19. Reading Is Fundamental
Moon Dancer was up late that night, her mind in a feverish whirl. She did not want to read any more of that damnable tome, at leat not right away; she could bear no more of its horrid revelations. She tried to read other books, but the histories and biographies of the Imperials seemed trivial, and mere romantic fiction positively puerile, compared to the vast vistas of space and time contained within the Codex of Shades.
What were tales of love found and lost, lovers separated and reunited, when viewed in the light of the mighty sweep of Cosmic events such as those vouchsafed to her by Penumbra? What, indeed, could be the petty comedies and tragedies befalling fictional characters, compared to the all too real Tragedy of Prince Crimson Quartz? She shivered at the thought of how such a stallion might not be able to hate -- or love -- though she dared not pursue that line of reasoning too far.
What were factual accounts of even the most heroic mundane strivings, set against the monstrous hoax that had been perpetrated upon Ponykind? If what King Sombra had written were true, the whole history of Equestria -- indeed, of the world -- was little more than a play, a great outdoor pageant put on for the amusement of inequine alien goddesses, creatues who had seeped down from the stars to experience life in equine forms, for their own unguessable purposes.
But these goddesses were far from the only fountainheads of power. They might be the mistresses of this Universe, but there was another Universe, awaiting on the other side of a barrier more absolute than any wall, yet one breachable by a mage with the will and power, the dark unlife of the Universe of the Night Shadows. They were hostile, to be sure -- but might not their power be used, by a sophisticated sorceress with no illusions about them, to free Ponykind from the domination of the Cosmic Concepts?
So Moon Dancer read on and on and on, dipping deeply into her catalogue of horrors, and learning the names and natures of the terrifying dark shapes with those hateful yellow eyes, whom she had glimpsed in that brief vision, part of which she had purchased at the price of her first kiss, purchased from the stallion-shaped thing that called himself Penumbra. She trembled as she read, because she was learning about dreadful beings; and though she was learning about them from the relatively safe remove of a book, still she shuddered -- for she remembered those glaring, glowing orbs; brimming with both hate, and hunger.
20. Of the Night Shadows
She read of the Greatest Shadows.
She learned of Skleros, the dark crystalline god-thing from whom Sombros had received his super-equine powers, whose dominion was over the angles of space and time, along which he did not so much move as grow, and whose ways were rigid but irresistible. There was a sketch here, of a vast complex crystal tower, much like a loathsome parody of the Crystal Palace -- from the vertices of whose angles peered out numerous yellow eyes.
Moon Dancer shuddered when she realized that it was far more likely that the Crystal Palace had been modeled after Skleros than the other way round, and wondered just how long Skleros had been affecting the Pony world; and she shuddered again when she learned later in the text that some of Skleros had grown already into the veins of crystal near the Crystal City, and in the Crystal Mountains to the north. Was this monster now one with the bones of the Earth itself?
She read of Skloia -- the "sister" of Skleros" (the text here warned that Night Shadow kinship relations were often very different than that of Ponies). Almost a morphological opposite of her brother, Skloia appeared to be a mass of mist or fog, within which twinkled the many eyes that seemed a hallmark of the Great Shadows. She was caustic and toxic both chemically and in some psychic fashion, yet (the Codex warned) had the art of "sweet-seeming" (glykofainimeniki, in the common Crystal-Imperial), the better to seduce the gullible.
Skloia too had a terrible power of infiltration, more horrid because it directly affected Ponies rather than geological formations. She could enter the soul of a vulnerable Pony and implant within her one of her own Eyes, through which she could view the Pony world, slowly corrupt and possibly even take control of her unfortunate victim. Skloia sought out powerful hosts for this spirtual infection, as she greatly valued her Eyes and would not waste them on just anypony.
There was Raknon, which was like unto a webwork of glistening fibers, which at points met and at those nodes manifested its own eyes. Raknon was strange even by the standards of the Shadows, for it appeared to somehow exist at an angle to the rest of spacetime, so that it could perceive pasts and futures with ease, but not so clearly comprehend the events of a more linear time. Raknon was some sort of oracle to the other Great Shadows, and they respected and even somewhat feared it, for they did not understand it very well.
There were some notes scribbled in the margin here: "Advantage over Sisters?" ... "Similar to Paradise Ont?" ... "Iolite might know."
Stigasklavon, the "Scourge of the Slaves," was described as some sort of very large and complex machine, but of frightening intellect and force of will, who traveled as a pattern of consciousness to its destination, where it assembled a new body out of whatever materials it found there, living or otherwise. All its forms were intricately jointed skeletal devices, from the ends of whose members depended numerous whips and other implements of torment.
Its task was to rule the many slave-races of the Night Shadows, of whom the most important were the Psychomekanoi or Automekanergoi (meaning, translated in in Equestrian "ensoulled machines" or "self-directed machine workers") who had been the final products of the great civilizations who had flourished in the youth of the Shadow Universe. These were machines, but so cunningly-wrought as to be able to think and feel and self-replicate, for they had long ago had incorporated within them the panspitha, the very Spark of Life.
Stigasklavon had somehow seized control of the panspitha, and thus rendered the Psychomekanoi its slaves from now until the unguessably-distant end of time. It was a terrible slavery, for only with great difficulty could the Psychomekanoi even die, at least permanently, so all they knew was unending labor in the vast machine worlds they built, the kybertronoi, which drifted from place to place throughout the Shadowverse, building great machines and structures for their lord and master.
There were some notes scribbled in a margin there. One about this being a good system of labor control, and at that Moon Dancer could not but reflect upon the deeds of the Imperator Sombros. Plainly, he had meant to use Ponies in like wise, and slowly transform the Earth into something like a kybertron. The other about some sort of prophecy that a "Goddess From Beyond" would restore to them the panspitha and their freedom.
There were other Greatest Shadows listed; a virtual catalogue of horrors and night-demons beyond Moon Dancer's previous imaginings. There was Parafrosynia, the "Mare of Madness," with whom a mere conversation could reputedly shatter one's sanity. Somehow she had the ability to infest in and breed in one's mind, producing lesser Spawn who would eventually grow to the point of being able to spread themselves in likewise.
There was Minymon, a genderless pattern of electromagnetism, which could infest any Turin-capable machine and reduce its information to random garbage (Moon Dancer was not sure what a "Turin-capable machine" was -- this might have been some of the lost lore of past ages kept in the Crystal Library, but it sounded dreadful). It may have had something to do with machines, for the Automekanergoi greatly feared it.
And, many many more, each in its own way uniquely horrible.
There were the vast hordes of Ordinary Night Shadows, who constantly struggled to rise by climbing over and crushing one another, in the vague hopes of themselves becoming Greater and perhaps even Greatest Shadows someday, or at least useful enough to them that they would have a greater chance of survival, slightly less horrible existences, and more power to harm their rivals. These were always athirst for life such as exists in our Universe, since the energy they could gain by draining it would increase their own status. Beyond that, they wanted to find hosts with whom they might merge and seek out even greater power. Moon Dancer wondered if the Ordinary Night Shadows had been what she had seen in her vision.
Beneath them were the Lesser and Least Night Shadows. The society of the Shadows seemed to Moon Dancer to be a great pyramidal hierarchy, with each level of Night Shadows standing atop many more their numbers in each lower level, and abusing them abominably. It looked to her very much like what Warrior Marks and Peacelord Angels had described as the 'final monopoly stage of investment,' though in no other way did the Shadows seem much like investment bankers and factory-owners, save in that they had the slave-kybertronoi. Each lower level was weaker and less intelligent: the very Least Night Shadows seemed more like trained beasts than Ponies. Probably because the higher levels constantly oppress and drain them, Moon Dancer thought.
Beneath all the Night Shadows, and even their numerous slave-races, were the Shadow Vices. These were to the Night Shadows like contagious diseases, each one amplifying the tendencies toward a particular depravity or sin to irrational levels, and using this behavior to transmit themselves to new hosts. Strangely, though these were mere parasites and despised by the Night Shadows themselves, they were descrbied in terms which made it obvious that they were intelligent, and some smarter than the Ordinary Night Shadows themselves, at least in their areas of expertise. Why, imagine a malicious, scheming cold or flu! thought Moon Dancer. That's what they must be like!
Then, above all the Night Shadows was something truly terrible, something which even the Greatest Shadows trembled before. That was Pan-vaster, the All-Destroyer -- the Shadow Universe's version of the All-Father Himself.
Moon Dancer had cast aside silly superstitions, taught her by her father, when she realized that he was corrupt and false to her mother. But still the thought of an evil All-Father caused her to shudder with dread at the blasphemous implications. According to the Codex, Pan-vaster had somehow slain or driven out or imprisoned the All-Father of the Shadow Universe countless aeons ago, when the stars had still shown brightly, and this had been the climax of a successful rebellion by the Night Shadows in which they had somehow consumed or driven out or replaced the Cosmic Concepts of that continuum. The text was unclear on exactly what had happened, and Moon Dancer suspected that Crimson Quartz himself had not clearly known.
Pan-vaster had somehow slain or imprisoned or raped one of the previous rulers of that Universe, a female entity who was known as the Great Dark, for she was the final darkness to which all which returned. And Moon Dancer shivered at this, for she had read inchoate legends of a similar creature in her own Universe, one whose attention it was not wise to attract, who was known as the Mother of Monsters and the Final Darkness and many other things besides, though the Ponies of the Age of Wonders had called her by a name taken from physics, though they did not imagine her sapient.
Having done so, Pan-vaster styled himself "The Lord of the Great Dark," to emphasize his ability to defeat even the final fate of his Universe. And having done so, he had the power to freeze the ultimate heat death of his Universe at a point short of its completion, a "false entropic maximum" in which the entropic tendency was arrested by means of -- Moon Dancer could not understand the mathematics here -- somehow crystallizing space-time, but in a manner which someow tormented the souls of everything that touched it, including those of the Night Shadows themselves, with this ceaseless torment the price of continued existence. The physics were beyond her.
Even skimming over this quickly -- Moon Dancer knew that she would have to come back and take notes upon notes, and cross-reference with other arcane and scientific tomes -- she could well see that the Night Shadows were evil, evil beyond anything she had ever conceived, and she would be wise to heed Penumbra's final admonition not to trust them.
21. His Motivations?
She wondered why he had so warned her. Did he fear that the Night Shadows would break through and overwhelm the Earth and devour all Ponykind, as was manifestly their intention? Or -- and she knew that she was selfish for hoping that this might figure in the least beyond the more cosmic and universal reasons why Penumbra might not want the Night Shadows to triumph -- was it in part because Penumbra liked her, personally?
She also saw something else. Though the summoning rituals were precise, the bindings seemed less so, and the instructions for contstructing protective circles and casting other wards were downright shoddy. Summonings and bindings were not part of the normal Equestrian magical tradition, but wards were: and the wards suggested had flaws, which a foe might easily exploit if known. Those spells, as given, seemed almost to have been sabotaged.
This disappointed her. To an extent it angered her. Above all, a book should tell the truth. She felt the betrayal of those imperfections, or lies, all the more because of the personal manner in which she had paid for the acquisition of the tome. Surely her kisses were a currency both rare and precious, given that she had only ever issued the single note! She felt cheated ... devalued ... used.
The reason for such imperfections in the book, if intentional, were depressingly obvious. It would be to lead the impulsive or ignorant mage to attempt a summoning, confident in the protection of her spells, but naked in truth before the Night Shadows, unable to prevent them from -- killing her? Eating her? Possessing her?
Moon Dancer suspected the last, as traveling between dimensions simply to kill a summoner seemed pointless, and doing so just to eat one single Pony seemed wasteful of effort. Given how many of the NIght Shadows named seemed to be able to control, enhance, or merge with beings from our Universe -- if she could trust the tome on this -- possession seemed the most plausible goal. A Night Shadow possessing a Pony would, after all, be better able to move undetected amongst other Ponies, and would thus have prolonged opportunities to satisfy its strange hungers and singular thirsts -- or, for that matter, accomplish any other ends.
Indeed, Moon Dancer had no reason to believe that this had not already happened, and repeatedly. It was disquieting to consider that the Night Shadows might be among her own species, their existence unsuspected even now.
Barely more than fifty years ago, the Southern seccessionists had waged war against Equestria, attempting to establish their evil empire. They had been aided, in part, by dark formless beings whose origin and powers were never adequately explained. There were disturbing similarities between the Formless and the Night Shadows, enough that it occurred to Moon Dancer that the Formless may have been Night Shadows, somehow equipped or modified to take tangible manifestation in our dimension.
The Codex of Shades had been penned well over a thousand years ago. It seemed improbable that Moon Dancer was the first magically-adept Pony to peruse its pages; or that none who had done so had possessed either evil intentions, or been posssed by the evil intentions of the Night Shadows. Had the Night Shadows been slowly, insidiously infiltrating Ponykind?
This did not mean that she could not make use of the knowledge -- and power -- contained in the book. It did mean that she should be careful, though, or she might find herself serving the Shadows' ends, rather than they serving hers.
Moon Dancer considered the book. It was unreliable, yes, but it was scarcely the first unreliable source she had ever encountered. She was woefully-innocent of even the most respectable sorts of social experiences with stallions, but her knowledge of books was both deep and broad. In particular, she grasped the discipline of historiography -- the study of the historical origin and biases of writings, and hence the analysis of their reliablility. She could apply these techniques to the Codex of Shades.
To begin with, just who wrote the book?
22. Authorship
The biographical clues in the introduction implied the author to be Prince Crimson Quartz, who had become Imperator Sombros, the "King Sombra" of dark legend, who had become the tyrant of the Crystal Empire, challenged Equestria to a pointless war, and gone down in ignominy, dragging his whole Realm with him to an extradimensional limbo. She knew this to be more than legend, and she had advantages unusual for historiographers dealing with him -- she was sitting in the very capital city from which Sombra had ruled, surrounded by Crystal Ponies who personally remembered his rule, and perhaps his other actions -- such as writing the Codex of Shades. This could definitely help in establishing authorship and provenance.
In terms of provenance, she had received the book from Penumbra -- who in some mysterious way, was neither Crimson Quartz nor Sombros, but was something Sombra had created from the part of him that was still Pony. That statement implied that some, or most, of Sombra was not Pony, at least not any longer. If Sombra was not Pony, then what was he?
Though the Crystal Ponies did not like to talk about him, there were of course, plenty of books and other documents describing what Sombros had looked like, and things he had done before his defeat of the Royal Pony Sisters. Moon Dancer had acquired some of these, and read them in passing. He had been a dark-gray coated, black-maned, red-eyed Crystal Unicorn with a deformed horn -- essentially, a bigger and more impressive version of Penumbra.
But he had been, physically, a Pony -- though an unusually large and strong one, with exceptionally-powerful magic. He had a normal Pony form, with normal Pony capabilities and requirements. And that form had been destroyed by the combined powers of Princesses Celestia and Luna, over a thousand years ago -- though to the inhabitants of the limbo-lost Crystal City, it had seemed like no set duration of time at all, but rather a confusing deep dream.
When the city had returned, and its former ruler attempted to regain it, Sombros had been very different. A vast, roiling black cloud, from which had emerged a Pony-shaped form which could swirl and disperse and recondense, in ways utterly-alien to Pony flesh and bone. The reports she had read had difficulty describing it, but Moon Dancer could well imagine like what Sombra must have looked, for she had seen them in her vision.
A Night Shadow. Based on what the tome had told her, an extremely-powerful one. But then, what other kind would choose a brilliant, capable royal scholar-mage, such a paragon of a Pony as had been Crimson Quartz, as its host?
She believed that she could now reconstruct what must have happened.
Crimson Quartz had grown to stallionhood in the dying days of the decadent Crystal Empire, surrounded by memories of the Empire's former glories. He had yearned to restore those glories, and the Lady Tourmaline had become his ally in this quest -- and eventually also his lover.
But his evil older brother Morion had risen to the throne, and then sought to eliminate Crimson as a rival for his power. He had harmed both Crimson and Tourmaline, and they had fled into Equestria. There they had joined Aventurine, the middle brother, and led an army back to liberate the Crystal Empire, and Morion had fallen.
However, the Empire was too decadent for Crimson's plans to work. He needed more power -- so he summoned the Night Shadows, and bargained with them for power, and became Sombros. But they had lied to him, and they possessed him, and Sombros was the mask worn by a Night Shadow. Possibly, this was also how Princess Luna had become Nightmare Moon.
Moon Dancer saw that to trust the Night Shadows would be folly, for if she opened themselves fully to them, she too would become a Nightmare. But she also saw that they had a power from beyond, a power which was beyond anything she knew in this Universe.
And she -- unlike Sombros -- had been warned in advance.
23. Knowledge Is Power
I have the power here to liberate Equestria from the tyranny of Princess Celestia and the plutocrats she lets appropriate the surplus wealth produced by the workers, Moon Dancer thought. It would be a crime against History itself for me to not use this power to break the chains of the proletariat.
I am highly-intelligent, and I know the dangers. If I proceed carefully, step-by-step, I should be able to avoid falling as did Sombros and Luna before me. Sombros was unwarned, and Luna is really no Pony at all. I am warned, and I am a Pony true, a Pony of the ancient and honorable House Light.
I can -- I must -- I will learn to use this power for good. So I do swear! It is my destiny!
And on this and similarly cheering thoughts, Moon Dancer fell asleep over the Codex of Shades. And if she did not necessarily dream sweet dreams -- at least they were complex ones.