Rise of Ponietheus

by twitterdick

3. Luna: Eerie Scenes Forced From a Dream

The reverent Princess Luna found herself struck with a dream, a recurring dream. In that dream, she was stalked, followed and flooded by a being in grey and black with a bloody bone mask of white; and she sees flickers of light - white, red, grey - amongst a background of solipsistic drippings and drains, of isolation, of a miserable, terrible fading. She found bleak scriptures and towers there, all burning in slow motion, all still as if covered in ice that was melting in the dead of night but never, never getting any smaller.

And then of the sounds, the sounds. They echoed and bellowed like a slick, shivering symphony playing laments in the barely noticeable distance. There were shrieks from shrill strings, and a whirling of whisper that trickled, tumbled down deep into a maelstrom at the bottom of a tub drain. It all so very unnoticeable, but so acute and resonant like the milky silk ghost of a sound you hear far from the corner of your ear that no one else seems to notice. There were distorted signals that beckoned and spoke of a reckoning, of terror and power. The sound drowned the light. There were psychic strings as speakers that never moved, never shrank and never stopped performing.

Luna found herself amidst a shady room, a place of tomes, and before her the being in grey and black held a jar. It poured a black powder to the floor, and the powder burst to ash. It stopped, and then poured more powder to the floor atop the festering first pile - which then burst to flame. It stopped again, then continued to pour the powder atop the burning pile, and the pile disintegrated, faded out, and drifted away. Then the being shattered the jar, and the black powder that remained rested there upon the floor and did nothing. Nothing.

Then Luna felt a pulling, a shifting, a drifting of her limbs and thoughts. She felt firmly pulled in all directions, and the sounds pushed onto the forefront, solidifying to weather; storms, bludgeoning wind, of thunder, of lighting, corrosion. She was pulled to somniferous lights that collected at the bottom of the storm drain, the sounds, and felt only pulling. Air filled her nose, her mouth, her lungs. And she awoke to silence.

It was a dream that shakes you from sleep. It was a dream that haunts you while you stand awake.

Luna pulled herself from her bed and poked her nose through the curtains on the northern window. It was midday - midway through her normal sleep cycle - and the warm sun above shined above a peaceful landscape. But there, near a horizon with high mountains all about its contours, bitter clouds burst and brewed. They appeared to be collecting there. Thoughts of the north, and of the shadowy figure of her dreams consumed all of Luna's conscious thought. She felt such rippling into and from her subconscious as well.

She made another trip to the Canterlot Castle library, as she had the other times she'd experience this dream. This time she felt lead by something, by a calling or the fragments of a dead memory. She pushed passed the larger, decorative doors into the big, look rooms of shelves and shelves of books. She immediately passed the nonfiction section where'd she had spent her previous trips to the library, and browsed through the section containing ancient literature. Then she found it, The Epic of Echelion, one of Equestia's oldest tales. She pulled the withered brown book from it's home on the shelf, and brought it to a small desk near a window on the north side of the library. The story was the only one she could think of that mentioned the long forgotten mountains to the north.

She read and read, until she came across a potent segment of the story. The first part of the epic, entitle 'Ponietheus Bound', ended thus:

There, by a river, I sat and reflected with my head hung low. Although the darkness lie behind us and the southern valleys of Equestria before us, my mind remained upon the past. For I fear I alone remember the Benefactor, the one who gave us fire and knowledge; for when that great devil of the sky was set to rain down upon us and drive us down into the fires of perdition, our Benefactor leapt from his mountain and the sky was encased in darkness.

That devil was encased in the bitter darkness and molded, wearing the faces and parts of animals common and unrecognizable. His feeble crown became thorns and he screamed as he was banished south beyond the reaches of the horizon. All enemies from the sky were crippled; the ones in the air lost their wings and the ones upon the ground lost their horns. They shrieked and fled, becoming ones of the earth with us.

But our Benefactor shifted. He looked a shadow of the beasts under the earth - like all our dead mothers and waking fears. Our people shrouded under that darkness and we gathered all we had and fled with the cripples down into the valley beyond. We ran then into the wilderness for ten days and ten nights without rest, and regarded our Hailcryon and our Benefactor as a cage with a beast of blasphemy with ten horns, ten eyes and the faces of the dead, the damned and the forever lost. One devil was lost and replaced with another.

None would dare to go back, and my duty overtook my desire to return and see what became that place and of the friend that slew the enemy and lost himself because of it. Our land is now pure and warm, our friends many and our enemies in our debt. The cloven ones - hornless with wings and wingless with horns - know nothing of the ways of the earth. They know nothing of hunger, fire and cold. And our new homes are accompanied with bitterness, warm and a strong view south.

But my heart is enraptured with despair. I think I heard a glimmer of the Benefactor's thoughts, forced from a dream. I fear, and dreamt, for in that place - the great city that grew dark and arid - Ponietheus wept for all he knew. He wept for the death of the old ways as it rained down upon him and he watched all he loved cross into where he could not follow. He sat and stared long into the unknowable future, and cataloged all he had wasted.

She whispered there to herself, "Old stories have a way of forcing themselves into the present."

"Luna? Dear sister, is that you?"

Celestia appeared from a nearby hallway and approached her sister, coming up on her left side. "What are you doing awake?"

Luna remained rather catatonic and dazed. She did not speak, but turned her head to her sister and gazed. Celestia met her gaze and tilted her head. Her eyes broke away to the brown book on the table.

"What is that? What do you have?" Celestia asked.

Luna looked down upon the tome stretched out before her. Its words echoed in her mind, and sparks of old feelings and half-remembered dreams burst in the back of her head, just out of sight. She reached for them, but they moved farther - like they were pulled farther. She sat back mystified.

"Its just a story. A very old story with a very sad ending," she said.

Celestia moved closer, first in concern then kindness. She placed her head gently on her sister's shoulder and directed her gaze to the gleaming window and the storms beyond. "It's amazing how fictional characters work their way into our hearts easier then any real being. It's easy to get lost in this place, but there is no malice in it."

"No malice…" Luna said, her words were raspy and her mind in a haze. She sat daunted, overcome by a book. "No malice, but cruel nonetheless."

She turned to her older sister and whispered a question, "Can you imagine pouring so much of yourself into another, only to watch them leave you?"

Celestia paused. "…No," she said, "What's gotten into you?"

Luna sighed. "I've been having dreams again. No, it's the same dream over and over."

"Do you feel another mind is there? Do you feel a foreboding?"

"Absolutely, yet not quite. It's so uncanny. There's always a black figure, with a face like a skull - like the face of dead mothers. It just watches, but it's everywhere. There's always a library, a dead city and black powder. Then there's clouds and sounds - the kind of sounds that are so quiet that you cannot help but hear them. They don't belong there, nothing there belongs. They're like… that storm brewing in the north. Storms don't look like that, it's not right."

"How many times have you had this dream?"

"Four times. Details change, and every one seems more depraved and desperate in atmosphere than the one before. Every time I wake up, I see those clouds up north just collecting there, almost instinctively…"

"…And the black figure, she's always there?" Celestia said.

"'She'?"

"…It."

"…Yes. Always."

Celestia broke away from her sister and stared out the nearby window. The clouds raddled in the distance, and she could almost feel their rumble in back drop of the ambient sounds. "Do you think the black figure is… real or just a piece of you?"

"…I don't know. I can never see it clearly," Luna said, "I mean, there's no part of me that I'd picture like that. But I don't know for sure."

Celestia inhaled, but smiled. "I trust your judgement, sister," she said, "If you think that storm is a foreboding thing, then find somepony to investigate it. I suppose I cannot truly see what your seeing through your eyes, but I feel for you. I agree, there is something that is… not right."

"I'd like to go myself, if possible," Luna said.

"I would not stop you, but I'd prefer if you didn't. I'm not so sure I'd want you running off to who knows where," Celestia said. She put on a playful smile, and leaned down near her sister's ear. "Besides, if you find a library out there, you might never come back."

Luna snickered. "I definitely would take any excuse to get away from you! You're quite the dictator, I hear."

"Why, who would say such a thing about their benevolent leader!?" Celestia said with a gasp, "Tell me their names so that I might throw them in prison!"

The two shared in a laugh the broke the arid stillness that was collecting upon the atmosphere - however briefly. Soon, their eyes turned again to the storms outside that seemed to stretch out further and further into the sky like a conqueror awaking with a morning stretched. The playful smiles corroded.

"…Shall we send Twilight Sparkle and her friends to investigate?" Luna said, "It's probably nothing, and I'm sure she's itching for any excuse to get away from here and assemble her friends."

Celestia sighed. "Well, since your the more compassionate and level-headed of the two of us, I'll leave it to your discretion. If it turns out to be nothing, then it's nothing. But if it's not…"

"It would be better to know as soon as possible."

Celestia relaxed from her authoritative posture somewhat and stretched her neck. "Please have it be nothing…" she murmured, "All these constant crises are getting somewhat repetitive."

"…You're running out of celestial objects to banish them to," Luna said.

"Indeed," Celestia responded. She backed away from her sister and bit her tongue. After a short silence she said, "Twilight Sparkle should be returning from her lunch break. You'll probably be able to catch her in her room."

The elder sister left and the younger one sat there a while, gazing out into the distance via the window there.

And there, in a bit of a thoughtless torpor, Princess Luna found herself irrevocably in front of Twilight Sparkle's bedroom door. It was strange, she thought, that all the will she had to walk up, knock on Twilight's door and deliver orders to her withered. She had stuck her hoof out prepared to knock upon the door but it froze in place is if suddenly rendered incapable of preforming the action. She breathed heavily and forced her hoof upon the door. It pushed open for it had not been latched. The inside was dark, the bed neat, books scattered, curtains closed and assistants joyful snoozing the midday away.

Luna was hesitant, but nonetheless resolved. "Um, excuse me…?" she called into the room.

Spike stirred. "Hmmm…Not now, Twilight…" he said, rolling to his side.

"I am not Twilight," Luna said, "but I was hoping I could-"

"…Hmm? Not Twilight?" Spike said. He forced himself upwards, and rubbed his eyes. He glanced over to the Princess, focused, processed then inhaled sharply with wide eyes.

"Ah! Princess Luna!!" Spike shrieked and leap from his bed. He then frantically threw open the curtains and made sure everything in the room and on his person was neat and in order. He then stood militantly in front of the Princess with a firm salute. "What can I do for you, my lady?"

"…Um, oh goodness. Is… Is Twilight around, Sp-… Ssssp…?" Luna said.

"…S-Spike," Spike said.

"Right!" Luna said in-between a rather embarrassed set of chuckles. She clenched her teeth. "Where is Twilight Sparkle, Spike?" she asked.

"Umm…" Spike said, eying the room, "I… I think she's out to lunch. I was just guarding her things when I… uh, fell asleep."

"That's quite alright," Luna said, rubbing her shoulder nervously, "Could you take a message for me?"

Spike grabbed a quill and paper from a nearby desk. "Y-Yes, yes! Absolutely."

"Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle," Luna began, "You are hereby tentatively extricated from your royal duties in order to-"

"Ext-….extraaah…" Spike said. He glanced at the Princess with a worrisome expression.

"…Granted a sojourn of absence in order to-"

"So-… Sojjj-…"

"…Given a break."

"…Given. A. Break." Spike mouthed as he wrote.

"Yes, 'given a break' from your royal duties to investigate the eldritch… I mean, the spooky storm clouds to the north to make sure they are not a threat. If they are not, then you will return to your duties. If they are, your… break will be extended so that you may mitigate… I mean, fix the situation. Any resources you need will be available to you."

"…Available. To. You. Okay, I got it!" Spike said.

"Thank you very much, Spot!" Luna said cheerfully.

"…S-Spike," Spike said.

"…Oh, right…" Luna said, "…Sorry."