//------------------------------//
// For the Greater Glory of (the many) God(s) Or; The Use and Abuse of Linguistic Concepts 
// Story: The Ninety-nine Nectars of Princess Luna; Or How Twilight Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Her Wings 
// by NoeCarrier 
//------------------------------//


“For the Greater Glory of (the many) God(s) Or; The Use and Abuse of Linguistic Concepts”


“So, Starswirl the Bearded wasn’t queer. He just liked wearing a dress. Celestia is the greatest Princess in history, right up there with her Sisters. The feather-flu is the world’s worst plague. Equestria only kills enemies of the state. The gryphons never shelled Port Dauphine. Those cannonballs were there before any of that happened. Luna is completely straight. Twilight and her are just friends. She really deserved those wings, entirely on her own merit. The zebras aren’t a threat, and neither are the gryphons. We’re allies now. Those wars were just misunderstandings. There was never another culture here before the rise of the current inhabitants. Those strange rocks mean nothing. 

There has never been a greater magical knowledge than exists now. The Palace is just well constructed. Gryphons and ponies never crossbred. Gadarn was just a normal, mortal being, and the crown passed down is just mundane steel. Faster than light travel is completely impossible. No pony has ever travelled beyond the atmosphere. Hot air balloons don’t count. The hydras aren’t intelligent. Those huge brains are just because they have six eyes. And Fleetfoot started the feather-flu epidemic!” - a Canterlotian stallion, name not given, AN 1003.


By the time the tremor reached Truth and Emboss, it had petered out to nearly nothing, its terrible force finally spent. On the western horizon, clear for many miles and marred only by the grey wasteland of the gryphic industrial heart, there appeared a vision, a slate mirage, shimmering and roiling, becoming taller by the moment. It did not seem to have an end, and merely fell away from sight toward the north and south. Emboss squinted, turning his head this way and that. The others were doing the same, speechless. Even Hywell, still beside the body of his fallen friend, could look at nothing else.

“Ideas, anyone?” Astrapios finally said, half a minute later. “I'm really looking at you two here.”

“Nothing we know of the Thiasus explains it,” Emboss said, feeling as if he'd just swallowed a bucket of sand.

“It is coming closer,” iYut said, no trace of fear in his voice. “We must seek shelter.”

“Shelter?” Astrapios said, flapping his wings. “We're in the middle of nowhere, you stripy idiot!”

“There are mines, are there not?” iYut said, the corner of his mouth turning up.

“Yes, copper and zinc, but they were mined out a century ago, everyone moved to the mountains,” Astrapios said, dancing back and forth between staring at the zebra and the unknown terror approaching.

“It's a tidal wave,” Truth said, suddenly. “Oh, sweet skies!”

“Tidal wave? As in, tsunami?” Astrapios said, peering down his beak at her. “That's completely impossible, we're five hundred miles from the sea, it'd need to be--”

He did not finish speaking before the world seemed to contort around them, like fabric being tautened. Even the non-magical persons in the party felt it; the unicorns winced and gasped. Heat washed over them, and ultraviolet flashes lit up the landscape. Emboss turned toward Hywell. He was standing tall and proud, head up, examining them. The Crown glowed, threw off shimmers as its surface temperature aggravated the air.

“It is a tidal wave,” he said, voice steadfast, calm and assured as a predator is before pouncing on prey it knows it will catch. “One great enough to drown the world and end all life here. I am called to defend it.”

Hywell looked skywards, as if expecting to break into a magical flight but, for a moment, nothing happened. Then, there was a dazzling flair of pure white light, and another flex of reality. Emboss screwed shut his eyes and looked away and, when the glare had cleared, the Crown was gone, but Hywell remained. He had an utterly baffled expression on his face. Then he collapsed. Above, faint traces of something bright and red scored lines against the blue, arcing westwards.

“Gadarn's left tit,” Astrapios spat, glancing over at the twins Ensire and Erisne. “Right, grab him.”

“The Crown was told, the Crown acts,” iYut said. “Kutufa Kutupwa.”

“I'll cast your dice in a minute,” Astrapios said, glowering. “What do we do now?”

“We go underground, and we take refuge with my people,” iYut said, scanning the horizon.

“Through the mines,” Astrapios said, nodding quickly. “Of course. How do we pick the right one? How do you know it'll connect up?”

“It is a gamble,” iYut said, gesturing toward the few dozen small pit heads that could be seen on the waste around them. “Choose wisely.”

“We've little choice,” Emboss said, nuzzling Truth's wither before fixing his gaze on the identical tower-shapes of the pit heads.

One was topped with a tattered flag, just visible, flopping forlornly in the breeze. It bore a five-pointed star.

“There,” he said.

With the fleetness that only those escaping cataclysm can muster, Emboss and Truth lead the way across the ruination left behind by the expansive gryphon industrial machine. The canal itself was cut along the edge of a rise that ran west to east, and they fell down its steep slopes to a floor of blackened tree stumps and long, rutted paths through the mud where unnumbered ranks of workers must have trod. Stinking, filthy water was disturbed with every hurried step. Clouds of tiny blackflies, so small as to appear to be unusually intelligent dust, burst from the oil-filmed surfaces and buzzed around, angrily protesting the rude interruption.

It took them ten precious minutes to cover the deceptively small distance between the canal and the mine. There was evidence all around that, at one point or another, there had been a causeway across the mire. Shaped stones and unidentifiable mounds of rotten wood lay in a linear track, though it had long since fallen down and was no help in their passage. Emboss felt the mud suck at his hooves with ever more force, eroding his stamina. His heart pounded, and aching lungs gasped for air. Filth covered every part of him besides his back, and splashes threatened there, too. His coat was stained beyond redemption as they reached the apron of the mine.

The central mine buildings rose up out of the mire on a rock platform. Brick and wood made up three fallen towers, only the very tip of the largest still standing even vaguely straight. The flag mounted there fluttered gently, the sole moving thing. Odd, industrial shapes lurked beyond gaps in the cladding. Silent and dead conveyors ran between the ruins as a snaking, angular tangle. All Emboss could smell was the decay, and a panoply of weird chemical scents that he didn't recognize. Piles of coal, ruined by exposure to a hundred winters, were little more than carbon smudges. Their vast scuttles had ruptured and exploded. It seemed a logical point of ingress.

The gryphon mine was dark inside, and bearing of the smells of rats and mice, if not any more signs of intelligent life. Faint echoes were all around, of those who had once worked and lived within the narrow passageways and crawlspaces they now navigated. Astrapios had taken to iYut's back, riding him above the withers, and appeared to be quite at ease with this. In quieter times, Emboss might have remarked at such a sight, but he had broken through the walls at the edges of his endurance several times. Little would unnerve him, save perhaps for the sight of Celestia again.

There was no need for discussion. Emboss headed down, through whatever route seemed logical, and the rest followed. They were all running on instinct. It wasn't long before they found the central shaft of the mine, around which were the ruins of winches and cars. Much of the steel was rusted to oblivion. The mouth of the shaft loomed, offering the possibility of safety and of danger in equal measure. Emboss overrode the eohippine urge to flee from it, drove that squealing, reactionary part of him to the farthest reaches of his mind and crushed it there. Anger rose up in him, at the world, though largely at Celestia. How dare she do this! How dare she make me run to the edges of the world! How dare she!

He was interrupted by the sounds of his wife's telekinesis. She grunted in time with the loudest pulse. Serpentine coils of wound material shed their loads of dust and shone dully in the hornlight. Strands of metal had been woven into larger bundles, over and over again, until a cable of extraordinary strength had been produced. Emboss just stared at it, still furious.

“Brass,” said Astrapios, disaffectedly glancing at the barely-identifiable metal fixings of the rest of the mine. “How lucky for us.”

“Some of us,” Truth said. “You can fly, at least.”

“Or just 'fall slowly',” he grumbled.

Emboss grabbed one end of the cable, to which a wickedly curved hook was attached, then pitched it across the machine space toward where once had stood a brace of large steam boilers and winding engines. He drove the hook around in the rubble with his telekinesis, feeding energy into it via the cable. The hook glowed and glimmered in the dark, threw off sparks and melted into the sturdy foundations of the boiler mounts. Smoke and steam rose up, as if from the risen ghost of the dead engines, and then he let it cool.

“Gryphons, go on ahead,” Truth said, sparing a moment to stare at her husband in amazement. “We'll follow you down.”

The zebra nodded his assent, then bent round and pulled a trio of fat tubes from his panniers. A graceful toss of his head sent them arcing into the shaft. Each was smoldering and, as they fell out of view, they burst into fountains of ruddy red light, plummeting downwards. Erisne nodded approvingly at her sister, who bore the alce King with apparently little effort. Astrapios cleared his throat ever so slightly and, at this signal, Erisne hopped up and he transferred from his former mount.

“Be careful,” he said, then they leapt into the air and fell into the black.

“I will destroy the shaft after we are through,” iYut said, smiling hungrily. “Water seeks easy paths, but the weight will be vast. It will not buy us much time.”

Truth tossed the coils of the cable down. They scratched and skittered like impatient worms, striking the walls of the shaft.

“Keep a firm grip on it,” Emboss said, curling his magic around the steel.

“Not all of us have TK, darling,” Truth said, glancing at iYut.

The zebra laughed. He was already digging things out of his panniers. Shoes came out that looked like caltrops, one pair deftly slipped onto his front hooves and tied with straps whilst the others clipped onto the coronet band of his rears. Vicious little spring-loaded teeth bit into the hoof wall. Sparing only a moment to check all was secure, he dropped rump-first down the shaft. The fanged shoes found easy purchase in the crumbling blocks of limestone ward

“They live underground,” Emboss said. “Of course they've ways and means.”

The little eohippus was not as dead as the last moment's rage had assured. It snuck back in to seed apprehensive terror as Emboss copied iYut's drop. Thaumokinetic feedback stung and burned, and the tug of gravity as he hung suspended over the void below was only fuel to the fear. He loosened the magic grip, dropped an inch down the wire. His back hooves slammed painfully into the rock. His breath hitched in his throat, heart hammering. Above, he saw the heartening sight of his wife's hindquarters gamely preparing to follow suit.

It was a long way down. Some unknown fraction of whatever tiny amount of time they had remaining passed before they met iYut, who was on the other side of the shaft, almost lazily jammed into an odd stress position facing the wall. He had excavated a hoof-sized cavity in the friable stone using part of a collection of steel picks and rods, each tied with string to hooks inside his panniers, and was carefully inserting brown-paper wrapped packages like pats of butter into it. If it was black powder, Emboss would have said it was a lot, but he guessed whatever lethal substance was in play, it would be hugely more powerful than that. The most surprising thing was that he was placing the explosives in total darkness. His flares were mere glimmers somewhere down below, and the meager hornlight the unicorns generated fell rapidly short.

Distant roaring had begun to filter into the underground spaces by the time they reached the pool of light thrown up by the flares. It was less a sound, and more some unholy shaking of the universe itself. Emboss felt it in his teeth, in the pit of his stomach. He was trembling himself, from the magical exertion and the sustained terror. Relief overwhelmed him as he touched the ground with his own four hooves again. Truth joined him seconds later, descending from the square in the ceiling. The void was quite small, and the continuing ruin of the mine was evident all around. Remains of machines, better preserved here, and the single crashed pile of the old lift that would have once carted ore from the depths, crouched nearby.

Astrapios and his gryphons guarded the King slightly back from the safety of the light, looking decidedly less comfortable than ever they had been on the surface. Emboss couldn't recall which of the three types of gryphon represented had good night vision, though by their demeanor he thought it might be none of them.

The zebra appeared thirty seconds afterwards, falling like a bizarre predatory spider and landing with no apparent harm. He dipped and bounced to take the shock, then his head was up. Bright eyes glanced around, ears flicking and searching, scanning. Sparks fluttered down behind him. Truth audibly gasped as all except the gryphons simultaneously realized what this meant.

“Quickly,” he said, licking his lips. “I have lit the fuses. Follow me, and keep up. Your lives depend on it.”

“Fuses?” Astrapios said, eyes widening. “What have you done?”

iYut did not stop to answer the question. Panniers noticeably depleted, he darted forward trailing smoke. Another of the flares igniting whilst held in his mouth, he lead the way down a previously unseen passageway in the rock, along which ran narrow railway tracks. Truth and Emboss each grabbed one of those tossed earlier, keeping them well away from their heads in magic grips. Scrabbling and awkward slipping noises came from behind them as Astrapios and his crew struggled with the comatose form of the King.

Emboss felt his gallop give way to a canter. His lungs and throat burned. The walls of the tunnel pressed in. All he saw of iYut now was the odd metal-fanged back hoof stab the rock and push the zebra forward ever faster. The tracks had disappeared, and the passageways they fled down, turning this way and that, took on a more rough and unfinished appearance. The rumbling was a constant, rising toward an unspeakable crescendo. This was the stampede, an instinct as old as mud and photosynthesis. His mind vanished beneath an adrenaline fog of fear and the feeling of other fleeing equids fore and aft.

At the moment when Emboss' body caved to oxygen starvation and lactic acid build up, muscles spasmodically shuddering and flexing uselessly, the world became noise and distant light. Someone squealed. There was the sensation of something coming up behind him, impossibly fast, then a sledgehammer-blow struck his head and thought ceased.


*


“Whom?” Twilight dared, breath forming a silvery cloud.

“The device is restored,” Luna said, then grinned sardonically. “She lives.”

Twilight was too nervous to make the disgusted noise the comment demand. Instead, she touched noses with Whom. It was warm, and smelled of antiseptic and the unusual peppery perfume she preferred. Magenta eyes were suddenly examining her; the muzzle pulled away and the tray creaked ominously as Whom's head came up.

“It's cold in here,” she said, croakily.

“Oh, thank the skies,” Twilight gasped, curling her neck around Whom's and nuzzling her.

“Why are we in a morgue?” Whom said, then seemed to spot Luna. “Oh, Hi!” Her body twitched and tensed as she struggled away from Twilight and fell shakily from the tray, legs barely arranging themselves beneath her in time to support her weight. “It's nice to meet you, I'm Whom!”

There was a silence awkward enough to power interstellar flight. Twilight swore she felt the spacetime contort and writhe in sympathy. Even the usually oblivious Whom seemed to notice that something was wrong. She glanced between the two Princesses in confusion.

Eventually, Twilight said: “Whom, this is Princess Luna.”

“Don't be silly, Twilight,” Whom said, frowning. “I'd recognize her.”

“ The Selenite Principality is a far richer place than mundane reality, Twilight,” said Luna. “I was many shapes and sizes. I primarily appeared as an aspect of the Nightmare to this one, though.”

Whom shuddered, like she had just swallowed half a lemon's worth of juice.

“Don't say her name,” she whinnied.

“Whom, I told you that Luna was here, didn't I?” Twilight said. “You knew that she had returned from exile. We're in Equestria now. This is Ponyville.”

Whom gulped, and was quiet. She stared at Luna and began to tremble.

“An aspect of the Nightmare, glorious and terrible as a thousand dying stars,” Luna said, wistfully. “Barded in blood, caparisoned in dread; a personality made in the image of a God, to terrify those who had never known fear.” She sighed, turned away. “To give them a definition of the very word, until my name was a synonym for all the black things of the world.”

“Not a good pony,” Whom said, in a small voice. “No.”

“We're leaving,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “Come on, Whom.”

Whom slipped toward the exit with her, head low, making no fuss and offering no refusal.

“Abusus non tollit usum,” Luna muttered, as they left. “Ad maiorem Deorum gloriam.”

The black-and-blue figure of the Princess dissipated into smoke and vanished between the cracks in reality.


*


Rainbow Dash did not recall awakening from a deeper slumber, but instead became gradually aware that reality was a thing she was embedded in. Her limbs were dead weights, and moving too great an effort to more than contemplate. Shapes and images played before her eyes, and an intense barbiturate inertia of the soul nourished a blithe disinterest in the resolving, dying figures who populated the emergency ward.

“In here,” a mare said, younger and highly strung. “See her marks?”

“Bugger me sideways, you really weren’t kidding, Lux,” said a stallion, older, the last vestiges of humour disappearing from his voice. “That’s a real, live Element alright.” He paused a beat. “Why on Equestria did you dope her, again?”

“Because half a ton of enchanted cloud and very much not enchanted masonry fell on her arse,” Lux said, shuffling into view and adjusting something affixed to a wooden stand beside the stretcher Dash was lying on. “I had exactly no better options. In case you hadn’t noticed, the people hospital is now at the bottom of that pit. I had to raid a vets.”

“She’ll be down for hours,” the stallion said, sighing. “This is a big problem, a really big one.”

“Why, Elegy?” Lux said. “Tell me what’s going on, please. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“The Mayor’s office, my office, has to cede authority to the Elements during a major civil catastrophe, if on scene,” Elegy said, the clopping of his hooves on the stone betraying his nervousness. “I’ve got charts and everything. Twilight’s first, then this one.”

“Rut the skies,” Lux cursed. “Even if she wasn’t dosed up to the eyeballs on bear sedatives, she’d be begging for them. I don’t need to be a corpic scryer to tell you that. Surely the law makes provisions--”

“It bloody doesn’t!” Elegy snapped. “It is extremely rutting specific!”

“I’m up,” Rainbow Dash gurgled, managing to drag herself forward a massive few inches. “Grab the sausage, let’s play sheep.”

“Not an ounce of bodyfat on her,” Lux said. “She’ll be dealing with the thiopental for the next twenty four hours, at least.” She grunted. “I thought I was doing her a mercy. How was I supposed to know?” 

“You weren’t, Lux,” Elegy said, the fire gone. “We’ll get through this. We’ll have to. I think we can declare this one off-scene, anyway.”

“I’m pretty sure this lot work in packs, usually,” Lux said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Element by herself.”

“You mean, the rest of them might turn up?”

“It’s a possibility.”


*



“I’ve never been in a hot air balloon before! Oh, where are we going?” Whom said, squealing excitedly. “Do you really own this one?”

“Well, technically, my parents own it, and they rented it to the Crown on a hundred-year contract for a nominal sum, in exchange for the relief of a non-con lien on the family pile some ancestor was hit with after a game of cards played against Celestia,” Twilight said, horn lighting up as she empowered the spells that unfolded the balloon’s canopy and prepared it for flight. “The Crown initially sublet the balloon to the guild that owned the Library I live in, but then I became a one-third owner of the Crown’s various properties and fruits of contractual obligations, plus the guild sold out to us and we distributed its assets amongst the Crown Estates.”

“I think I understood about four of those words,” Whom said, distractedly dancing around the basket and watching in awe as telekinetically-triggered cantrips and enchantments in the wicker, wire and canvas unfurled and did their work. “Equestria is weird.”

“It’s a tax thing,” Twilight said, inspecting the inside of the basket. “Nobody really owns anything anymore. As for where we're going, I don't entirely know yet. Maybe West Wingshade. Fluttershy has gone on ahead to scout. We have to find the Elements. ”

“I'd like to own stuff, I think,” Whom said, sniffing the wicker curiously. “So I can look after it.”

Twilight said nothing, busying herself with the preparations. Stored in the small grassy paddock behind her Library, sarcastically named the Aerodrome field, the balloon had weathered Ponyville's numerous tribulations with surprising ease. The waste energy from the enchantments lit the night up and kept ruining her adaptation to the dark. The magic lifted the fat cube of neatly compressed canvas upwards then began unfolding it vertically.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Twilight said, as the envelope reached half of its total size. “We've got the time, now.”

“I don't want you to think that Nightmare Moon was mean to me,” Whom said, eyes still tracking the automation. “She wasn't. She only ever treated me and my sisters with respect.” Whom sighed, looked away. “The same respect you show your balloon, and no more than that.”

“I see,” Twilight said, ears losing their perk and falling out to the sides.  “So when I started treating you like a thing...”

“Yeah.”

The envelope tensed up and began softly inflating itself, taking shape with cold air first, a trick done with magic and mostly for show.

“I'm so sorry, Whom,” Twilight said, gently. “I've been horrible.”

“It's okay.”

“It's still not okay, Whom, none of this is okay, the more we find out the less okay it all becomes,” Twilight said, stepping into the basket and touching off another series of enchantments, these ones designed to heat and funnel the air that would be their lifting medium. “I don't care what Luna says, you're not a device simulating a person, you're a person, end of story. You're a person, and you're my friend.”

Tears began to stain Whom's cheeks, but her face was lit by an electric and infectious smile. She clambered into the basket and hugged Twilight harder than ever.

“You're the first pony to ever say that to me,” she managed, before being overwhelmed by intense and racking sobs.

Twilight held her there, crying away centuries of pain, until the balloon had finished pre-flight heating and it was finally time to go.


*



Berry Punch exploded from her home opposite Sugarcube Corner in an ecstatic torrent of horse, toga and stale wine fumes. The earthquakes had done little to settle her mood. As she rounded onto what passed for Ponyville's main drag, she spotted once more the vision of Mytheme, framed by the houses and buildings around the main square, and juddered to a halt. It was lit from below by oily lamps, which cast yellow glimmers on the lower hull, and from above by faint moonlight, the sheen of which, on the diamond, was enough to set off spasms of deistic joy.

“It's almost time!” she bellowed, over a distant peal of thunder, from DRAMA's town-ringing clouds. “Joy beyond measure!”

“Time for what?” said the Night.

Berry Punch whinnied and sprung away from the source of the noise, dropping the last of her wine in the mud.

“Who said that?” she squealed, glancing around and seeing only the expected shadows.

An equine form the colour of three in the morning, bruised, condensed on the muddy street, with only the subtlest of plops.

“Princess Luna!” Berry Punch said, then bowed her head low in a swooping arc, a drunkard's exaggerated swing. “I knew you would be here.”

“Prithee tell Us, what is to come?” said Luna, after clearing her throat. “Energies beyond understanding, forces of vast and imponderable magnitude, are at work this, most troubling, of Our nights.”

“The Party!” Punch whispered, loudly. “You have to know! It's your Party!”

Luna inhaled deeply and studied Berry Punch closely. The skin on the back of her neck stood up, and strange sensations trickled down her spine.

“I-I, I helped,” Punch said, retreating slightly. “I want you to know that; I helped.”

“Helped?” Luna said, putting her own imponderable force into the single word. “Prithee, tell Us, how did you help?”

“I gave Twilight Sparkle the first part of the recipe, for the N-Nectars,” Punch said, gulping. “It was passed down to me by my dam, through twenty-five generations of my tail-female line...”

Punch had been about to embark on a little speech she had prepared, should anyone have asked her what her role was in the great Party to end all Parties, something to tell the grandfoals when Pinot Noir eventually had his own, but the look that had appeared on Luna's face could have stopped the stars themselves from fusing.

“Why?” Luna said, and it was with a tone that suggested a vast weight dredging through the deepest silts of the Pit itself.

“Th-the Nectars are the p-peak of my art form,” Punch said, finding the words increasingly difficult to get out. “The Party that is to come by their making, its ultimate apotheosis! The revellers will become like unto the Divine!”

Luna was grinding her teeth.

“What? Please, your Majesty, why--”

There was a judder through the air itself. Telekinetic force took hold of her muzzle, jerking it upwards. The hissing sizzle of heat, pain and the horrid smell of something burning assaulted her senses in turn. Her lips became numb, the mobile tip paralysed and insensate.

“Pig, glutton, wanting and wanting, taking, meddling!” Luna spat, her horn lit with a cool aura. “Blind little creature, listening to ancient half-sense, nonsense!”

The pain spread out across her face, and tears of confusion and agony clouded her vision. She desperately attempted to open her mouth, but it felt as if the whole complex structure of her lips, tongue and teeth had fused into one, immobile mass.

“I had wondered, of course, how all this was started,” Luna said, taking a deep breath. “I knew that I had to shoulder a portion of the blame, for it was I who mentioned the accursed things to my Sister, but how had she known where to start? How had she gotten even a fragment of the old brew's makings?”

It was too much to bear, and Berry Punch felt the muscles in her hindquarters give up. She collapsed, but the Princess's grip was strong, and her head remained jerked skyward.

“Celestia's eradication of the information in the common texts was complete, this is certain,” Luna said. “But she would have needed to keep it safe, somewhere. She would not simply have given it to my Sister, would not have had it nearby. I suppose you, or your distant ancestors, were complicit, unwittingly or no. So, another of her accomplices. Were you ever your own mare?”

Luna seemed to be weighing something up, rolling her head from side to side.

“A geas?” she said, frowning. “No, that would be too much, too great a compulsion, too much risk of a discovery.” Luna chewed her lip. “You took her schemes willingly, found joy in their undertaking, though you knew not the name of your Mistress. Your guilt is a lesser species, but a species of guilt, none-the-less.” She nodded, once. “You were a glutton, a pig, wanting and wanting. Now you shall never be. Not a drop of water, wine or beer shall pass your lips, not an ounce of grain nor sheaf of hay.” She mantled her wings, looked away. “Nor shall you die from the lack of it, for the span of a thirty thousand moons. This is your punishment. Suffer the opposite.”

Berry Punch tried to scream, but she could not.