There were no shackles in Morgan’s prison, no chains to hold her fast. In her chambers, in her tower, none were needed. Luxuries filled her space with a bed fit for the King’s sister and censers hung from the ceiling ready to spill the most exotic and fragrant of incense. There were even some few creature comforts from Midgard, some she recognized or even found herself making use of from time to time. If there was anything the humans learned to do and do well, it was creating distractions. Existence in a world without magic arguably constituted a nightmare, yet somehow they’d survived.
Morgan wasn’t so sure she wanted to. Every breath she took felt like a sin against her true mother, the nameless being that spun her out of smoke and shadows and infused with a tiny fragment of self, connected to all the others of her brood like an intricate spider web glistening with drops of dew. The silence in the wake of that feeling deafened her.
Below, the citizens of Mag Mell scurried about their business. Though distant, Morgan found she could see quite well in the dark, as well as she ever could, making out the distant new freeway with its cars and trucks. With her wings, she could soar down to the world below and mingle to her heart’s content, but she could never hurt anyone, not ever again. Tartarus would have been wasted on one whose wings were clipped as skillfully as hers. The destiny even bound her from ending her own hated misery. A prison of flesh and spirit.
“Morgwyn,” she spoke in a quiet harsh tone. “I was the Morgwyn. I am…”
I did horrible things. The voice came unbidden. I deserve to be alone, I deserve all of this.
Morgan whimpered and rubbed at her barrel with a hoof. Too much time alone was almost always worse than time spent mingling. Distraction, distraction is the key. Humans knew that much. She turned to the mirror, her likeness shifting like smoke along its surface until a tall young woman stared back at her with sharp blue-green eyes and long dark hair spilling down her shoulders and back. Raven hair aside, she could be confused for the King’s twin, which in technicality she supposed she must be. Morgan’s throat made a quiet little choking sound before she could turn away. At least her wardrobe allowed for some self-expression, some separation from the overgrown child who cursed her.
And justly so. I owe her my sympathies, I have to make it up to…
Morgan shook her head and growled, adjusting a long sweeping dress of deepest purple before tossing a patterned scarf around herself. The door to her chambers slammed behind her as she made her way out.
* * *
The halls of the castle were busier than usual, and it took Morgan a moment of reflection before she could remember the cause. A few dozen normal Equestrians roaming through the halls quickly shed light on the mystery – Ah yes, Luna and Celestia. Visiting on some shallow diplomatic business, supposedly, but the reality was clear to Morgan and her twin both: they had every reason to check in on her and her… sister, regularly.
To her benefit, much of her powers from her time before remained unquenched. This was true of the ones incapable of doing harm, at least; she had little use for those that could in her present state. Early on, Morgan found to her relief that when she didn’t want to be seen, she wasn’t. She was less relieved to find that the King could draw her forth just by calling her name.
A familiar sense of nausea gripped her, pulling her forward. Morgan made a token show of resistance; it wouldn’t do to come too willingly. Her little shows of defiance were important, to her at least. Amelia couldn’t force her to come, not if she didn’t want to.
Morgan… Morgan, I need you…
The name that defined her, blurring her memories and sense of self. She could remember… growing up, playing with her sisters, an older sister weaving a crown of flowers which always got stuck in her dark mane.
When she opened her eyes, she stood in a dimly lit bedchamber. Amelia sat in a massive chair of petrified wood, a twisted mass of polished opalized oak gifted from the Jotnar of Niefelheim. It wasn’t as imposing as her proper throne, but it served in her more personal quarters. As usual, she was her two-legged self with long golden hair, green feline eyes, and a cat-like manner to her otherwise adult self. One would never believe her to be only fifteen years of age. Well, fifteen summers from her point of birth. To look at her one would think her in her late twenties at least.
Morgan glanced down at herself, noting that she was once more “wearing hooves” as some of the younger goblins were calling it. Her tail twitched and her nostrils flared.
Luna and Celestia stood across the room by the large doors of polished oak. She searched their eyes, always expecting a change of heart, that one day they’d come back and bind them for transit to Tartarus.
Instead, when she looked to Luna she saw mild curiosity tinged with apprehension. Her sister was truly a mystery, because there was no hostility or fear at all. Indeed, Celestia’s expression was downcast, her eyes filled with worry as though she were the one who had wronged them.
“There she is, and here we are,” Amelia said, raising a rose-rimmed goblet to her lips. “If you’re satisfied that we’re all right, we can skip dinner and you can go back home.”
“If it’s all the same, we’d wish to stay for some time.” Luna frowned, her eyes narrowed. Her ear twitched at Amelia’s dismissive tone.
“The weekend,” Celestia cut in quickly. “Just for the weekend. We beg your hospitality.”
Amelia’s cheeks darkened. “I’m not interested in playing princess with you, Celestia.” Her eyes had a curious glow to them, like little embers dancing inside. “If you want to stay, one sovereign to another, then I suppose there’s little I can do about that. Queen Stylus will see to your accommodations, but they’ll be the same as last time.”
Luna seemed satisfied for her part and began to make for the door. Celestia followed, then lingered. If Amelia’s comment cut her, she gave little sign, offering a smooth face.
“Your mother and father are in Equestria, now. They signed their papers and moved into their new home in Hollow Shades earlier this week.” Her stoic disposition was interrupted by a nervous, rhythmic twitch of her ear. It was like watching ripples form in a pond.
“Good for them? I’m sure they’ll both be much happier there.” She finished whatever was left in her goblet it had a sweet smell like strawberries or crushed dates. “Why are you telling me?”
Celestia paused before adding, “Your sister worries for you. She says you haven’t visited in—”
“If she’s worried about me she can come herself, instead of sending her favorite cousin.” Amelia looked away, setting the goblet down on a table. The longer she lingered in Celestia’s company, the more uncomfortable she grew. The King of Wands began to twiddle her thumbs anxiously, and her left foot began to dance skittishly about the floor before she consciously willed it to stop.
Celestia watched on for a bit longer, and for a moment, Morgan thought she saw the hint of a tear. But why would she be crying? She honestly didn’t know that spectrum of emotion terribly well.
“Your…” She huffed, dissatisfied with herself. “Amelia, I… I’m sorry,” she murmured at last, leaving the two sisters behind in their large accommodations. The door closed with a hollowed out thump. Amelia waved her hand and a lock clicked into place.
The young woman shivered, as pale as if she’d seen a ghost.
Morgan flicked her tail and felt some curiosity of her own take root.
“Is everything okay?” she asked after an extended pause, though on reflection the answer seemed obvious. Seeing Amelia like this hurt her somehow in a way she didn’t quite understand, and she didn’t understand how to fix it. It felt proper to ask anyway.
“I’m fine,” Amelia whispered. She looked angry, but she didn’t order Morgan out. She did that very infrequently.
Morgan stood at the center of the room, her head tilted to the side. She weighed her words and thoughts carefully, wondering where to start. “Your parents would probably be equines now,” she whispered, her deep voice filling the room. Once it had been a sibilant whisper, felt more than heard, but now it had the timber of a full-throated mare. “Physically, I mean. Your line always—”
“Ponies, you mean.” Amelia shifted, crossing her legs. “I guess they would be.”
“Ponies,” Morgan repeated. “If you like. We called them equines before…” She paused and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
So the subject makes her uncomfortable, but why? Morgan’s brow furrowed. Daphne and her line had been of that nature since the first whether they realized it consciously or not; if anything this was a homecoming, but one Amelia hadn’t truly taken part in. She remembered vividly the raw joy Amelia had experienced at putting on hooves for the first time as a child, but so rarely since her coronation.
“You… wear your human form a bit compulsively, do you not?” Morgan said, trying her best to sound considerate, and doing a poor job of it.
“So what if I do? This is as much me as is… that.” Amelia squirmed even more than before.
Morgan crossed the room followed by the soft sound of her hooves tapping against hardwood and muffled carpet. She hesitated, then nosed at the girl’s side. Amelia shivered, her long mane growing out and falling around her even as she slid forward to land on four hooves. Her eyes squeezed shut, and wetness gleamed at the corner of the lids. In size and grace, she was equal to Celestia, but in color and mannerism, she was still herself, still very much Amelia. Morgan pressed in against her side, her tail shifting with anxious movements.
“What’s wrong?” Morgan asked, and her tone was more urgent than she had intended, almost pleading.
“You almost sound like you care,” Amelia said, burying her face in her twin’s mane.
A silence lingered for some time before Amelia broke it again.
“I can feel it sometimes, you know? Brushing my mind?”
“The Bridle,” Morgan snorted. “It… was good of you to forget it. It’s a tool of absolute order and no good would have come from it. I just wish you could forget everything else, surrounding it.” Recognizing the apparent hypocrisy of such a statement given her own role in pushing Amelia to its possession, she sighed, then added, “I just wanted to go home so badly. The home I remembered.”
Chaos.
Amelia took a deep breath and then shook herself. Soft cream-colored hair faded away, and her mane became much shorter as she rose to stand on two legs.
“I’ll be fine, I’ve got it.” She wiped at her eyes. “I don’t need help.”
Morgan watched her leave the bedroom, wishing suddenly and profoundly she knew the proper way to respond to such an obvious fiction, and experienced another wave of nausea. This time, it wasn’t followed by the telltale tug of a summoning. She felt something else. She’d heard some of the human goblins refer to it as “deja vu.”
Shifting her wings, the King’s dark twin made her way out after her sister, stalking the halls silently, and unseen.
* * *
“Sister,” Luna began, her mind wandering back to Morgan and her well-concealed turmoil. “I’m not sure I understand…” As they were in public – in theory – Luna composed herself with the air of a regal figure, but inside she felt tired and confused.
Celestia craned her neck, glancing back to her sister. “What are you having trouble understanding?” Her eyes were still a bit misty.
“If you care for her so much, if you feel she should come back to Equestria, why don’t we invite her back to the castle? Why aren’t we taking her home?” She glanced around the large halls of the castle, where goblins skittered about preparing the place as though tonight’s dinner would be the introduction to some festival. Many of them were singing lewd songs, or laughing about subjects that made her feel uncomfortable. There was even a song about her, once; she’d heard snippets of it and been filled with pride. When Naomi explained that she was essentially the devil, in context, she had felt rather more uncomfortable about it.
“This is no place for a filly,” Luna pressed.
“King Amelia isn’t a child. Not anymore, at least. And even if we did ask, her contrition has left her deferential, not obedient.” She considered her sister’s words. “That doesn’t mean you’re wrong, merely…” She shook her head. “Such an invitation shouldn’t – no, cannot come from me.”
Luna’s eyes brightened. “Are you asking me to speak with the little King privately?” She asked with a conspiratorial grin.
“I’m asking you to do what you feel in your heart is right,” Celestia said, pushing aside the double doors leading into their mutual guest room. “Stars, I shouldn’t even be here.”
The suspicion that her sister wasn’t giving her the full story only deepened, but Luna kept quiet, testing her mattress with a hoof. Delightfully springy and covered in fresh, silken sheets of midnight blue, despite Amelia’s cold welcome. Queen Stylus would never let any guest go untended, particularly not heads of state, demigods, nor in that rare occasion exemplified by their visit, both.
“I’ll see what can be done, then. Fear thee not.”
* * *
The reception feast was held in one of the grander halls of the Old Wand Castle, so-called for its use in antiquity before Nessus’ coming had forced the capital to move to Equestria. High above from vaulted ceilings, chandeliers glowed with countless candles that filled the room with golden light and cast soft-edged shadows across tapestries that shifted in subtle animation. Amelia’s subjects formed a neat little trapeze act in order to light each and every one. The eccentricity never failed to move Princess Luna’s heart as she glanced up, her eyes filled with wonderment. After the performance was finished the performers descended on narrow ladders. Winged goblins and ponies were on hoof to relight any that might be extinguished.
Amelia sat at the head of the table, with Morgan at her left hand and Marble Stone beside her. Celestia and her sister sat at the King’s right as the guests of honor. Under ordinary circumstances, Luna and Celestia would be pressured into amiable conversation, but tonight was different. Any attempt Luna made at conversation was politely responded to, but it was clear neither Amelia nor Morgan had any interest in fostering the exchange. The blue tablecloth between them might as well have been a storm-wracked sea for all the distance between them, measured in tension rather than miles.
Celestia took to the food with far less enthusiasm than Luna. Equestria was growing so rapidly, and after her extended visit beyond the barrier that divided Midgard, she’d adapted to more modern cuisine in a hurry. Luna appreciated the goblins and their thirst for tradition. Helping herself to glazed roast duck and all manner of exotic dishes including jellied eels, apples swimming in sugary glaze, and savory lentil stew, she felt as though the clock had been wound back a thousand years, back to a time when ponies still lived in fortified cities and strongholds.
Amelia didn’t seem enthusiastic about the food either.
“I was never big on Medieval Times.” She replied to Luna after an idle remark about the quality of the food. “Never seem to get around to changing it, though.
“I don’t understand,” Luna frowned. “Wasn’t that age hundreds of years prior in the land where you grew up?”
Amelia snorted. “It’s a restaurant, ’couz.”
Luna stared at her a moment longer, then leaned closer to her sister. “What is a ‘’couz’?”
Celestia stared at her plate quietly, barely touching anything, and replied with a whisper. “She means cousin, Sister.”
The King’s subjects were always a bit crestfallen when she ended things after the fourth course. If they’d had their way, Luna considered, it would be closer to sixty, maybe more. Certainly the goblins in the kitchens seem to love these events, and took them as an opportunity to express themselves. It seemed almost a crime to leave a sugar statuette Luna untouched, morbid as the thought of devouring a confectionary version of herself was, and she settled for breaking off the mare’s tail of spun blue sugar off and letting it dissolve on her tongue. She and her sister weren’t the only guests, however, and a detachment of Sword goblins feasted further down the table. After the final course had been delivered, a woman with bronze skin and fire in her eyes rose from the table and gestured to one of the servants, calling over a pair of goblins carrying a large chest fashioned from reeds woven together.
Amelia stared at the offering skeptically.
“King Amelia of the Wand,” a sharp-eyed woman with dark skin and frosted hair said through a thick accent, loud enough for those gathered to hear. “We have not journeyed all the way from Midgard to enjoy your hospitality alone. I come bearing a gift from my own King Alisha. We pray you take it with her blessing, and apologize that she was not able to come in person.”
“Why am I getting presents now?” Amelia propped her chin up with a hand. “I’m hardly on speaking terms with your King. As I seem to recall, our last meeting was a little contentious.”
The captain smiled, as though she’d expected suspicion. “The work you do with the Hippocrene has lifted a significant burden from my Liege’s shoulders, and the land she seeks to reclaim. Though your aid may have been unintentional, we ask you receive this with our thanks.”
Amelia stared at the chest a moment longer before gesturing to have it opened.
Luna finished chewing a last mouthful of food and swallowed, her eyes sparkling.
“Now that is a royal gift,” she whispered to her sister, tail swishing.
Cradled on a soft velvet cushion of emerald green lies an elegantly fashioned peytral of pure gold and set with a stone of moss agate, the hue of which matched Amelia’s eyes perfectly.
Amelia let out a sharp startled cry and tumbled out of her chair, her form changing even as she struggled to right herself, hooves striking the stone and shoving her heavy chair over with her widening sides. Luna’s breath caught in her throat at the panicked look in her cousin’s eyes. She looked like a caged animal. Sparks leapt along the length of Amelia’s horn, before snapping with a tiny contained explosion; when the light faded, she was gone.
The Sword captain blinked, then set her jaw. “If your King didn’t appreciate the gift, she could simply have refused,” she said, glaring at Morgan. With Amelia gone her soul’s twin had become the focus of all attention. Luna’s heart went out to her as the mare’s entire body tensed and withdrew within herself.
“I’m… I’m sure it wasn’t that,” Morgan murmured like a chastened child. “My… the King has been under a lot of stress lately.” She shifted her wings. “I would love to accept this gift on her behalf and deliver it to her quarters.”
Morgan seized the parcel by a long leather strap clenched between her teeth, and nearly galloped out of the hall, sweat beading on her brow. While the Sword goblins continued eating in grim silence, the rest of the Wand court seemed to take their King’s faux pas in stride. As far as they were concerned, it seemed this was a common occurrence.
Celestia nosed at Luna’s side, she didn’t need to speak for her little sister to get the message.
“I’ll check in on them, then,” Luna said, her voice catching slightly as she turned from the table. She dropped it to a low murmur for her sister’s ears. “Though I can’t say I understand your concern. Is it not right that they should suffer for the same deeds that our people are still recovering from?”
Celestia’s eyes had a strange deep orange cast to them in the lighting, and for a moment Luna thought she was looking at someone else.
“You weren’t there, Luna. You don’t understand, and I hope you won’t have to.” Celestia left the table, likely to seek the solitude of their rooms, Luna concluded.
Luna flared her nostrils and huffed.
“The things I do for family,” she muttered, wandering off down the halls in the direction of Morgan’s departure.
In the cacophony following Amelia’s incident, she even had hopes of evading attention on her way out, but was stopped by a brash little goblin in the seeming of a pony, her coat and mane elegant works of art, as though artfully crafted and fired in the finest of kilns yet still as supple as any. Her hooves had the heavy weight of stone absent no measure of elegance. The most telling identifier would have to be the ornate wand slung along her side in a leather harness.
“Princess,” Marble Stone greeted the taller mare. Her appearance was a poor match for her rough voice. If she wasn’t speaking in a fast-paced Wand accent, she drawled in a country manner that Luna had grown familiar with since her return home.
“Knight,” Luna said, continuing their rather impersonal address. “You wish to speak with me? I’m on errand per my sister.”
Her smile faltered at that, but she pressed on. “I’d speak to you someplace more private if ya would?”
Luna hesitated, then nodded her consent. “I can spare some time for a citizen of Equestria.”
Marble Stone faltered mid-step, and glanced behind her. “I belong to the Wand.”
“You will always have a place, a home,” Luna asserted, following the goblin mare into a side room.
The chamber was incredibly crowded with pots, vases, and other works of sculpted clay. A wheel sat at the center, and a kiln nestled outside on a balcony with a low arch. There was a bed, but the place felt more like a workshop than a place of residence.
“I note that you’ve taken to your special talent,” Luna pointed out with a glance around the room.
“I made my choice.” Marble frowned up at the princess of the night. “I ain’t one of your foals to spirit away; we tidy?”
“We are tidy.” Luna tilted her ears back. “So what did you wish to speak to me about?”
“We’re headin’ out for the Hippocrene again tomorrow,” Marble said. “Only I don’t feel comfortable leavin’ things as they are. The King is weirder than usual. Been gettin’ weirder over the past couple years, and people are startin’ to notice it. I’m sure you have.”
“As I understand it, managing her fits was something she hired you for.”
Marble Stone frowned. “Aye, only I won’t be here, you ken?”
“What are you asking me to do?” Luna pressed.
Marble Stone moved over to her pottery wheel, beside which sat a large secured crate, likely filled with bits of unshaped clay.
“You’re a dreamweaver, so they say. You’ve got that rare gift certain gobs got.”
“I am princess of the night,” Luna said with a twitch of her tail, “if that’s what you mean.”
“Yeah, sure, that.” Marble Stone waved a hoof. “I want ya to steal into the King’s dreams, find whatever’s off, and fix her.”
“Fix her?” Luna frowned, tilting her head. “In what sense? I can’t make Amelia anyone she isn’t.”
“You can polish her, can’t ya? It worked for me. Staff and Sword, I’d expected that sister of hers to make her whole, but here I am, still waiting.”
Luna considered the large goblin mare a few moment before continuing. “As it happens, my sister already made such a request of me. I can’t promise you that King Amelia will become the King you desire, but I can promise that I am keeping my eye on her.”
“Suits me, all I want is the King she can be; wanna swear on it?”
Luna lingered in the doorway. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” she said. “Where I come from, we trust in our friends and loved ones.”
She left a red-faced Marble Stone, closing the door behind her.
* * *
Morgan…
Morgan’s hooves carried her away from the dining hall in a staccato thunder that warned servants and guests alike to duck aside in her charge. Though surpassingly rude, she found she could bear the gaze of the royal sisters no longer. Her cheeks burned with a shame she barely understood, and some terror clenched her heart that she could not put a name to.
Morgan… come, please…
There were no shackles upon her, and yet the ones within were more insidious than any she’d known.
A passage of scarlet-draped windows spaced by columns of golden wood, Amelia’s colors, wound ahead in a gentle curve to her suite. Maple doors stood ajar, freeing the sound of muffled sobs. Past her sister’s audience chamber with its petrified throne, Morgan lingered paralyzed before the blue steel-bound door to the bedroom. Her golden twin’s cries vibrated the wood under her hoof as she slid it against the surface of the door. With a sigh and an effort of will, she pushed herself back onto two feet and raised her hand to knock.
“Come in,” Amelia moaned through the door, as Morgan rather suspected she might. They always knew when the other was near.
Pushing it open, she found herself in a red-and-gold silk-draped enclosure, with the crescent moon a silver sliver through the open balcony. A pale equine shadow lurked among the gauzy hangings, far from the pillow-strewn bed and the far more practical wing of her bedroom, where she kept her computer and her reference books.
Leaving the offering by the door, Morgan walked in, her velvet dress rustling about her heels, and looked down at the shadow. Here lay the creature she’d made, the little girl she’d tortured until she could be a child no longer. Yet, no matter how often she reminded Amelia of that fact, she kept drawing her back to her side. What purpose could she have to maintain her here? What more could she take from her?
Doesn’t it pain her to have me near?
She turned and placed her hands on the balcony’s marble railing to gaze out at the moon with an anxious fist clenching her heart. The fingers of her left hand brushed at the smooth stone restlessly, and she was heedless of her long hair tossing about in the breeze from outside. Mag Mell’s raucous chorus of light and sound was far removed from the Wand Palace, and only the sounds of the palace reach her ear, however dimly. The bright slice of the moon’s sharp point drew her gaze, admiring the subtle precision of the curve; would that it could pierce her now and send her away from this place.
Arms slid around Morgan’s waist from behind, and she looked down to find herself smaller, a girl-child instead of a grown woman. Amelia’s face pressed against her shoulder, and their tails, one gold and one black, twined about each other as the girls took on the aspect of the felines they’d become. As if to spite all of her unspoken desires, she leaned back against her and they cradled one another in the dark of a nearly moonless night.
“What happened down there?” Morgan asked after some time had passed. “I’ve never seen you like that. You’ve seen Celestia before, and this is hardly the first diplomatic gift you’ve received.” Her ears twitched and she turned her head back to look at her silent partner. “What’s changed?”
Why do you seek comfort in me?
Amelia shook her head and pressed against Morgan more tightly still.
Turning, Morgan squirmed in her grasp until she could slide her arms around her as well. “I don’t get you at all. You certainly never tell me, so I don’t know how I could.” She sighed. “I don’t understand why I’m here still.”
“I want you here.”
“So I’ve seen, but as long as I’ve been here, you’ve never gloated, even though you and your sister beat me soundly. You never try to lecture me, even though it’s your responsibility to see me rehabilitated. You don’t have me do hardly anything except stand around.”
“I need you.” Amelia squeezed her eyes shut. “Morgan…”
“Damn it,” Morgan snapped, but couldn’t muster much force into it, not with Amelia’s presence weakening her, drilling into her resolve. “You know who I am. You know what I am.” Fighting against the wave of contentment, she pushed Amelia back, gently but firmly. “I’m not your sister. I’m the Morgwyn!” Her voice rose to a shout before lapsing into a sibilant whisper that spoke of shadows and whispers.
Amelia opened her eyes and met Morgan’s, algae green gazing into blue-green. “You’re all I have left.”
Morgan shuddered and pulled away, walking back over to the gift. She wanted nothing better than to melt into the shadows and become formless mist, a mote of blue fire drifting between the worlds, but no matter how she strained and begged the universe to release her, her body of meat and bone would not come undone. All trying managed to do was give her a cramp.
“I don’t understand. I don’t.” She let go of a breath held tight in her chest and brushed back her long hair from her face, staring down at the package quietly. “Why are you so afraid of this thing, anyway? It’s just a hunk of metal. If the Sword King wanted a rematch, she’d come herself; she’s no coward.”
“I know,” Amelia called back, her voice calm, but with a tremulous edge that skittered like water on a hot plate. “Honestly, I’d be surprised if she knew how much it hurt.”
“And why is that?” Morgan asked, turning her head back to look at the waif curled up by the window.
A breeze stirred the becalmed hangings, and Amelia’s ears flattened against her skull. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Temper flared, itself something new and strange to Morgan, whose passions had run cold and diffuse before she had alien blood to set alight. “First, you say you need me, then you won’t tell me what’s troubling you! What am I to you?”
Amelia narrowed her eyes back at her, arms tightening on her seat. “Figure it out!” she bit back. “I’ve done everything but wave a flag! Don’t you get snippy with me, when all you do is mope around and wish you were dead!”
“I do wish I were dead! Every single day of this life you foisted on me, I want to be free! I’d pray for death, but there’s no one to hear me! We’re in a cold, bleak universe and no one cares!”
Regret flashed across Amy’s face and she softened. “Morgan, I know. I’m sorry–”
“Don’t! Just – don’t!”
With her tail lashing and her ears pinned back, Morgan stalked out of the King’s suite and stormed down the tower. A pair of goat-faced goblin janitors pressed against a wall, eyes shut, terrified that the bad old days of King Nessus were back – or worse, the Morgwyn come to eviscerate them and take their hearts – and stayed that way until she had gone. It stuck in her throat, the looks on their faces. It only incensed her further.
“They’re supposed to fear me!” she hissed aloud as she made her way across the wide hall connecting Amelia’s tower to her own, heedless of who might hear her. “I spent every moment making such a nightmare of myself that Order-born would weep to hear my name!”
Yet, no matter how she protested, she couldn’t help but cringe inside at the thought of opening them up with her radiant claws of fire, to see their guts and sear their innards, to look into their very soul before it flies free to Helheim.
She stopped, her heart pounding. For five years now, she had only barely flirted with such thoughts, not daring to crack open that door and see what awaits her in the halls of her titanic memory. The scent of ash and blood filled her nostrils, and she leaned against a sandstone pillar for support as the world dropped out beneath her to a burning city, where slaughter the likes of which few mortals have ever paid witness to spill out before her. The screams of the dying and damned filled her ears, and her heart thundered like a mad drum in her ears.
Dinner lurched in her gut and she stumbled on through rolling waves of nausea. The faces of the goblins on her way back to her tower were all the same – masks of civility hiding fear, none daring to speak aloud to the King’s dark shadow what their eyes belied. She made it to a higher balcony before she had to lurch to a railing and gag over the side, again and again as her traitorous body seized her. Each rolling lurch paralyzed her until the smell of burning corpses again came to her nose and forced her to heave the remains of the evening’s meal onto a rooftop below, startling a flight of seabirds blown in from the Mother Ocean.
Falling back, she slumped against the pocked stone of the railing and rubbed her sore limbs. A tug at her side revealed a small goblin filly, her blue eyes afraid at just the sight of her, yet still she approached with a handkerchief held in her mouth solicitously. Morgan nodded her head in silent thanks and dabbed at her eyes and nose and mouth. The filly slid a cup of water to her with a feathered wing, and Morgan swished it in her mouth and spat it out over the side.
Without a word exchanged between them, the filly collected the cup, stuffed the handkerchief into it, and slipped away into the shadows, but not before offering Morgan a small smile in sympathy.
It only made things worse.
With a heavy sigh, Morgan slammed the locks shut on her door and tottered forward to throw herself upon her bed, sheltered between silken curtains adorned with stars and moons in silver thread. Each of these she pulled closed until she curled up among her pillows in a warm, dark cavern pierced by the starry night.
“The Morgwyn never felt safe or warm anywhere,” she whispered to herself with her arms around a pillow. “The Morgwyn never felt pity or remorse for the slain, it never feared rejection or cringed when people flinched from it. It never…”
Her arms tightened around one of her pillows and she pressed her face into it, whimpering softly. There were no shackles on her skin. Why should there be, when skin itself proved more than sufficient?
Exhaustion, itself alien, dragged her down into sleep. The bed sank beneath her, a tunnel cut through unimaginable space. Green vines, thorny and cutting, snapped around her and she snarled, biting at them and trying to cut loose.
Turning, she found herself gazing down the tunnel to a shining cloud, where Daphne stood with a great vase from which the vines emerged. “So be it,” she growled, her voice turning sexless and sibilant like the whisper of a snake, and turned as insubstantial as mist and shadow to pour back towards the hated Water Child. The fury of fourteen billion years of confinement rippled through the Morgwyn and it howled, becoming a gale of blue fire that whipped about her with black winds.
The vase swelled and Daphne ducked into it as the gale winds shredded the clouds and turned light into dusk. In her protective cover, Daphne rocketed away, turning through time to escape the Morgwyn’s furious assault, in Chaos a task as easy as walking. The demon coalesced and pursued her, following her into labyrinthine corridors of rippling light and spinning galaxies that speed up and fall apart, dissociating into hot gasses that themselves compress further and further together until they formed a singular point at the center of everything.
An ache filled the Morgwyn, knowing that past that point, in the illimitable darkness beyond time, lay its home. If Amelia would just pry open the cracks a little bit, it could slip free, slip away to the eternal freedom that lies outside reality’s grasp.
“It doesn’t end this way, you know,” Daphne said, drawing the creature’s attention back to her. “You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it.”
The Morgwyn snarled and stretched its jaws back, blazing fangs gleaming. It charged, racing for Daphne, and beneath its feet the darkness turned to black soil, and then it was racing on rich green grass beneath a summer sun. When it reached Daphne, though, leaping to pounce on her and devour her heart, the suddenly huge mare caught the Morgwyn in her hooves and spun it about. It found itself pressed to her barrel, and an alien warmth spread through its form.
“What?” it gasped, but its voice came out soft and clear.
The weight of wings settled across her back and Daphne’s hooves pressed her long mane tight against her. She raised an ebony hoof to strike at her, but the limb froze as she met the older mare’s eyes.
“Is it so hard to accept?” she asked, tumbling to the grass with Morgan tucked between her forehooves.
“I didn’t choose this!” Morgan trembled, her filly hooves held close to her body. Sick to her stomach, she recoiled from the sweet scent of crushed grass, the traitorous tremor of her own heart. “I want to be free.”
“Can’t choose your family. Whether or not you can make it work is what counts.” Daphne nuzzled at her poll, working to ease the tension there and send fluttering waves down her spine. “Aren’t you happy? Doesn’t this make you happy?”
“Yes!” Morgan cried hot tears. “That’s why I don’t want it. Can’t you see how it’s poisoning me? I’m not even your real family, I’m not anyone’s family – I’m a prisoner in this body. Let me go!”
“You’re as real as you want to be, Morgan,” Daphne murmured into her ear. “You can have a home here, too.”
“No!” she screamed, thrashing about. Daphne’s wing fell across her and she fought against it. “No, no! I won’t give in! I am the Morgwyn, I’m a destroyer; I’m a reaper!”
Her hooves tore away the wing and she tumbled free of the grass, only to find that it was a blanket that held her, and she’d fallen from her bed to land on her back in the form of a mare. Outside her window, the green star glittered below the moon.
The Morgwyn never referred to itself in the first person, Daphne’s voice whispered. It never knew itself, not really.
Morgan squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears, pushing Daphne’s presence away. When she opened her eyes, the green star was gone. She pushed herself to her feet and blew her mane out of her face, then trotted over to the balcony and beheld once more the goblin city.
In truth, nothing held her here. Amelia claimed that she needed her for some unfathomable reason, but she’d let her go if it came to it. She could launch from this window right then and fly until her wings ached and she had to curl up just long enough to rest, and then again and again until she was so far she could never find her way back. Maybe she couldn’t deliberately expose herself to inescapable danger with her strictures, but eventually, some monster would get lucky or a freak storm would drown her.
Then she’d be free.
Free from pain, free from love.
Morgan spread her wings, her pegasus magic flowing out and testing the air around her. It was a good night for flying, and the air flowing from the Mother Ocean that touched all worlds was fragrant with the scent of salt and kelp.
It was a long time standing there, thinking about leaving. Once upon a time, she simply would have decided and made it happen, but like so many other things in her life, it became complicated. Her thoughts raced down into black holes of indecision.
A crash behind her startled her out of her reverie and she half-spun to find the goblin filly from earlier picking up a broken plate off the floor near her table, sweeping up denuded grape vines and peach pits. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, mortified at having been seen, let alone made such a mess. Invisibility is a prized commodity among castle servants.
Morgan let a breath out, her dark mane falling across the side of her face to shadow it. “It’s fine. Just… finish up and show yourself out.”
She brushed the shards into a bin and shut it soundlessly. As she turned to go, she paused and looked back at the mare. “Uhm… Miss Morgan? What were you doing just now?” She blushed and ducked her head. “If’n you don’t mind me asking.”
Quirking her ears in surprise, Morgan slid off the balcony and walked over to her. The filly flinched as an obsidian hoof touched her side, and Morgan felt a quaver at the thought of her anticipating a beating for the simple act of asking a question. Or does she just fear the Morgwyn?
Definitely the former, she decided as her eyes opened wide and curious and so painfully trusting.
“I thought about leaving,” she answered quietly, “and never coming back.”
“Oh.” The filly lowered her tufted ears flat against her skull. “I’m sorry.”
Morgan couldn’t help but smile. “Why’s that? It’s not your fault I’m unhappy here.”
“No, but, I feel sorry for you.” She scuffed a hoof along the polished floor. “I ain’t very popular among the other servants, because I’m kinda clumsy, but I don’t really have your problems, miss. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be presumptuous-like.”
Heaving a soft sigh, Morgan gave her a gentle push with her wing. “It’s all right. Tell you what, you can come clean up here whenever I’m not around. You get exclusive access. Just try not to do it while I’m here, I don’t like being interrupted.”
“You ain’t leaving then?” she asked brightly as she tapped over to a wall and pushed open a nearly invisible servants’ entrance.
“Not yet, I ain’t,” she said, offering a smile that evaporated as soon as the filly disappeared, replaced by a sort of bleak indecision.
Why? Why can’t I just leave?
“Hey,” Morgan called just as the filly began to scurry off. “What’s your name? I never got it.”
The filly paused, caught in the middle of slinking off to a servant entrance. “Oh, it’s nothing special miss. Queen. Miss queen’s sister?” She fumbled for a proper title, briefly reminding Morgan how inconsistent her presence was with how life is supposed to be in the castle.
“I’d like to hear it anyway if it’s all the same,” Morgan answered.
The filly trembled for a moment before responding. “It’s Dewdrop Dazzle, your highness.” She settled for a general honorific.
“That’s a traditional Equestrian name,” Morgan said.
“Yes’m.” The filly nodded, fidgeting. “May I leave now?”
Morgan considered that development in silence before nodding. “You may.”
Sighing heavily, she turned back to her bed and fell into it. Stubbornly, she forced her limbs back into human shape, working them one at a time against her tired, sluggish mind, until she’d assumed the form she felt the least discomfort with. At last, she snapped the curtains shut about the bed and laid back as her thoughts and limbs grew heavier and heavier, and watched the play of the stars on her curtains as they rustled in the breeze.
* * *
Banging her head against her bed would accomplish very little, Amelia decided from where she lay against it, no matter how much of an idiot she felt. She scrubbed her face with her hands and rolled to her feet in a smooth motion. The ever-burning ichor in her veins pulsed with heat and life, but it increasingly gave her little comfort. Instead, she felt restless, forever unable to pinpoint the cause.
She passed over the ragged cloak she wore in the guise of a goblin child; on another night, she might have worn that shape into town, seeing the world from the perspective of those who still remained at the bottom of the heap in spite of her efforts. She paused at her desk, where a few hundred emails had piled up since this morning, let alone the hand-written notes from Stylus. Her eyes swam as she tried to read the reports, and the words vanished into the pounding of her skull. Feeling peckish, she lifted her hand and called her staff of white ash from the corner of the room and ignited a block of wood she used for carving, converting it in a flash of divine magic into a juicy apple, but it proved as impossible to keep down as dinner had been.
For a moment, she considered trying to call Morgan back, but the haste of her departure gave her pause.
Amelia leaned against the Wand by a window, as though unable to bear her own weight, and gazed out over the city. Seven years, not even half her natural life and just a blip on Celestia’s. The job of managing the fractious goblin factions was demanding, certainly, but could she be this badly burned already? It seemed unlikely, and, unable to find answers staring into the star-filled night, she returned to her bed and shrugged off her rich red robes.
With her clothing gone, the mark on her shoulder stood out clearly. A five-pointed, green-tinged star that could have been rising or sinking against a blue mountain. There wasn’t much of a mystery as to its meaning – she’d thought herself a goblin, but it had appeared on her shortly after her escapades in Equestria and she had hidden it since. The Morning Star, the planet that precedes the light of the new dawn, stealing some part of its glory. Her sister’s glory.
What, do I have to be fighting against destiny to be happy? Where would I even begin, now? I’m where I have to be, doing what I have to do, and my company is exactly what I deserve.
All she ever wanted was to be free, happy, and loved, and then she was none of those things.
Closing her eyes, she sank away reluctantly, wishing she could curl against someone and shivered as though cold. Deeper and deeper she went, retreating from the waking world, and finally found herself drifting in darkness.
Something warm touched her hair, soft and comforting as it stroked it down her neck and back. She murmured weakly as sleep sloughed off her, wondering if Morgan had returned, or even if Daphne had portaled into her room. Worming closer towards the source, she heard a woman’s voice whisper to her, “There you are, Amelia.”
She moaned softly and pressed closer.
“My little girl… don’t feel bad. You aren’t a monster. You were just a scared child trying to do what you thought was right.”
“I am a monster…” Amelia mumbled back. “Mom… please, I can’t go. I have to fix things.”
“Shh.” Hooves tucked around her, holding her close.
In spite of her feelings, a more alert – and more innately suspicious – part of her mind caught on that detail. Indeed, her mother sounded not at all like this mare.
Her eyes snapped open and she found herself in a white-stone ruin. Hooves held her tenderly, lovingly against a mare’s barrel. When she lifted her head, the sight froze her guts to ice. It was far from the first time she’d had this nightmare, but she’d never hooked her between her hooves like this.
Celestia lay there, her mane living flame, her eyes pits of light, her coat frosted with red. Squirming free of her embrace, she scrambled away and her eyes caught a flash of gold. The terrible Bridle glowed like molten metal from where it sat atop a shattered pillar. If anything, it terrified her far more than Celestia’s nightmare form, but it would protect her until she could get rid of it. Again, the suspicious part of her wondered how it could possibly be here when even she had forgotten how to bring it forth, but blind panic, that awful determination to survive that had carried her for so long, drove her on. Reaching for it, she snared the smooth unblemished metal and thrust it forward like a ward against evil.
It hurt to watch the light fade from the mare’s eyes, even as a nightmare, but what hurt the most was seeing the love that was there sink away as well. It reminded Amelia of her mother, of what she could never have again.
* * *
Dream boundaries as insubstantial as soap bubbles rippled faintly in Luna’s passage. Like a silvery blue aurora, she graced the nighttime fancies of goblins of every walk of life, from the lowest, scum-filled alleys to the gold-encrusted drakes of the highest towers. When they woke they would remember little more than a bright flash or a glimpse of a starry mane, but the encounter would touch them forever on a deep layer, coloring their dreams for the remainder of their minds.
When her search brought her to Amelia’s dreams, she laid her hooves on the surface testingly. It felt like nothing so much as the surface of a storm, a feeling any pegasus became familiar with early in life, for their hooves stretch the cloud’s substance into a nearly insubstantial film like the skin of a drum. To a land-walker she would describe it as not so different from an earthquake distantly felt, a tremor rather than a full buck. The sharp percussion of a sudden close strike intermingled with the subtle rolling growl of distant bolts.
Taking a deep breath, Luna steadied herself. This was far from the worst dream she’d ever encountered – that dubious honor went to the invasion of the oneirophage. The titanspawn existed only in dreams, burrowing from one to the other and devouring choice bits, leaving its victims devoid of anything but their darkest dreams. Its death at her hooves had given Luna her horn, and thus forever demarcated her appearance from that of mortal ponies.
That aside, this still felt like a fairly bad nightmare as far as they went.
Closing her eyes, Luna faded into the dream like a breath of mist and stardust. It resolved around her, taking shape into a ruin of cracked white stone and shattered arches. She vaguely recognized its layout in a hazy memory of some unicorn kingdom lost so long ago that only Celestia and herself would remember it, though the details of its inhabitants, even their name and banner, slipped her grasp like smoke cupped between her hooves. The sky roiled with distant thunder, but the air above was calm, deceptively so. She turned, and found herself face-to-face with a sight that bit directly into her heart – a white mare ablaze like the sun, her eyes, mane, and tail scorching coronas. Light flashed and Luna felt herself flung away with incredible force. She felt her senses dull, and her mind fog.
Beating at her pillows with her hooves, Luna gasped awake, struggling for air and casting about in terror. Finding the room as cool and dark as a cave, no matter that the summer air of Mag Mell sweltered, she stilled her heart with practiced breathing.
Perhaps the dream wasn’t the worst she’d ever seen, but its content was as nightmarish to the visitor as it undoubtedly was proving for the owner.
Rising to her feet, she padded out of her room, nodded to her Night Guard in her suite’s receiving room, and crossed the short hall straight to the opposite door. Like hers, this one was flanked by smooth columns of white granite, but had been recently redecorated with the sun half of the coat of arms of Equestria, whose sister was mirrored on her door. Inside, two stout Royal Guards in gold-plated armor glanced up at the squeak of the hinges and stood up suspiciously. As well they should – a gifted goblin could very well impersonate her.
To the highest-ranking of the pair, she raised a hoof in greeting and lit her horn, showing first that she was no goblin by its hue and second by the coded spell she cast. The broad-shouldered unicorn mare saluted sharply and smiled. “Princess. Your sister is asleep. Would you like me to wake her?” she offered.
Luna shook her head, not that the soldier anticipated anything less. “I might be a while. Thank you, please return to your posts.” She paused as slid the door to the bedroom open, revealing hints of yellow patterned tiles on the ceiling. “Are your shifts over soon?”
“Yes, Highness.” The mare glanced at a watch. “It’s 0340, we’ll turn over to the morning watch in twenty.”
“Sweet dreams, then.”
Shutting the door with a click, Luna turned to find her beloved older sister curled about a long pillow on her side, tucked into it like a lover’s embrace with her mane flowing across her body. For a moment she couldn’t help but watch the rise and fall of her barrel, her thoughts peeling back the eons until they were foals once more, Luna wild and untamed and Celestia miserable and lonely. In chronological terms, they wouldn’t be very far apart in age in a relative sense, but for whatever reason, it seemed Luna could never stop feeling the younger by far. She would blame her imprisonment halting her progression, but she knew it had persisted long before, even when they were merely a thousand years apiece.
With a soft murmur, her sister stirred, and Luna wondered awfully if her sister had shared her dream with Amelia, but if so she showed no sign of it as she slid languidly from sleep to wakefulness. “Luna? Is that you?” she called, not in modern Equestrian, but in the ancient tongue that only they now shared.
“It’s me,” Luna murmured. “It’s just me, Sister.”
Yawning, Celestia beckoned her near and Luna slid in next to her. Sensing her sister’s tension, as usual, Celestia set about preening Luna’s feathers, nosing them back into place. Luna lifted her wing and submitted to the attention, sighing softly.
“Amelia is having nightmares.”
Celestia paused momentarily before returning to her task. “She wouldn’t appreciate you intruding on them.”
“Perhaps not, but Marble Stone asked me to look into it. She’s grown increasingly erratic of late, she says, and you and I both know that she’s becoming more isolated. When she started here, she reformed criminal justice, banned slavery, even made peace with those giants of Niefelheim that she could. If it weren’t for her, goblins and ponies wouldn’t be getting along half as well as they are, and Mag Mell not nearly so safe a city.” She took a deep breath. “She’s been dreaming of you, as a nightmare.”
Luna turned her head as her sister froze again, and felt a familiar pang at the uncertainty in her sister’s eyes. “It wasn’t your fault,” she murmured.
“Neither was it entirely yours, but…” Celestia sighed and nosed at her side tenderly. “Can you help her, Luna? I would, but… but it is like that any attempt of mine to reach out would only serve to harm her, particularly if she is indeed dreaming of me in that fashion.”
“I think I can.” Luna shifted her legs and rose to her feet. “Do you have any idea why she could be having such dreams?” Her breath caught and she glanced at the other mare. “You don’t think you might be sharing dreams with her, do you?”
“None, and I wouldn’t know. It might be worth looking into,” Celestia said sadly. “Perhaps someone here might have some insight on what’s troubling the King? Have you spoken to the Queen, perhaps? Queens are the traditional administrators of the goblin courts, and she has a formidable reputation.”
Trotting over to the balcony, Luna scanned the towers until she found the tall, pointed, iron-set glass windows of Queen Stylus’ tower. Even at this late hour, they glowed from within with a golden light. It was said that the Wand Queen rarely, if ever, slept. “No, but I can try.” She slipped over to her sister and wrapped her up in her midnight wings. “Sleep well, Sister.”
“I will try,” Celestia murmured and embraced her tightly.
Launching herself out into the air, Luna glanced back at her sister’s window with her hair streaming behind her and across her vision. Perhaps I must needs take a glimpse into Celestia’s dreams as well, indeed.
With her wings filling with powerful updrafts from the castle roof, she glided higher among the confusing warren of keeps and buildings. Unlike Morgan and Amelia, Stylus lived in the heart of the castle, at the top of the main keep that looked down over the urban sprawl below. She picked an upper-level arcade that looked over an elevated courtyard. A chipped-stone fountain bubbled away languidly in the center and she skirted it on her way to a pair of heavy wooden doors guarded by stone gargoyles to either side.
Luna approached them and cleared her throat politely. “I am Princess Luna of Equestria, here to see Stylus, the Queen of Wands.”
No answer came from the statues, pocked by the constant low-level wind. Blushing, Luna stepped forward and knocked. “Well, I thought it was a reasonable assumption around here,” she muttered, ruffling her feathers.
The door slid open to allow a slot of golden light to fall over the gray courtyard. A raven as big as a cat hopped out on its little legs and stared up at her with one bead-like eye. It quorked at her and hopped back inside. Taking it for an invitation, Luna set her hoof to the heavy door and slid it open, scraping it along the flags until it stuck. She frowned and squeezed through as best she could, grateful for once that she didn’t quite have her sister’s generous hips, and passed into a large library of books and scrolls that overflowed their shelves and formed towering stacks across the floor.
“Sorry about that,” a voice called, as dry and papery as the yellowing leather-bound tomes themselves, “haven’t gotten around to properly fixing those hinges since Nessus broke them. They’re a bit off-center.”
“It’s quite all right,” Luna called back as she trotted about in search of the source. Ravens, crows, and sparrows eyed her skeptically from atop shelves and books, and Luna wondered for a moment if one of them might be the legendarily reclusive Queen. How much of that is the long imprisonment forced by Nessus, and how much inclination, I wonder?
Her question answered itself when she turned around a pile of ancient maps to find a reed-thin woman sitting atop a levitating volume. The floor was covered in old owl feathers shed from her molting wings, and her stick-like legs looked as though they could no longer support even her minimal weight. Though her sharp face, focused on her work, remained smooth, her stiff hair was pale and translucent.
It was a strange thing for Luna to encounter someone near as old as herself. The thought of her cooped up in this little room, dutifully completing her tasks while imprisoned by the last King of Wands for the last several centuries, reminded her uncomfortably of her own imprisonment – though at least for her, she had been too diffuse to really remember it in any substantial fashion, and a thousand years had slipped by in a dreamy haze.
With her gaze intent on her work, a scroll floating before her, Luna waited patiently for the Queen to finish her work. A smooth black rod beside her seared letters onto the page, almost certainly her rod. Idly, she wondered whether or not Stylus had learned how to use computers yet, not that she herself had taken on more than the basics. After finishing her sentence, Stylus turned to regard Luna with eyes as cool and dark as the raven’s.
“Welcome to my humble home, Princess of the Night. Forgive me if I won’t curtsey.” She tilted her head inquisitively. “Is it that you are here for my King then?”
Luna waved a hoof. “It’s fine, and… yes. Yes, I am here for Amelia. My sister and some other interested parties are surpassingly worried about her.”
“Yet you are not?”
Frowning, Luna shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that I’m not worried about her. Indeed, if anything, I’m probably one of the few who can sympathize with the trials of being someone who has a great deal to answer for, as I told her in person years ago.”
“So you would say that you are concerned for the King, but not with a strong personal interest.”
“Yes, then,” she said quietly, “if we must be legalistic about it.”
“We must – if we are to determine how well you can help the King with her concerns,” Stylus said, twirling her rod of office in midair. “Yes, I have noticed that the King is ailing, and perhaps your special gifts might help her. She is resilient, though, and not inclined to accept help, so you must be cautious if you will at all.”
“Can you tell me what’s bothering her?”
Stylus shrugged. “I know as much as the castle knows, for everyone in the castle speaks to me. They tell me that the King is given to temperamental moods and fiercer silences. In the wee hours of the night she can be heard crying out, but when asked she refuses any help and denies any harm. Doctors and psychologists are turned aside at the door.”
“What do you recommend, then?”
“While I support this measure, Princess, for it seems that violating the King’s private dreams are the only option remaining to us, I don’t think that you can do it alone.” She floated over to her desk and used her arms to push herself onto her chair. Luna winced in sympathy – the idea of growing so old that one’s wings would no longer support her was worthy of a nightmare in itself, and she was glad she would never suffer it herself. “There’s someone else who might be able to help, however. Someone much closer to her.”
“Maille? Wire? She lives in Equestria with her daughter now, but I could summon her. Or Marcus, I suppose, assuming he’s even near Midgard. Or Daphne, of course, I’m sure she can hear us.”
Stylus shot her a bemused look. “No. Morgan, the King’s shadow.”
“Morgan?” She lifted a hoof, startled. “She’s the very reason your King is here in the first place! Theirs is a history of pain and torment. Why would she be any help at all, particularly since Amelia imprisoned her?”
“Her imprisonment is precisely why I suggest it, Princess Luna.” Stylus folded her sharp-fingered hands and smiled tightly. “You of all people should understand what it’s like?”
“How do you mean by that?” Luna asked, flaring her nostrils. She had a fair idea.
“Merely reframing how you consider the two of them. Whether or not Morgan will consent… well, that is entirely up to her. I would try very hard, though – you may well be our court’s last hope of having a good King.”
Feeling almost more confused than when she entered, Luna nodded her dubious thanks and left without further entangling herself. Truthfully, she wondered why she bothered. Amelia was no child, not even by her birth age, and it seemed as if the entire city had simply decided to lump the task on Luna’s shoulders – someone whom, as she had pointed out, had little direct interest.
And yet Luna found the task hard to put aside, as she spread her wings and lifted off towards Morgan’s tower. Even if Marble Stone and Stylus had not asked on behalf of their court, or Celestia on behalf of her own troubled conscience, Luna found it difficult not to empathize with this strange, lonely monarch high on her throne. If her sister had not have been there for Luna’s own return from her Nightmare status, she, too, might well have withered away in darkness.
In all respects, Morgan’s tower was far more to her liking than Amelia’s with its dark velvet drapes and cool colors, though she chafed at any comparison Stylus might draw between the two pairs. The creature known as the Morgwyn was as unrepentant as a serpent striking a mare’s heel and far more dangerous. Shouldering through an open balcony portal, she knocked at the entrance to the suite.
Briefly, she wondered why Amelia had given her such luxurious accommodations. Even the guest suites that housed Luna and herself were neither so spacious nor furnished. It defied the somewhat drafty image of Stylus’ library with its smooth, plastered walls painted in midnight blue and its carved pillars of horses and celestial bodies. With a start, she realized that the audience chamber she sat beside greatly resembled her own in some details, and wondered how much Celestia’s memories had influenced it.
A horrifying thought insinuated itself, and she folded her wings at her sides and frowned. No… could it be that she’s come to regard Morgan as a replacement for me, somehow? Someone to fill Celestia’s need for a sister to watch over?
The lacquered door slid open to reveal Morgan’s humanoid features, with long dark hair spilling down her back and framing her pale face and her bloodshot, green-blue eyes glowing like a cat’s in the dim light.
If Luna was right, it represented a twisted sort of liability, and perhaps the most ill-placed familial affection she’d ever seen. Yet, as Stylus had said, it may be her critical path in.
“Oh. You.” She leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms over her chest and sighing. “What do you want? It’s pretty late. Not that I was able to sleep anyway.”
Luna lifted a hoof, considering for a moment turning and dropping the entire thing before grabbing her sister and fleeing this unhappy house, but she pushed through her reluctance. “I need your help. Or, more accurately, Amelia does.”
“Amelia? I think if Amelia, of all people, needed help, she’d say so.”
“Curious, considering her behavior the last time she was in Equestria that would seem to be the precise opposite conclusion I’d draw,” Luna said with some repressed heat.
Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “If you’ve come to beat on me, I don’t really think either of us really need help with that. Maybe I can’t throw you out, but I don’t need to sit here and take it.”
Sighing, Luna shook her head apologetically. “No, no. I just mean to say that she’s very good at suffering in silence, though I think you’ve noticed that she’s not doing well. Everyone in the castle has.”
Mollified, Morgan stood up straight, regarding Luna quietly. “Yeah. I have. She’s been weird to me, too. What’s this got to do with you?”
“I tried peeking into her dreams, but…” She sighed. “My sister was there, as a nightmare, and for me that is in itself a nightmare. I was told that you could help, that you’re the best person who could help Amelia.”
“So, you want me to dreamwalk into her private mental space and play psychiatrist?”
“Basically.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Look,” Luna said, spreading her wings slightly and lifting a hoof imploringly, “my sister, Marble Stone, and Stylus have all asked me personally to look into this. They feel that I can help her with my special talents, and Stylus at least is convinced that you’re key to that.”
“Why not Daphne?” Morgan asked acidly. “The great Aquarius should be here for her baby sister.”
Trotting over to a window, Luna stuck her head out and scanned the sky until she found a green star gazing watchfully over the castle, almost directly ahead. “At times closeness is keenly felt by absence, and arguments best made when you allow the one you care about to reach the conclusion themselves.”
Luna pushed her hair back from her face where it had fallen. Morgan’s lips were pursed, and after a moment of parsing human facial expressions, Luna decided that it was definitely a pout. “I think Daphne would come if she felt she could be of help, don’t you?”
For an answer, Morgan turned and walked back toward her bed. Luna followed her, listening to the swish of her silken skirts. Morgan’s four-poster bed bore an uncanny resemblance to Luna’s own, its sheets tangled into the geography of an alien planet in their owner’s futile attempts to get comfortable.
“There’s a large cushion by the balcony,” Morgan said, pointing over to a large half-sphere of bound together branches and wood looking over the city, draped through it was an elegant velvet cushion of shimmering indigo and blue. “You can use that, if you’d like, or fly back to your room or whatever you need to do.”
“I have your consent, then?” Luna asked. At Morgan’s grudging silence, she pressed delicately. “May I ask why? I don’t really understand what you want out of helping her.” Or out of anything, for that matter. “You two, well… don’t need me to remind you of your history.”
Morgan stared at a detail on a carved bedpost. “It’s that, or wither into an empty shell.”
Luna shared the silence that followed for a minute before sliding onto the cushion by the window. “Do you need help sleeping?”
“It’s not that I can’t sleep as much as I don’t want to sleep.” She shook her head and climbed into bed. “I can manage on my own.”
Nodding, Luna laid her head down. For the Princess of the Night, falling into sleep was as easy as stepping off a ledge, once one developed the courage to manage it, and down she went.
* * *
Morgan awoke bound in iron, her limbs lashed to geometric perfection. She thrashed and shook, as helpless as the bound titans undergirding reality, and screamed. She could feel Daphne’s vines constricting around her, crushing her, swallowing her freedom. “Let me go!” she hollered into the darkness.
“Jeeze, fine. Don’t throw a fit, Morgan; all you had to do was say so,” Amelia’s voice said as she pulled off the blindfold over her eyes and untied her legs from the posts. Blinking at the sudden sunlight, she found herself staring down at an audience full of giggling foals and her stomach crunched in on itself. Amelia, herself, and the other fillies and colts on stage all wore costumes of the pre-Equestrian era, and they stared at her as if she’d grown a second head.
A blush crept up her neck and she fled, her hooves thumping across the wooden flooring as she galloped backstage. A pair of hooves caught her and she panicked again, struggling for a moment until she felt the mare’s hooves stroking her wings and mane, whispering comforting words. In spite of herself, she buried her face in the mare’s mane and trembled. “It’s okay, honey,” she murmured. “You don’t have to go out there if you don’t want to. I won’t let anyone make fun of you.”
Morgan sniffed and moaned fitfully against her, a word bubbling up from the back of her throat. A whimper escaped her lips, “Mama…”
New hoofsteps trotted near, and the mare lifted her head slightly. “Oh, hello Princess Luna.”
Freezing, a mortified Morgan held still, hoping she’d disappear into oblivion. When that failed to happen, she slowly turned her head and stared at the Princess of the Night, their faces mirrors of shock. It dawned on her that she’d fallen into another lucid, gripping dream.
Delilah, the mother of Daphne and Amelia, faded away like dust in the wind, while the stars pricked into being around them. Princess Luna’s hoof was pressed firmly to her mouth, her eyes shining with tears.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Morgan turned her face away. “I didn’t ask for this!”
Throat dry, Luna licked her lips a few times. “I’m… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. I had no idea.”
“It’s not me! They’re making me think these things, feel these things!” Her tail lashed, her muscles bunched up all across her tiny filly’s body. “I don’t want them. Maybe I should let Amelia rot. It’s the only revenge I have left, not acting. She did this to me. She made me this.”
“And you made her,” Luna countered. “Is this not what you would consider justice? The Morgwyn had no notion of revenge, no knowledge of justice. It had only its own selfish ends.”
The dream faded away, leaving them surrounded by a swirling nothingness that reminded Morgan so much of the primordial chaos she can barely remember in faint snatches.
“You are no titanspawn, not any longer,” Luna pressed, wrapping her wing around the filly. She pulled them back from a grown mare with a coat like ashes and a mane black as night. “You are the most responsible for your existence of any being I’ve met in this world – or any other – so hold yourself accountable. Do you care for Amelia?”
Morgan stared at the darkness, her eyes uncertain. Images of her golden-haired twin flashed through her mind, and in spite of all of her standoffish sarcasm, she found she couldn’t help warming at the sight of her.
It was all Luna needed to see. She nodded definitively and raised a hoof. “Then defend your sister as you must, or lose her.”
“But I…” Morgan flinched away, shielding her eyes with her hooves. “No one ever talks to me like this.”
Luna folded her legs, lying at rest in a small patch of purple grass woven from nothing but dream stuff. “How do they speak to you, ordinarily?”
“Afraid,” Morgan started, trotting over and reclining across from her. “Of me, or of saying the wrong thing. Afraid I’ll have one of my fits, like King Amelia.”
“But you’ve never suffered such a thing, have you?”
Morgan thought back, surely there must be some time when she stormed off to her room, breaking something in the process, but she couldn’t think of a single time. Certainly, there were times she’d found herself overwhelmed, but never in an explosive tantrum.
“You’re afraid of your emotions,” Luna said. “You have as of yet never let them get the better of you in public, you would never suffer that. It’s not a wise course to adhere to at all times.”
“And how would you know?” Morgan snapped, her eyes stinging.
Luna paused, considering her words carefully. “Celestia was not always as sweet and well-mannered as she is now. I am certain my absence forced her to temper her fire into something calm and nurturing. When we first formed the kingdom that became Equestria, she was as wild at the sun, and prone to days of sweltering emotion. It would be foolish to claim either of us have ever been what you might call ‘okay.’ She lost her mother and father when she was very young, an event that shaped her entire life. For my part, I cannot remember them.
“She was the golden child; I the wild pegasus from the swamp who stank of sweat and mud. While her exploits were well documented, my own were not. I did not enjoy the same respect she had earned. While our ponies would overlook an outburst from Princess Celestia, an outburst from myself would be less easily ignored. I… I did not wish to be her poor idiot sister. I wanted to be accepted like her. I wanted ponies to understand me.”
Luna licked her lips. “So I fought harder than she ever did at formalities. I learned from servants how to set tables, and how to make use of each tool laid out. In private I would have them teach me manners and etiquette: how to talk, but more importantly when to talk. I learned how to groom myself, and grew my mane out like to be more like hers. When some pony offended me I buried it down deep, smiled pleasantly, and often laughed as though to dismiss it. I had the respect of our rapidly developing noble class, if not their love.
“But I felt, Morgan. I felt so strongly. I was but a pegasus and my moods came upon me like summer storms. During the day, when they grew terrible enough, I would hide away in my tower. I would shut myself away from my sister and ponies. It hurt, it hurt to feel so… alone.”
Morgan’s ears twitched as she considered the story quietly.
“I trust you know how this story ends,” Luna spoke, conjuring a tea kettle and pouring herself a cup.
“Did she create me to be you, then?” Morgan asked, not looking up.
Luna paused before sipping. “I’m suspicious of that myself, but you are different enough, I think. You won’t make the same mistakes; you are still you. For all that you also play the role of sister to the queen, you are the actor within that role. Many lives are like that, actors playing roles foisted on them by the outside world.”
She nosed at Morgan’s mane. “So, if the role doesn’t suit the actor, I would advise finding a new one. It is your choice.”
Morgan considered that in silence, lowering her head and munching at the grass, which tasted of black licorice. She stood again at a precipice, considering whether to take flight or return to her sister’s house. Swallowing, she lifted her head and met Luna’s eyes.
“How do I help her?”
* * *
Morgan navigated the swirling eddies of dream with an ease that impressed her tutor and astonished even herself. Indeed, Luna had very little in the way of basic instruction for her, though she proved an invaluable mine of training in the intricacies of dreamwalking. How many times had she slipped into the dreams of others, simply from a desire to wander beyond the confines of her own self? It was too easy to get lost and immersed in the feelings and resonance of each dream world she passed through, but for once she had purpose and meaning.
Amelia’s dreams loomed large over all others in the castle, a foreboding storm cloud at the peak of a mountain whose slopes were formed by the myriad dream worlds of the castle’s inhabitants. They were, many of them, far calmer and more stable than Amelia’s. Morgan passed through them with an ease that could only be practiced in other mares slipping from one to another as she made her way up the slope.
Finally, she stood before the swirling edge of her sister’s mind, wings held up to shield her eyes. Piercing this would be far more difficult than anything Morgan had ever experienced. Instinctively, she understood why: Amelia didn’t want anyone coming in, and Amelia’s mind was a powerful thing.
“You’re such a hassle.” Morgan’s eyes were wet from irritants and the wind and surely nothing else. “I don’t know how I ever thought I could control someone who cannot control herself…”
With that, she lowered her horn and pressed on. Her magic crawled up along the surface, shining from the tip like a beacon, a ship seeking safe harbor, but the storm only raged the more for her presence as she pushed through the barrier. Luna tried to follow, but the force that threatened to repel Morgan multiplied in strength at Luna’s presence and shut her out firmly.
“You are the filly I always waited for.” A voice carried over the wind, rich with emotion and echoing with power. “Oh, Amelia… you can never know how many I adopted into my care, how many students I taught, waiting for you.”
Morgan set her jaw and pressed on, striving further and taking larger steps, her wings held at an angle to help the wind whistle down along her sides, rather than buffet her. Her thoughts fled, and her mind became fuzzy, heavy like her head had been stuffed with cotton. The wind died down, or else she lost track of it. She could feel herself slipping away.
“No…” A golden-maned unicorn filly murmured, refusing to look up at the nightmare. “I’m not you, I’m not a pony; it was all a big lie! Don’t you understand?”
“Shhh… Shhh…” The nightmare cooed. “Hist, little one; I understand more than you can know. Don’t you see? Your soul was always equine.” She ran a hoof through the filly’s mane. “You betrayed your own people.”
Amelia’s green eyes widened in shock, then narrowed. “No! You’re lying, I…” She looked to the Bridle and shook her head. “I can use the Bridle, so I must be human!”
“A passing formality. One that has come to an end.” The magic burned forth from the mare’s horn, scorching the dark sand in the gloomy world they’d found themselves in, turning it into shiny, reflective glass.
Amelia could hide from the truth, but not her reflection.
“You betrayed your people, but selflessly so! It’s not easy being a ruler, being in charge of so many people who look to you to keep the heavens and earth stable.”
Morgan squirmed through the dream, fighting her way through the black wind.
“Stay with me. Be my student, be my child, and you won’t have to bear that burden all alone. Never again.”
Morgan crashed through clouds of haze and smoke, too familiar smoke, tumbling to the ground with her hooves in the air. The fumes and embers swirling around her filled her lungs and haunted her thoughts as she came within sight of Amelia and her captor.
This is a dream. It’s a dream. I can’t die here, this shouldn’t hurt…
But it did, Morgan of all people understood that dreams can hurt more than reality.
“I never need to be alone again!” The nightmare roared, stomping her great hoof and flaring her corona. Above, the sky was an ugly orange, sweltering with heat distortions, and an angry sun sat at the center of it all.
Amelia’s body trembled, her eyes wide, and in her world, all that lay before her was the nightmare. The creature she’d created. Morgan could feel the waves of fear and uncertainty rolling off her, taste her thoughts in the air. She couldn’t understand how this had happened. She had the Bridle, that meant that she was human, that she should have been preserved from this fate.
She’d taken a beautiful goddess, a benevolent mother to an entire kingdom, and turned her into something terrible. Morgan didn’t think it could be her fault, all of this pain, all of this anger; it had to exist in the first place for her to call it forth.
Unless it was as much hers as Celestia’s, unless her pain made it all possible. Through the connection they shared by the Bridle, Amelia’s helplessness, her pain, how alone she felt, had transferred into the princess of the sun. She was insidious, she could see that now, how she wormed into the most sacred of things and tarnished them forever. It was her special talent, the eternal gift of the thief of destiny. For all of Amelia’s fear, she knew one thing.
She didn’t want to be alone anymore.
“You don’t have to be,” Morgan managed at last, stumbling over. Her form awkward and small, a coltish pegasus filly, the dark mirror of the unicorn across from her with her golden mane and pale coat. Amelia’s eyes widened. “Amy, you don’t have to be alone,” she said again, worried that she hadn’t heard her.
“Leave us at once!” The demon hissed.
“No!” Morgan called back, legs tensing as she moved to stand between the nightmare and her twin. “I won’t let you hurt her anymore.”
“It is because of you that she came down this path at all! You will not take her from me. I will not be alone again! Not now, not ever again!”
But Morgan stood defiantly, her wings raised. Never mind that the nightmare towered over her tiny form, she would not move. “No, this is not the true Celestia. The Bridle is gone and forgotten. Your freedom is restored.” Her body slumped as she struggled for breath against the fire and heat, her heart pounded with the implications of her actions. “You are healed, nightmare! Go, seek out your sister.”
“My… sister? Luna? She’s here?”
Morgan nodded. “She is; go and find her. She’s waiting for you.”
The mare’s eyes narrowed dangerously, before her body collapsed into smoke and cinders, swirling away. Morgan couldn’t be certain, but she hoped they’d seek out Luna at the borderlands of Amelia’s consciousness, and that with Luna’s help, the nightmare could be laid to rest forever.
Her attention was drawn back when a small form pressed close against her, sobbing bitterly.
“Hey…” Morgan nosed at her, the sensation calming her. “Hush, everything’s alright now.”
Amelia looked up, her green eyes ringed in red from her tears. “I ruin everything. I’m not fit to be a king, I’m not fit to be a pony; I’m not fit to be anyone.”
It took Morgan a long time to digest that as her hooves wrapped around Amelia. The silence was punctuated by sobs and tears, and it was only when Morgan answered that she realized they were shared by both.
“I think… you’re a survivor,” she says at last. “It’s hard to keep on after something traumatic changes you. Makes you do things you later regret.”
Amelia looked up, ears alert, and Morgan considered how to continue.
“I’d like to be a survivor, too. It’s hard, and I don’t…” She shook her head and sighed.
“You’re better adjusted than I am,” Amelia spoke up. “You don’t have outbursts, you don’t send the castle into chaos.”
Morgan snorted in reply. “Yes, I do. Servants keep things to themselves.” When Amelia’s eyes widened with concern, Morgan elaborated. “Never any harm, but I have outbursts, I cry and people see. Besides that, I lock myself away in a tower, far from everyone. I wasn’t the one who fixed Mag Mell, who even now is making it a better place. That’s you, it’s all you, and right now everyone is worried for their king. They love you, Amelia, you’re their last chance for a good king.”
“Maybe,” Amelia conceded. “I know you don’t like it here.”
“I’m adjusting,” Morgan frowned. “It is what it is.”
“I’m releasing you,” Amelia said. “You can leave at your leisure. Go make a home for yourself wherever you wish.”
Morgan stared down at her, blinking.
“No.”
“No?” Amelia squirmed, pulling free from her hooves. “What do you mean? This is what you wanted. Permission.”
Morgan shook her head and pressed her face into Amelia’s mane, mumbling something inaudible.
“What was that?” Amelia asked, frowning.
“No, I want to stay here. I don’t want to be alone.” She pulled Amelia in again, hugging her tightly and resting her head on the filly’s withers. Amelia trembled, looking at her with wide eyes, and, ever so slowly, settled against her.
“I don’t have to wake up now, do I?” Amelia whispered, her voice hoarse.
“Not until you’re ready,” Morgan replied, equally thick. “Though we really should see Celestia and Luna off, I guess, and thank them for their help. Especially Luna, I would not be here without her.”
Amelia nodded. “Yeah, eventually anyway.” She rubbed at her eyes and let out a high laugh. It had been decades since Morgan heard her sister laugh with that voice. “Hey, you got your butt stamp!”
Morgan frowned. “What?”
Across her flank, set in her coat as much her skin, was a dark red moon shrouded in silvery mist. The moon eclipsed, a shadow. The Moon Reversed.
“I guess this is who I am,” she murmured, sinking down to the ground.
Amelia curled up there, just breathing, before twitching her tail and asking, “Is that okay? You having a mark and all?”
Morgan weighed her answer carefully. “It’s just one more thing, you know? I want to be a survivor like you. I want to learn how to adapt.”
For a moment, Morgan was certain her twin would press the issue. Instead, they both curled up, waiting quietly for the dream to pass into dust, and drift off wherever dreams go.
* * *
Another long night and Morgan was no closer to sleep. Not only did she have to stomach congratulations from goblins of the equine persuasion, she had to wrestle with the reality that even as a human, her soul was laid bare on her skin. She could cover it of course, but the marks were there, always reminding her. Reminding her that she was absolutely part of this world now. There were no chains to hold her fast, none but the ones on her own heart and soul – chains of love, hope, and desire.
She tossed endlessly, and was considering descending on the city below to seek mischief where she could find it when the door at the end of her room creaked open, and a silent figure made her way inside, her gold mane reflecting the light from outside faintly.
No words passed between them as Amelia settled onto the bed beside Morgan, hooves curled amidst the sheets, none need be spoken. Amelia wormed in beneath Morgan’s wing, her hooves tucked against her side, and Morgan slid her head under her sister’s. They settled down into sleep, and eventually, dreams. Morgan found herself outside a cottage door edged in golden light, the sounds of laughter echoing from within. She placed her hoof to the door, pushed it open, and stepped inside.
THE END