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// VI. Luna in Sulvam est, all's Right with the World. 
// Story: Redeem Us In Our Solemn Hour 
// by Cynewulf 
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I.
 
 
Check was not a pony without a heart. Often, others assumed so. Ponies often assume this about those whose heads are full of numbers. They see a trend and make it a characteristic—head full of numbers, head full of straw, no heart and no tears. Accountants don’t cry (they say, though perhaps in the back of their minds they remember that they do tend to hang themselves from whatever will do in miserable apartments). But he had never understood this thought. Why should numbers and graphs seal his heart away? If anything, he found that they fed one another. He could weep over the invalid and the injured and would just as well as any poet, but while the poet described, he would count. He would know how many there were—how much medicine could be spread—how long it would take—how far he could take it. He could not described very well with words, but he could speak a language free from the pitfalls of words.
 
 
 
 
He couldn’t sleep. His eyes felt heavy, sunken. His teeth ached from grinding, his greatest nervous habit. He kept thinking about the numbers. Food. Blankets. Marching hooves—ponies numbered in fours—distance. Inches of snow. A station lost in the night. Nineteen.
 
 
 
They were packed up. Tomorrow they would head north and meet the army on the border… not that far from Nineteen. He had noted this solemnly a few hours ago and whispered soft pleas for forgiveness. Sometimes you arrived too late even to make the decision to abandon.
 
 
 
He wandered HQ. The city slept and did not sleep around him. The streets were not empty but not full. There was life in this city, but for a moment, in the depths of his insomnia… it felt unreal. Like the city was a dream. Or a nightmare. No, not a nightmare. Maybe another…
 
 
So it was that he wandered by the Comm Office and stopped. And peered. And thought. He entered.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
II.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Luna did not always dreamwalk. She, too, could dream exactly as her subjects dreamed—insensate yet full of life, mind gone wild and heart casting a long shadow over desire. But tonight she dreamwalked, and beheld the tiny lights in a great roiling and misty ocean of night. How many thousands of points against the great blue and black and purple? How many tiny globes? Even she did not know, and she was their keeper. They shone and twinkled, now like stars, now almost like fruit that she could pluck. Or flowers to be admired, perhaps.
 
 
 
Luna enjoyed basking in their glow.
 
 
As always, she felt the disparate lights both as a single chorus and as a dozen fractured choirs. She saw the ones that glowed dimly—the old and the far too young for dreaming. The intense and chaotic dreams of the weary. The sweet, alluring, hypnotic dreams of lovers and desire. The bright dreams of foals and the darker dreams of their sometimes worried parents, the bold colors and the subtle ones, the imaginative and the dull. And nightmares. She felt the nightmares also.
 
 
 
She had once remarked to Celestia over dinner on some ancient highway that every happy or merely strange dream was unique. It was the nightmares that were all the same. Angry reds and cancerous black, she saw them.
 
 
 
And so Luna finished her strolling and began to steel her mind.
 
 
 
Long ago, she had sworn to do this. When she had returned from the shadows of Sulva, she had sworn that her dreamwalking would be a weapon to shepherd the ponies of Earth and protect them from unneeded pain.
 
 
And so it was that while she stood in the vast void, breathing calmly with shut eyes, readying herself to do battle… so it was that Luna heard a voice cry her name more loudly than the others did, and calling for her where all others simply cried out for release. She jumped, startled. Her eyes flew open and she turned astonished to find the sound. Had Celestia come? No, it was not her voice… Twilight was just beginning to Dreamwalk, it could not be her… The only alicorns left who could enter the Aether at all were…
 
 
 
She heard it again. Luna!
 
 
And then: Luna Protects!
 
 
 
And she stiffened. A terrible self-loathing crept its way into her heart. Luna protects. She growled wordlessly and took off after the call. Her name again and again.
 
 
It should not be so hard to explain why these words hurt her so. Luna protects, Luna provides, Luna redeems. But she had not done these things. She had tried and then she had undermined all of her work with the malaise that brought schism. She had returned, but what could a decade of work do? Not much. Almost nothing. Luna protects. Luna provides. It was like claws scratching on a blackboard. Luna redeems.
 
 
 
And then she found it, a tiny dream wrapped in the fires of nightmare, and Luna seized it and with a wrathful eye gazed within to find darkness. No, not quite—some light. It was deep into the heart of the night, and something stirred in every shadow. She saw a tiny figure—a pony, she surmised—sprinting in the shadow. She felt the presence of monsters but did not know their shapes. Perhaps they had no shapes. She tasted… blood. Smelled it. A shiver ran down her spine. The little pony cried out for her again.
 
 
 
Luna entered the dream.
 
 
She did not enter as herself. She never did, at first, unless something truly evil had taken over the dreams of somepony weak and hapless. There were such things left in the world that fed on madness, things she had not yet slain. But this was a normal nightmare, and so she grabbed ahold of the first form her dreamer gave her.
 
 
Luna found herself in the body of a mare. Batpony. Wearing… the bottom fell out of her stomach. A duster. This was a Ranger. One of her precious Rangers, her companions. Could this dreamer be… yes, it must be a Ranger, she knew immediately. She felt the truth of it echo back out of the dreamer’s panic. This was a Ranger.
 
 
Her anger was gone, replaced by concern. Luna cherished the little ponies who watched the frontiers for her. They had made up for the loss of her companions, and now one of them was in trouble.
 
 
 
Well, she would not be for long.







III.
 
 
 
Sprinting. Stars. Luna! 


They were dead.
 
 
I just keep running. I don’t know where I am or how I haven’t run out of room to run. Somehow I know I’m all alone. They’ve killed the others. They can’t have but they have. Everything is gone. The refugees are all little bloody shreds. They murdered my friends. Ruby gone, Lily dead, Swift, Knight-Commander, Soft, Star Brand.
 
 
I’m crying and I think I’m bleeding. I can’t let them catch up. God if they come any closer I’m dead I’m fucking dead.
 
 
 
And then there’s a wall.
 
 
I turn and now I see them all. Chittering in the dark, their eyes lighting up. Gods how many? Too many. Dozens. My legs feels weak. Like at any moment, they’ll just… snap. I’m going to die. They’ll eat me alive. I whimper because what else is there to do? This is it, I—
 
 
“Stand your ground!”
 
 
 
And from above me comes Lily. Alive. Lily, standing beside me in a fighting stance. “We shall take them together, Ranger. Stay beside me. What do Rangers do?”
 
 
 
It’s like a kick to the face and a shock to the heart all at once. Suddenly, my legs are solid, my eyes dry. Something in the air has altered. “They fly!” I yell, and we jump as one.
 
 
 
I take the first one with ease, and find out of nowhere that I have hoofblades. I grin at them, and when another jumps at me I take him out of the air with a kick that stabs the blades right up into him. Kick. Kick. Dozens of them. I get kicked in the chest, in the stomach, once in the head. A stinger goes by my eyes and misses by an inch at most—fangs bite at my coat but I’m too fast for them—hoofs try to bear me down but I am a whirlwind. I am the storms that blew over the tree tops, howling down off the snowy mountains north of Canterlot towards the treehomes of Hollow Shades until they blew over the entrances of to our neighborhoods. Once I feared the roaring that shattered our nights but now I am that storm, all hooves and blades and a high, keening cry.
 
 
 
Lily and I stand panting as the red falls from the world around me. We are back to back now, wings open and limbs both sore and ready.
 
 
And then… nothing. Nothing comes. Nothing is left, I think.
 
 
 
I sink down to the ground. “Thank Luna… Lily, I thought you were dead. How did you survive?”
 
 
When I turn to look at her, she is looking at me strangely. She is hesitating… and suddenly I feel nervous again.
 
 
“Luck, perhaps,” Lily says. She smiles. “I could ask you the same. How did you?”
 
 
 
My chest is still heaving as I try to remember, but I can’t. “I have no idea,” I say, blinking in the dark. “But…” I take a step forward, my nervousness gone. I wrap Lily up in a hug and she stiffens with surprise. “But I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad you’re alive. At least… at least it’s just… I…” I try to catch my breath but it dances away from me. “Oh Luna… Luna, Stars, Ruby’s gone. And all the others, and…”
 
 
 
Lily hugs me back, rocking me. “It’s alright. It’s alright, Midnight…”
 
 
 
 
 
 
IV.
 
 
 
 
 
Luna retreated from the changing dream to collect herself.
 
 
 
Who was this pony? Luna had felt her beating heart in the dream’s living thrum. How had she called so strongly?
 
 
She still felt the little pony clinging to her, even outside of the bubble. She often comforted ponies in their nightmares, both as herself and as others, and some had hugged her, yes. She had done other things… but something about that hug bothered her.
 
 
 
Perhaps because it was a pony who dreamt she was a Ranger whom Luna had not met. That should be impossible… well, almost. There were situations where a pony might not become a ranger through the normal methods. Only one thing necessitated this: the threat of almost certain death.
 
 
 
Luna, deciding she would need to dive again, steeled herself. But the nightmare was gone. The dream was quieter now.
 
 
 
Luna walked invisibly. She was in a cave, she knew it immediately. It was a curious sort, though. Dry, with smooth floors and the occasional support. Here and there you found a lamp or hanging enchanted lights, glowing out of crystals. But in general, it was rather dark, and Luna struggled to see ahead of her. But she found that there was no reason to fear. They had more or less paved away the sharp rocky floor here.
 
 
Luna began to notice the chill that was slowly, quietly creeping into her bones. The magic that kept pegasi from the icy grip of blizzards burned also in her heart, so whilst awake she would not have felt it, but in the dream? In the dream she felt as the dreamer might, and this dreamer felt cold.
 
 
Luna finally found her at the mouth of the cave. Or, at least, she thought so. It felt like the dreamer, yet her form was so different that it was hard to accept.
 
 
 
A little filly sat underneath a blanket at the mouth of the cave, facing outwards. Luna looked up to see what it was that she saw, and was surprised to find snow falling down. Snow covered everything—the grass, the trees, the bushes—and she thought to herself that she must be somewhere near Hollow Shades. Unless there were other woods batponies hid in, these days.
 
 
 
The little filly was so still. Luna reached in her mind and found it the same—
 
 
And was assaulted by words and actions and deeds. The smell of blood and the—
 
 
 
Luna shut off all but what she needed and then cleared her mind of shock. It was a learned habit, here in the Aether.
 
 
 
She felt herself become another batpony. This one was plumper, softer than the one before. Certainly no ranger. She wore a scarf and her mane was almost frighteningly long. Luna pushed it out of the way and then conjured hot chocolate out of the air.
 
 
 
“Midnight, honey?” she called in another voice. “What are you doing over here?”
 
 
 
The filly turned and blinked at her mother disguise with confusion. “Snow,” she said, and then pointed. “I got cold, so I brought a blanket.” When she said this, she used her hooves to spread her little mantle like a great cape.
 
 
 
It was strange, traveling through dreams. One moment, this had been a grown mare capable of surprising violence. The next, she was an adorable filly with little fluffy ears watching the snow fall with a little blanket cape.
 
 
 
“I see that,” Luna said. “I brought you hot chocolate. Would you like some?”
 
 
“Is it the gross spicy kind that grampa makes?”
 
 
 
Luna rolled her eyes. She had tried to get them to abandon the worst of Western cuisine, but even the rebels had been stubborn about some things. A race of recalcitrants. “Of course not,” she said smoothly. “I made it the way you like it. Creamy and chocolately,” she added, and knew she was quoting as the dream supplied the words.
 
 
The filly’s little face lit up. “Awesome! Yes, I would love some.”
 
 
 
Luna sat next to the filly and gave her the warm mug and watched with a smile as she drank. It tugged at sad memories, ones so old they no longer hurt her, but still ached. Celestia was not the only alicorn who had wanted to have children the way that mortals did. She had simply… no, she would not lie in dreams.
 
 
 
Little Midnight leaned against her mother and offered her cape wordlessly, but her mother refused to be covered with a smile. “You keep it. It’s your cape.”
 
 
 
“Mhm.” Midnight continued drinking.
 
 
 
Luna regarded the filly. It was not unheard of for dreaming ponies to don different shapes to reflect the things they dream. But sometimes it could be a sign of something very different. Luna felt at the boundaries of the dreamer’s soul.
 
 
Midnight jumped, but didn’t spill. She looked down at the mug, looked up at Luna, looked around her… and shivered. “I’m dreaming.”
 
 
 
Luna, a little shocked, blinked. “What?”
 
 
 
“I’m dreaming… this… Thank Luna it’s not a nightmare,” she said, the same filly’s voice and body playing host to an adult mind. “A dream… mother. Are you my mom? It’s okay if you’re just a dream… Because I miss you and this was a good dream. I think I might just stay here.”
 
 
 
Luna just stared. Awake. She Awake. “But all I did was…” She took a deep breath. “What do you mean? That this is a dream?” she tried to keep her voice calm, probing. She touched this Midnight’s aura again, and the little filly jumped shivered.
 
 
 
“I don’t know…” the little filly frowned. “But I just… I know this is a dream. I can’t remember where I was earlier and how I got here… I know I’m not a child anymore. This memory is old… I’m a Ranger now.”
 
 
 
Ponies lucid-dreamed sometimes, but when they did, they could not feel the aether. Luna prodded, her heart quickening within her sleeping breast in response to her swelling hope. “Do you feel strange?”
 
 
 
“Everything feels weird. I… you aren’t my mother. You’re shining.”
 
 
 
Luna let go of her disguise in shock.
 
 
 
The little filly stared at her blankly for a few moments. She promptly screamed, then cut that scream off with her hoof in her mouth, tried to back up, tripped into the snow, and then rolled over on her belly to lie prostrate. “Oh Lu—stars, oh stars starstarstars fuck I mean—”
 
 
 
“My little pony,” Luna said gently. The filly cowered. With a sigh, Luna set her upright with her magic, which only seemed to make her panic even more. “Midnight, please be still.”
 
 
 
Midnight stopped moving immediately. She went limp. “H-how do you know my name, Princess?”
 
 
 
“Because this is a dream, and you have perplexed me greatly.” Luna levitated the little pony back inside and dried her coat, which only seemed to humiliate the little Midnight. Luna sighed. She took a deep breath, and put the slightest iron into her voice. “Impersonating a ranger is an offense, little pony. What is your name, rank, and station?”
 
 
 
The filly stood at attention and saluted.
 
 
 
“Midnight Aria, Ranger, Nineteen.”
 
 
 
An arrow through her heart. “Nineteen? You… oh, my child, we thought you had all died.”
 
 
Midnight’s salute wilted. She sat. “I… no,” she said. Her voice began to drift. “No, we’re… I mean Shadow’s dead. But I’m still here, and so are the others. For a while.”
 
 
 
“I must ask you a question, but I think I already know… why is it I do not remember you, when I remember every other ranger?”
 
 
 
“I’m an initiate. I mean, I was. I’ve only seen you twice. Once when you visited Hollow Shades when I was little and my momma put me on her head so I could see. The other time when I graduated from Ranger School and you spoke right after Grizlebrand did.”
 
 
 
Luna closed her eyes. “I feared that. And if they have elevated you without my word, that means…”
 
 
 
“We’re in Amethyst City, your highness,” Midnight said. Luna opened her eyes and what she saw almost broke her composure. This little filly looked up at her with such mixed hope and despair, her eyes watery and watching, her teeth biting her lip as she settled on what to say. Nothing seemed enough, so she just sagged and said: “We know nopony can get to us. It’s o-okay. It’s okay. But there are ponies with us. Like two hundred, probably. Knight-Commander Yuletide would know for sure. There are tunnels we can send them in, and they’ll go east or south, but… Please, princess. You have to help them. Please. I don’t want to stay here if I don’t know they won’t make it.”
 
 
“My little… Ranger,” she corrected. “I swear to you that I shall find them myself if I have to ensure their safety. I swear this on the moon and the stars.” On an impulse, unbidden, the old language of Midnight’s tribe sprang to her lips as she continued, “On the Mother of Sarnath and the Shining Caves, I swear it to you, or may I be struck down.”
 
 
 
Midnight’s eyes went wide, but Luna wasn’t sure that she had understood any of the last bit. Some knew and some did not, but it did not matter. What mattered was that she meant it.
 
 
“You… you have a gift. Maybe,” Luna began. “You are dreamwalking now, as I do. It may be simply an accident of time and place. You are, after all, in my service, and so perhaps I was simply attuned to hear you… but that is unlikely. Some have gained dreamwalking when I tested them under great stress, but never for long. It is most likely temporary. It may not be, but now is to early to say if you truly have the natural spark. What is important is for you to know that you can trust what you remember of this. Is there one pony you can trust?”
 
 
 
“Yes.”
 
 
 
“Nineteen… is Meadow still there? A mare named Lily, perhaps?”
 
 
 
“Lily.”
 
 
 
“Go to Lily and tell her this, word for word: Luna is in Sulva, and all’s right in the world. Do not be concerned with what it means. It is simply something that will ensure she knows that you speak truly. Tell her that I will do my best to find and protect the refugees under your care. Tell her that I am coming.”
 
 
 
“Princess…”
 
 
 
Luna had been looking slightly above her with her face set in fierce lines. She looked down, surprised.
 
 
“Yes?”
 
 
 
“I… I never had my audience.”
 
 
 
Luna blinked. And then she smiled. She sat.
 
 
 
“No, no you hadn’t. Will you have it now?”
 
 
 
“Yes.”