow, watering ever-so-slightly.
“Don’t cry, damn it. Just don’t do that again.”
“I...I got the map…”
“Yeah, great,” I scoffed. “I had half the Cyclosa guards chasing me! I hope it was worth it.”
“I’m sorry…” she mumbled, her voice weakening as she tried to repress a sob. “I thought you were following me. I didn’t know…”
“Luna, you can’t just be sorry. Do you think they care if you're sorry? You have no idea how vulnerable we are by ourselves! Now half the city is gonna be searching for me, and that includes guarding the road to the Grey Wasteland. We’re gonna have to lay low and wait until all this shit dies down, and it’s your fault!”
“I said I was sorry!” Her held back sobs lasted no longer, and tears began streaming down her cheeks. Her crying was silent, but were not lacking in strength. I was still angry with her for putting us in mortal danger so early into our journey, but there truly was nothing further to be done. She’d learned, and there was nothing to gain out of tearing her down any further. I leaned forward and hugged her lightly. Our embrace lasted not a moment, before she pushed me away. I sighed, and placed one of my forbidden wings on her back instead, causing my cloak to sag a little onto the unmoved wing. She initially shirked fearfully away from the freakish appendage, but calmed down once she looked into my forced smile and widened eyes.
“Come on, Luna. Let’s hurry to the gate. We might make it there before word of our little incident does.”
iii
I’d imagine one might be wondering why the Erisian guard would put so much apparent effort into apprehending a mare such as myself, whose actions had posed very little of an actual threat. It might actually seem like a bit of a logical contradiction after what I previously recounted of the guards in Cyclosa being quite lazy and unfit for their actual duties.
To answer simply, there was no practical reason behind the efforts they put into finding me that morning. Instead, the main reason lay in the mere fact that a mare had apparently disrupted the peace and gotten away with it, thus in a way beating their tyrannical rule. This was something they simply could not stand for, even if the extent of which I had ‘disrupted the peace’ was something negligible whose effects did not last much longer than a few seconds of minor shock on behalf of a single guard, followed by a brief sprinting chase that had lasted a little over ten minutes.
Luna and I traveled quickly towards the gate to the Grey Wastelands, but despite our haste we could not outrun the growing dawn. Ponies rose early in Cyclosa provided they had some sort of work like I had. I’d been expected to be in the scrapyards before six in the morning, and did not dare venture any later than that time. I was never in a mood to find out how tardiness was dealt with, and I had my sincere doubts anypony would have cared that I had been working my hooves to the bone for five years and made a nearly negligible amount of noticeable mistakes across them.
Whether they had a shop in the marketplace, were fishing for resources in the dump, or worked in the farms lacing the South end of the city, there was never a shortage of ponies with places to be come morning. We skirted as best as we could away from the route where the largest amount of activity would be, instead ducking between the shanties and sticking to the shadows as we had grown quite used to by that point. With the morning light slowly casting back the much desired night, the streets slowly became more and more populated by ponies running about with delusions of a purpose. They did not pay us any mind, and for once I was thankful that the majority of the pony population was stupid, selfish, and about as complacent as sheep, never venturing too far from whatever roles their trifling place in Erisian society required of them.
Such was my mindset as I led the way through the blooming crowd, ignoring the ponies around us and avoiding the occasional guard whenever I spotted them on the more populated sections of narrow shantytown streets. In my ignorant, cynical, and centralized inclination, I was not oblivious to the hypocrisy in my actions and thoughts, but to dwell on them served no practical purpose.
In a vivid contrast to my stoicness, Luna was providing fleeting but welcoming smiles to the rare pony who intentionally met her eyes, clearly too young and sheltered to have already subscribed to the egocentric psychology that had infected Erisia and I was doing my best to drive back. It was rare for any of the ponies to return Luna’s subtle attempts at anything beyond apathetic self-concern, but it did not seem to deter her from radiating as much warmth as she could.
Eventually our journey came to an abrupt end as I stopped my swift trot in the face of a wide clearing, populated by less than a dozen ponies. It was the most open area we’d seen since the deserted streets at midnight, and it was also the first time in my life that I glimpsed anything beyond the towering walls enclosing Cyclosa.
At the end of the clearing comprised of more decrepit cobblestone was a derelict looking guard-tower, placed right beside an entirely unsullied exit from Cyclosa. The Grey Wastelands were beckoning us, uninterrupted by the encasing brick walls for an impossibly brief area of twelve feet. Stationed at the foot of the sad guard tower was an actual guard, holding a spear and looking much more attentive than any other guard that I had seen prior. The clearing was deserted save for him; it was quite obvious the incentive to leave the protection of Cyclosa’s brick walls was not too prominent amongst the population.
“Damn it,” I spat. This complicated things.
“A guard!” Luna chattered excitedly. “What do we do?”
“There’s no way we can get by him without a few questions being asked,” I mumbled. My wings were pressed firmly against my sides, with my cloak keeping them further flush for safe measure, but nonetheless they were the only thing on my mind as I sat contemplating our actions.
All it took was for one guard to ask me to remove my cloak, and I’d might as well surrender myself then and there.
“Hey!” A loud, harsh voice rung out. I whipped around and felt my blood curdle in fright. “White mare! Stop right there!”
A guard was walking towards me, brandishing a spear. He must have seen me in the streets before and been following me, no doubt seeing a young mare and an even younger filly travelling towards the town gates as more than a little suspicious.
It took the greatest of my self-control to keep my voice and breathing steady, but even so it sounded only a little less uneasy and frightened than what I truly felt. My entire body had tensed, and my mind instantly felt emptied as fear overtook all my other thoughts.
“You’re just waltzing out of Cyclosa?” he barked, pointing towards the gate with his spear, and promptly turning it until it was only an inch from my snout. The other guard, seeing the commotion, began heading towards us as well.
“Is that not allowed?” I shakily replied. The moment the words left my mouth, I instantly wished I could take them back, even before I saw the guard’s grip on the spear tighten further and the dull head scrape against my snout. I did not intend to come across as sarcastic, but I very well knew he would take great pleasure in presuming I did. I dared not take my gaze away from my own hooves, even though my common sense was desperately screaming at me to ensure Luna’s safety.
“Who do you think you’re talking to, filly?” he screamed.
“I’m sorry!” My response was immediate, albeit panicked and unintentionally loud. “Please!”
The other guard was with us now, too, I’d seen his hooves even from my gaze at the cobblestone street, and while he was not pointing his spear at us like the first one, I felt no further comfort from his presence.
“Where’s a young filly like yourself going so early in the morning?” he drawled. “Leaving Cyclosa is prohibited for a mare of your youth, you know.”
“No it isn’t, you son of a bitch,” I spat at him in my mind. The fired up guard was disregarding the rules he was supposed to uphold, and he didn’t care even in the slightest, nor would he face any punishment for doing so.
My actual vocal response, of course, was far from confrontational than the one I gleefully spoke in my head.
“The farms,” I said. While I had been too foolish to think of an actual excuse beforehand, the fear speeding my thought process was swift enough so as to formulate one without delay. “Our father hasn’t come home, and my mother is too sick to go herself. So she sent us to see if he’s alright.”
“The farms are to the South!” While the first guard again did the talking, I felt a sharp pain in my side as the other spear was driven into my cloak. It was accidental, I would later decide, but at the time my mind was thinking only of the wings on my back I desperately had to keep concealed.
“Please don’t hurt us!” I yelped the moment the pain registered.
“The farms are to the South!” he repeated in nearly the exact same voice, ignoring my plea and instead keeping the spear locked directly in front of me.
“There is no exit from Cyclosa in the South,” I said as calmly as I could. Blood was trickling down my side where the spear had accidentally hit, which meant there was now a hole in my precious cloak.
What I was saying wasn’t untrue. I would know, the southernmost part of Cyclosa was the scrapyard, and past the brick wall were the farms that I had no actually seen with my own eyes even from the highest point on the piles of scrap.
“What are your names?” he barked.
“I’m Selena,” I lied without delay, “And this is my sister Moonli—”
“I don’t care about her! I asked you!”
“I’m Selena.” I simplified instead. I knew they were the wrong words in moments, but once again there was little I could do to change them now. My irritation with his inconsistency and unnecessary harshness seemed to be almost potent enough to overpower my terror.
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty—”
“And her?”
To my surprise, Luna answered before I had a chance to. Her voice was squeaked and had about as much volume as a whispering breezie, but somehow the three of us heard her quite clearly as she honestly told the guards that she was twelve. Any of the hostility that had been directed at me was spared with Luna, for reasons which I truly did not know.
There was a brief, horrifying period of several quiet seconds, in which my story was clearly being turned around in the guard’s heads as they tried to sense some sort of flaw in it’s validity. In an attempt to ease the growing feeling of dread in my chest, I rationalized that they had no reason to care whether or not I left Cyclosa, unless word of what happened in the marketplace had indeed travelled quicker than we had.
“Go.” The guard eventually muttered. “Your sister can wait with us till you get back. Just in case you two had any ideas of escaping.”
When I looked up at the second guard, the one who had remained entirely silent, I realized with dread that they were keeping Luna, while I was apparently being allowed to leave. Before I could say anything in protest, the first guard took a step towards me, twisted his spear around, and used the blunt end to push me backwards. I lost my footing and stumbled to the cobblestone street, as they both roared with laughter.
There was a thousand furious responses running through my head as I processed their actions. But even with countless insults in my head, I did not speak at all. Even with the shame of being ordered around and the bitter sense of loathing as they held my younger sister hostage, I drove back the urge. Instead, my response was kept to a dejected sigh. I truly did not know what to do...if I refused to leave without Luna then it would be clear to them that my story was a fabrication, but if I did then I would be leaving her behind. No matter what route I took, there was no way I could save both of us, at least not without creating a scene and having to revert to simply trying to flee into the Wasteland and hope they didn’t catch up.
Luna was being held firmly between the shaft of a spear and the second guard, looking at me with a pleading expression. I turned my tail to her and looked at the Grey Wastelands beyond the gate, desperately trying to think of a solution.
“Wait!” I heard him scream at me again. I could have sworn I’d heard his voice waver a little, as if he had just been given cause for fear.. “Are...Can those be…”
With blooming dread, I turned to look to my sides. My cloak...my precious cloak that had been the only thing standing between myself and a swift execution, had come undone as a result of the guard’s harsh shove. It must have been sagging a little, and fallen further when I’d begun to walk away. My wings were hardly visible, but nonetheless a few stray feathers stuck out from beyond the precious cover of the thick, itchy fabric, revealing to all what I was.
There was deathly silence for almost ten seconds, silence in which both myself and the guards were too terrified to do much more than stare; me straight ahead at the Grey Wastelands so close yet so far away, and them at the tiny bit of protruding wing.
Then, without the slightest movement to telegraph my intentions, I whipped around and fired a single magic blast directly at the guard holding my sister. It struck him point blank, sending him flying back. Luna stumbled to the ground and the spear fell with a clatter, but she wasted no time in rolling back to her feet and sprinting in the direction of the gate. I was on her tail without hesitation, only breaking my stride to fire another blast which struck the ground close enough to the other guard to at least pelt him with a bit of exploding cobblestone, some of which flew directly into his face and eyes. The one that had grabbed Luna had not yet risen, and in my quick glance I thought I could see blood trickling from his skull, now without his helmet which had rolled off when he had fallen.
I believe a unicorn of science would classify my instinctive actions as a magic surge, a quick, short-lasting increase in magical potential caused by a large amount of fear, fury, willpower, and a lack of organized and distracting thoughts. Regardless of what the specific classification was, it was a degree of magic I had never in my life thought myself capable of performing; I had trouble levitating objects for too long, firing even a semi-competent beam of magic was something I couldn’t pull off even with intense focus and zero distractions.
"You little slum rat!" I heard a furious voice scream after us as well as chasing hoofbeats, but whether as a result of my unexpected attack, or simply because Luna and I were faster than the guards, we made it through the gate ahead of them. We tore out of Cyclosa, and into the Grey Wastelands, not stopping as we continued running into the great unknown.
The sight of uninterrupted space was an almost unique experience, one I surely would have reveled in a little longer if I hadn’t been sprinting as fast as I could manage with my heart and mind both working furiously just to keep me from passing out. All around us, the Grey Wasteland was sprawled out like a rolling ocean, the same colourless dirt stretching for as far as we could see. The dirt plain was not necessarily formless, on occasion it rose or fell in hills or holes, and even the occasional dead tree existed to break up the monotony, although at the time I did not know for certain what the straggly bits of twisted wood actually were. A thick smog hung over the ground in every direction, and any distance more than a few hundred feet away was practically swallowed up by the thick yellowish mist. I’d once spoken with a pilot in the scrapyards who had called it ‘City Piss’ and informed me that it was a tell-tale sign one was approaching a settlement as they sailed through the skies. Apparently, it died out the further one got from a city, where there was less filth to sully the skies.
There were many treadmarks in the dirt where carriages had been pulled between Cyclosa and whatever town was closest to it, even though I had greatly come to understand that airships were the preferred method of transport in Erisia. I imagine a few centuries ago, carriages would have been more widely used, largely due to the fact that pollution was non-existent, but now with the sky always grey and the air always filthy, pollution had ironically become an ignored issue. It was so abundant that it wasn’t noticed. Airships were faster, could carry more passengers and cargo, and were less at risk of getting stuck in marshlands.
Of course, one issue that neither could skirt around were the dust-storms. They were the reason for the massive stone walls around Cyclosa and other settlements. When a strong wind picked up, and with very little to stand in it’s way, the smallest bit of dust could snowball into a wave of destruction with humbling simplicity. Whether a pony was in the air or on the earth, when a strong dust storm picked up there was no difference between the two. They were both as good as dead.
And that was to say nothing of crossing the Grey Wastelands on hoof.
Behind us, a splitting screech tore through the gloomy, early morning air, replacing our frantic hoofbeats as the only sound we could hear. It was Cyclosa’s siren, one which had sounded only twice before in my life, both times being when somepony had acted against the guards in a violent way and was attempting to escape. I didn’t know how their stories had ended, and the only way I had actually found out the reason for the awful sound at all was by eavesdropping on the guards during one of their card-games while I worked. I imagine if I asked they would have told me—the trust I had built with them was in no short supply—but I never mustered enough courage to approach them with the question.
Luna, on the other hoof, responded to the sound with a yelping scream. She surely would have heard it before, but it’s source I had never told her.
Still, we had been running for almost five minutes before the guard’s word must have reached the ears of any others, and when I turned around to look in the direction of the noise I saw that Cyclosa was already mostly lost to the smog. I’d been greatly looking forward to triumphantly watching it sink into nothingness as I left it behind forever, but it seemed like I’d missed that opportunity, with the reality of our sprinting escape clearly contradicting my mind’s image of a slow, gradual walk to freedom.
In moments, pegasi guards would be taking to the skies in search of us. The magic surge that had helped me before was no more than a memory by that point, and we would be defenseless if they saw us. Instead, I slid to a halt, and Luna carried on running for several more meters before realizing she was alone and stopped as well.
The Grey Wastelands, while not featureless, might as well have been. There was nothing nearby to provide any sort of cover, and certainly no caves to hide in or thick forest canopies to veil us. We were a random patch of white and blue in a plain of grey, surely visible to any pegasus flying close by.
“What do we do?” Luna shrilled. “Celestia! What do we—”
“Calm down, Luna!” I said. “Look for something to hide under.”
“There’s nothing!” she moaned. “They’re going to see us, Celly, they’re going to fly over and—”
“Luna! Stop!” I screamed.
My eyes swept the Grey Wasteland, searching for anything that could help us. As unhelpfully panicked as Luna had been, it didn’t make her wrong. There really was nothing around us. Nothing but the high-pitched wail of the distant Cyclosa siren announcing to us that our actions were not going to be ignored. The closest thing to us was a slender looking tree, and so I trotted over to it.
Next to the tree was what looked like the ruins of an old carriage. I spotted a wheel, and some tattered cloth, which had been stained grey as a testament to the dust-storms it had survived. The actual body of the carriage had survived too, but only somewhat, and was now rend into two separate pieces. The whole thing was as grey as the rest of the surrounding area, and with nothing better in direct sight, I stumbled inside and motioned for Luna to follow. Perhaps with the thick smog around us, it might actually work. It was better than huddling out in the middle of the beaten path and praying for the best.
We huddled in the beaten carriage for what seemed like an eternity, but surely could not have been more than thirty minutes. There were wide cracks all across the broken surface that we could see out of, and I looked in the direction of the wailing siren in search of movement in the clouds. They would surely roll out perhaps a few pegasi guards, but I had my doubts—or perhaps they were more akin to frantically hopeful thoughts—that anything further would be done to find us. We’d injured one incompetent guard and then fled into the Grey Wasteland with practically nothing but a saddlebag. It was hardly anything to send airships over the Wasteland to remedy, and hopefully it would not escalate any further.
“He saw your wings, Celly!” Luna whispered, after remaining silent for so long.
“Oh right,” I thought to myself. Any thought of this simply blowing over quickly vanished. “Never mind.”
“That means they know,” I said hopelessly. “We’re hardly out of Cyclosa, and they already know. Every guard in Erisia is going to be looking for us now.”
Or, if we were fortunate, the word of the two guards would be seen as foolish, delusional, and impossible. It was traitorous blasphemy to speak against the decisions and statements Discord made, and it was him who had claimed that alicorns were an extinct species. If I was lucky, Discord’s own reign of terror would help us remain discrete for a little while longer.
“It’s my fault,” Luna said with a sniffle. She wiped her watering eyes with her jacket and looked away from me.
“Luna, no it isn’t. I’m sorry I shouted at you earlier.”
“It is my fault.”
“Who cares?” I nearly exploded. “Luna, I don’t even care if it’s your fault or not. It’s over with, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I’m not blaming you for anything, but I need you right now, so please stop blaming yourself. Look at me.”
Shakily, she turned her tear-filled eyes to meet mine. I gave her a weak smile and rested my wing on her back again. Unlike before, she did not shirk away from it, instead seeming to take comfort in it’s feathered softness.
“We’re going North no matter what. And we’re going to be fine.”
“Thank you, Celestia. I really am sorry I went to get the map without you.”
“There would’ve been a guard at the gates anyways. There was no way we could have gotten around that.”
“...Celestia?”
“Yes, Luna?”
“Do you think I’m going to grow a horn like you grew wings?”
“Do you want a horn?” I asked, playfully giving her forehead a tap.
“After seeing you totally kick that guard’s butt? Yes!”
I chuckled lightly and reached a hoof up to touch my own horn, realizing for the first time how fortunate I was to have pulled that off.
“Well then yes, Luna. You’re gonna have a horn and it’s going to be even more powerful than mine,” she grinned widely, her previous sorrow fading away. “But my wings are going to be stronger than yours, I’ll bet.”
“You wish!” she laughed, pushing my wing off her shoulder. “We’ll probably be the coolest, strongest ponies in Erisia!”
She was smiling ear to ear, and I did not have the heart to tell her that if everything went without a hitch, not a single pony in Erisia would ever pay us any attention again before long. I’d been toying with the notion of cutting off my own horn and starting a new life in another city, but the thought of putting Luna through the same thing, especially with a horn she had just gained, sickened me. And if what had happened in Cyclosa was any indication, there was only so long I could keep my wings hidden. The only option that remained was to flee from Erisia. At least by doing so, we could live a somewhat safe life as what we were, instead of what we were forced to be.
The thought of living with Luna alone in some shaded forest on the outskirts of the Northern Tundra didn’t seem too bad to me anyways. Our whole lives, we had known nothing but the crowded conditions of the slums, and the unpleasant smell of pollution at every hour of the day. What a beautiful contrast a life up North would allow us.
Of course, there was also the more rational (or perhaps more cynical) part of me which always served to point out that my dream was a wishful fantasy, a delusional utopia lifted from one of Luna’s story-books that couldn’t exist in the squalor of Erisia, nor in any of the neighboring lands beyond.
After what I would estimate as at least an hour—it was difficult to tell for certain—the screeching sirens suddenly ceased, and the Grey Wastelands once again tumbled into it’s typical sprawling, dead reverie, with only the sound of the wind howling over the dirt. We waited several minutes after we’d heard them stop, and then finally crept from the carriage and back onto the dirt. Amazingly, it would seem like they had given up, with much more ease than what my fear had dreadfully predicted of them.
Or so I had thought, anyways.
Many Erisian guards faced Discord’s judgement because of what occurred on that day, simply for being in the city at the same time as us. I would find that out much later on, and even as I recall them now I am quite unsure whether or not I feel guilt in somewhat being responsible for their deaths. I don’t truly know why I should, considering it was my intention to simply leave without causing a scene, but now that their memories exist practically in Luna and my minds alone now, I carry a much different perspective on them than I did as a young mare. I pity them...not for what they were, but what became of them. They abandoned their own families and the very memories of their past lives in order to serve Discord, and for that I have no empathy for, but I don’t believe they deserved to die for their failure in finding the two of us through the fog.
It was the cruel reality in Erisia that, provided they were foolish enough to mess up, the guards were just as vulnerable to the reign of Discord as the ponies they thought they were above.
iv
For a long while, Luna and my world became nothing but dust. We made our way back to where we had seen the wagon tracks, and continued following them onwards to whatever city they led to.
Even though we walked for hours, we did not speak. No longer in mortal peril, we both had plenty of time to simply think about where we were, what we were doing there, and the whole mad affair of it all. Several times, I heard Luna’s breathing cease, resume at a more rapid pace for a moment, and then gradually ease back to normal, as if she had just realized or seen something which surprised her. I certainly shared in her sentiments; without a proper time for us to fully come to terms with what we were doing, the true blunt of it was instead being thrust upon us at random intervals when our minds chose to wander upon some memory of our pasts which we quickly realized we would never be reliving again.
Every once in a while, I would hear Luna add a sniffle to her suddenly sporadic breathing. I knew she would be embarrassed if I asked her what she was crying about, and I didn’t have to ask to know the answer anyways.
While Luna did her best to hide her brief moments of emotion, I found myself disturbed by how empty I felt by comparison. I knew I should have felt something...fear, sorrow, guilt, but as I walked on, listening to the howling of the wind and the sound of the bits I’d stolen rattling in my saddlepack, I felt nothing at all. The only emotion in my head at the time was perhaps a weak sense of curiosity at what lay ahead, although my curiosity was unmistakably driven by fear instead of optimism. I had promised Luna that everything was going to be fine, but it had been a promise I had made with perverse doubt in my heart. A promise whose foundation lay on emotion instead of rationality, which truly was risky and unwise despite how beautiful it sounded.
Because if it came to be Discord’s decision, to call that promise pathetic would be too great of a compliment for the worthless absurdity of the words.
It was more than three hours after we’d left the carriage that we next saw something else to break up the monotonous grey earth and sky. Rising strangely alone with nothing but dirt around it was a tall formation of several slab-like rocks, looking foreign and alien but showing the weathered signs of being there for centuries. They were large in form and thickness, layered on top of each other so as to form multiple cave-like entrances. A few more of the rocks lay around the formation in similar clusters, but none as large as the one Luna and I were currently trotting towards to inspect.
“A cave!” Luna chattered excitedly. “Cool!”
“Yeah,” I said. “I wonder what these are. They look old.”
“They look like rocks,” Luna stated bluntly. I sighed and brought a hoof to my face, before turning my back to them and beginning to trot back to the carriage tracks leading us forwards.
“Aw, Tia…” Luna’s reluctant voice came from a distance, and when I turned I saw that she had not followed me, “My hooves are sore! Can’t we take a break here?”
“No,” I shook my head. If we did not hurry, the word of another alicorn in Erisia might make it to the next city before we did, and entering it without a hassle would be considerably difficult. “Come on, we need to keep moving.”
Luna let out a protesting moan, but trotted to catch up to me without any words of protest. Our walk swiftly resumed it’s quiet and sombre tradition, with nary a sound save for the wind.
When we had first entered the Grey Wastelands, I had found the eerie ambience of the wind to be unnatural and unnerving, a feeling only intensified by the otherwise mute world around us. It’s howling tone rarely took on any variation, instead drawling on with no deviation of pitch or volume. But after awhile, I began to find solace in it’s sound, for without it the only sound would be our hooves in the dirt and the coins in my saddlebag. There was something strangely humbling about the sound which I could not control like I can control the sun or moon in this distant, present day.
“Celestia, can I ask you a question?” Luna said hesitantly from behind.
“Of course you can. What’s up?”
“You’re...not going to be going away anymore, right?”
I stopped my steady pace to look at her, an eyebrow arched in slight confusion.
“Going away where?”
“Well, you always leave so early in the morning every day. And then when I wake up it’s already morning and you’re gone again. When we get to where we’re going, you’re not going to have to do that anymore, right?”
It took me a moment to realize Luna was talking about our life back in Cyclosa. Every day when I left for the scrapyard, Luna was just waking up. Sometimes, she would stay up late waiting for me to come home, but the sad truth was that we saw each other in the brief moments when I was either coming or going, and the span between I was always working or sleeping. There were no days of the week in Erisia, either, so any breaks we were given were extremely rare, spontaneous, and often unexplained. And for a worker as respected as I had been, and whose competence could usually be counted on, such luxuries were often reserved for the ones whose presence was not as vital.
In a cruel, humorously ironic way, it seems like as a princess so much later in my life, not much has changed in this aspect.
“No, Luna. I won’t be.”
“That's good," she said, with very little emotion.
“Do you still have that map with you?” I asked, in an attempt to break the ensuing awkward silence.
“Yeah. Do you wanna see it?”
“Sure. Might as well get an idea where we’re heading, right?”
Luna nodded, and reached a hoof into her saddlebag. She withdrew the map and I took it in my magic, unfurling the thick parchment in front of us so that we could both look. I noted that it was made with real parchment, not paper, meaning that some animal had died for this map. I wasn’t about to tell this to Luna, who undoubtedly would not have liked to hear that the map she had risked both of our lives for had such a sick and barbaric point of origin. Even in those days the killing of other animals beyond small rodents was seen as largely despicable amongst the public, or at least the public that I had grown around.
Cyclosa was a small dot at the very bottom of the map, with no immense stone walls depicted to represent the dystopian hell it actually was. The artist had even had the nerve to depict a beautiful river flowing outside the town, but if it had ever existed at all it had dried up decades ago. All around the town was empty space, in which the cartographer—perhaps out of cruel humour or perhaps out of paranoid delusion—had drawn barely visible pony skulls and wagon wheels lost in the sand.
The next town to the North of Cyclosa was one called ‘Pillory,’ which seemed larger than Cyclosa. Even this information I carried with skepticism; if this town truly did exist, the map was ancient and archaic, and so too I presumed the towns to be. Whether they still existed truly did remain to be seen.
“Pillory,” Luna said aloud, also spotting the point. “Cool name. Is that where we’re going?”
“Yeah. It looks big. Maybe they have a shipyard.”
“Like, airships?!” Luna gasped excitedly.
“Yeah.”
“And we’ll be riding in one?!” Joy and enthusiasm gradually pulled Luna’s voice higher and higher in pitch to a near-squeal of delight.
“It would be the fastest way out of Erisia,” I shrugged. The idea was still fresh in my mind, and I was already regretting bringing it up when I was still in a state of relative uncertainty. “We’d just need to find a ship willing to take passengers.”
Luna was about to respond, when a sudden burst of wind blew, grabbing the still unfurled map like a kite and sending it flying into the air. I screamed out in surprise and pointed, while Luna began dashing after it with her wings buzzing wildly. I had never before seen her fly, and it wasn’t a sight I was greeted to that day, either. As motivated as she was, her wings had been next to worthless her whole life and as a result the strong muscles they possessed were quite unfamiliar to the entire flight process.
As surprisingly as the wind had billowed, it fell to nothingness just as quickly, and the map thankfully fell back to the ground. Luna leaped on it, grabbing it and rolling several times in the dirt, somehow managing to maintain her grip on it throughout the entirety of the melodramatic procedure. I trotted after with a small grin, one which did not take long to vanish when my eyes ventured past Luna at what lay beyond on the horizon.
The strange, unpredictable pattern of the wind suddenly became a lot less strange. I once again raised a hoof to point, and Luna’s exalted smile died as quickly as mine when she saw my widened eyes and raised hoof.
The entire horizon of grey sky directly ahead of us had changed to a lighter shade, no longer stationary sky and instead towering clouds growing in height by the second. They were clearly moving at a rate much swifter than the smog around Cyclosa or the clouds far above. With the changing wind acting as the tragic catalyst, this colossal wall of billowing dirt was an immense dust-storm, one that the wind was pushing straight into our path.