A Journey through Memories

by Centauri

Chapter Eleven - A Radical Turn

A Journey through Memories

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Chapter Eleven - A Radical Turn

I felt the sun on my back and my love under my wing. I did not want to move from this spot, but I knew I must, for fear of awkward questions from the others. I lifted my wing off Twilight and she stirred, but did not wake. I looked at Celestia’s light hanging low in the sky, burning the clouds a deep orange, and guessed that it was half an hour past dawn. Applejack woke up a few minutes after me, momentarily scared that she’d overslept.

“Good morning,” I greeted her. She returned the greeting with a smile, looking well-rested. We waited around the camp for another fifteen minutes, chatting idly, until we decided we should wake the others. I went to Rarity first, deciding she would need the most time to get ready. I nuzzled her shoulder gently.

“Hey, Rarity,” I woke her. “Rise and shine.” She opened her eyes and gave me a mild glare; she, especially, hated being woken up before she was ready. Her glare softened to a resigned look before long, however. Next I moved to Pinkie Pie. Before I could wake her, she bounced up.

“I’m awake!” she exclaimed. “My Pinkie sense was telling me that I’m about to be woken up, so I woke up before you could.” I marvelled at Pinkie Pie’s acute sensitivity to her own instincts even in her dreams, but left alone, taking the advice from reading Twilight’s friendship report on the subject; I knew Twilight well enough that she would have tried very hard to find any scientific reason, and I doubted my own ability to outdo her.

I decided to wake up Twilight next. I nuzzled her tenderly on the neck. “It’s time to wake up, dear,” I whispered in her ear. She smiled, and opened one eye.

“Can’t it wait?” She asked, half-heartedly.

“Sorry, no,” I replied, smiling at her. “Not unless you want to skip breakfast; we need to get through this forest today.” She grunted and stood to her hooves. She stopped short.

“Should we tell the others?” She asked, slightly aghast. I turned to see the others’ reactions to our exchange, but I was relieved to realise that nopony else had noticed the exchange. I was shocked with myself that the thought had not crossed my mind. I thought about the problem at hand.

“No...” I wondered aloud. “Not yet, at any rate.” I was glad that Twilight agreed with my reasoning. “Rest assured that we will tell them, though.” She nodded, and we returned to the others.

“Do we all have enough apples left for the trip through the forest?” I asked the assembled mares. They all nodded. “I might be able to find some fungi, though, if you want to use them in cooking.” Rarity nodded at this; she had a prestigious knowledge of cooking and could make a simple forest fungus seem like a royal feast. “Is everyone ready?” I asked, to another round of nods from the mares. “Then let’s go.”

I led the way into the forest by the dirt track. When we reached about a hundred yards in, the air started feeling very close and I could not see the sun through the dense trees. Twilight, Rarity and I lit up our horns to cast a white light around us to dispel the darkness that we were engulfed within. I was forced to remember the scene that I had rediscovered in my memories as Pinkie Pie pulled faces at the trees around us.

“Hey, Fluttershy,” Pinkie called. “Look at this one.” Fluttershy responded to the summons and broke down into a fit of quiet giggles as she looked at the tree.

As we neared our third hour of walking, I saw a fungus which I knew could be cooked with ease and gave an interesting flavour. I knew we could all appreciate some change in the normally dull routine of our trudge around Equestria. I gave the mushrooms to Rarity, who stored them in her saddlebags for later.

* * *

We continued along the track, listening to the silence around us, hoping for the slightest sign of life in the foliage. It was a monotonous day, and conversation was low. We all wanted to be out of that forest promptly; Pinkie Pie was the only exception, who found the humour in the trees to be infinite and always changing. It was, however, to a communal sense of relief that we emerged from the trees at the other side of the road. It was past sunset, but it was difficult to tell time in the forest, so nobody cared. Rarity could not summon enough energy to cook the mushrooms I had collected throughout the forest, so we all had to graze on the grass around the forest.

Twilight lit up her horn and started reading one of the books she had brought with her, and, one by one, the other ponies fell asleep. I walked up to Twilight and examined what she was reading, and she allowed me to drape a wing over her back, offering some meagre warmth.

“I’m just brushing up on long distance teleportation,” she told me. “I always had a bit of trouble with that.” Twilight stopped reading and nuzzled my neck; I smiled at the contact. “When do you think we should tell them?” She asked, worriedly.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It just seems so complicated.”

Twilight nodded. “I feel terrible about lying to my friends...” she began, “or, at least, not telling them the full truth.” I could feel the pain she was going through as if it were my own.

I nuzzled her in return. “I know, dear,” I assured her. “We will tell them in due course. In the meantime, however, I think we shouldn’t trouble them.” Twilight lay down on her side and I reciprocated, hooves touching.

“I’m just not sure what they’d think,” Twilight said. “What with you being a princess and me being your sister's stu...” she broke off suddenly and blanched. “Oh, hay. How are you going to let Celestia know?”

My heart fell; that would be a very difficult bridge to cross. “Not easily,” I replied after a pause. Twilight grunted lightly in sympathy.

We spent another hour chatting idly with each other, about teleportation, stars we could see now, and numerous other frivolities. Eventually, I suggested we should get some sleep after the late night we had received the day before. I laid my wing over Twilight again tonight, for it was winter and getting very cold at night, and tried drifting off to sleep, watching the moon along its path.

* * *

There was some conversation throughout the journey over the next five days. Pinkie Pie had started to sing again; her songs were gradually becoming more absurd throughout the hike. Fluttershy joined in, sometimes adding a beautiful descant on top of the lyrics. The rest of us predominantly stayed silent, or laughed as the lyrics called for. Twilight was walking with her book in front of her, trying to pick up tips for long-distance teleportation, and I offered her advice when I could. We continued our conversations often deep into the night, enjoying one another’s company immensely, and praying that none of the other mares found out.

It was now the mid-afternoon of the seventh day of our hike from the crossroads north of Highridge, and Cadmos was in sight. It was not a large town; consisting of about fifty buildings, none of which were more than two storeys above ground. It had a village square with a fountain in the centre near the southern entrance, where we were approaching from. The whole settlement was surrounded by a fifteen-hoof palisade, and only three points of entry into it. It looked like a town with few passers-by, and I guessed that there would be few inns there.

As we neared the southern gate, the three stallions guarding it bowed to me. I bade them stand and thanked them for the welcome, denying any offers to alert the town mayor to our presence. I asked them for the way to the nearest inn, and they obliged happily, directing us to the right turnoff from the main square. As we entered the square, I saw some golden-armoured town guards leading off stretchers covered with white linen. Noting that there were many stretchers and too little disruption for this to be an accident, I walked up to one of the guards.

“Excuse me, sir?” I asked, and he saluted. “How did this happen?”

“I’m afraid we have no idea, your majesty,” the guard returned.

“Please, just Luna,” I requested for the goodness-knows-how-many time. “May I please see one of the bodies; I may be able to shed some light on the subject.” The guard complied, motioning for one of the stretchers to be brought over. He gingerly lifted the linen, and I gasped at what I saw.

A midnight-black mare was lying on the stretcher, looking at peace. She was wearing a familiar dark-grey cloak. I examined what had killed her, and a guard, noting my interest, told me. “She was killed by a rising stab wound from the diaphragm. The blade pierced her heart, so it was quick.” I hoarsely thanked the guard, and returned to my friends.

“We had better sleep with our doors locked tonight,” I told them, and they stared at me in horror. “I think the assassins know that I’m here.” Fluttershy made a tiny noise akin to a gasp, Applejack and Rainbow Dash’s jaws set, Rarity’s mouth hang slack open, Pinkie Pie was not smiling; in fact, she was deadly serious, and I knew Pinkie Pie well enough to know that it was a grave issue. Twilight looked at me in shocked horror. “We had better go; we need to get somewhere remotely safe before nightfall.”

We started down the street, jumping at any slight movement in the shadows, until we finally reached the inn. We walked in and I found it was covered with an undertone of conversation. We kept our cloaks on, for it was cold, and we moved to the bar. I ordered an apple cider, knowing I could hold my liquor better than all; the others ordered something without alcohol. I looked up and down the bar, looking for any midnight-coated ponies, but I found none. I did find a brown unicorn stallion drinking a full bottle of whisky. I saw that he was not overly intoxicated yet and walked towards him.

“That amount of whiskey could kill you, you know,” I told him, half conversationally, half seriously worried for his health. He stayed silent for a short time before he finally turned to me.

“I’m beyond caring, right now,” the unicorn told me, and I was shocked. I was about to ask him why, but a small voice stopped me.

“Luna,” Fluttershy caught my attention. When I regarded her, she simply pointed to the coat rack; a dark grey cloak was hanging from one of the hooks. I stifled a gasp as I double-checked the room. But... there are no assassins here, I thought to myself, also feeling extremely glad that we had kept our travelling cloaks on: my wings were well concealed under the thick fabric. I needed to check something, and I walked over to the barkeep.

“Has anyone ordered a room for tonight?” I asked the barkeep politely. He grunted in affirmative. “Are we able to rent three rooms for the night?” I continued. The barkeep looked up from the glass he was cleaning.

“Fifteen bits,” he said, simply. I paid him and he handed me three keys. They had the rooms’ numbers on them, and I recommended to the others that they go upstairs. I gave another cursory glance around the common room before I followed them up. As I walked the first step, I passed the coat rack. It had no cloak on it, and I paused. They either must’ve left, I thought, or they’re upstairs. I shivered, noting that the cold wasn’t the cause to any degree.

When I got to our rooms, I noticed that Twilight had already sorted the five mares into their respective rooms: Rarity with Fluttershy; Pinkie Pie with Rainbow Dash and Applejack; and... her with me. I shrugged: she made her choice, and I was happy with that. I advised that we all stay in our rooms until dinner, at sundown. I stayed with Twilight until then, talking about different academic topics. We reached the topic of ecology, one which I happened to be an expert in for the fact of being a co-creator of it. This had apparently slipped Twilight’s mind, as I found when I casually stated that fungi had been my idea.

“Celestia’s flowers grow in the sun,” I explained to her, as she remembered that I had helped shape Equestria as ponies saw it today, “and I felt it prudent that we should have a plant that grows in contrast to them, in the night. They’ve become a lot rarer in the past thousand years, after...” I stopped; I did not want to enter that topic with Twilight. Sympathetically, she moved onto the subject of chemistry, to which I happily obliged.

It came to dinnertime, and we convened in the common room. The brown stallion from before had left, leaving a nearly-full bottle of whiskey on the bar where he had sat. I ordered some hay and grass seed salad, and sat by a table in the corner. As I munched on the assorted leaves, I noted that while the establishment looked untidy, the cook certainly knew their craft. Twilight sat down opposite me, and I smiled briefly at her, stopping when the others sat down. We finished our food and moved upstairs to our beds. I checked that everypony was okay, and discreetly cast spells for deep sleep on each of them, knowing that with my plan to go to the tropics in the north, they would need all the rest they could get tonight. I moved to our room and lay on the bed opposite to Twilight’s.

“We should get some sleep, dear,” I recommended, looking at Twilight. “We’ve a long fortnight ahead of us.”

“Where’re we going?” Twilight asked.

“Up north, to the tropics,” I replied. She groaned: it was a long way to the tropics, and the trip was not always easy; bandits also frequented the paths, knowing that unwary travellers were very far from assistance.

We bade each other goodnight and Twilight snuffed the candles with her horn. It was not long until the steady rhythm of Twilight’s breath sent me to sleep.

* * *

I didn’t know what woke me up an hour past midnight, so I assumed that the lavender pony across the room had stirred enough to wake me. I smiled and delved into her dreams.

She wasn’t dreaming. She couldn’t have moved.

I quickly checked the others’ states of consciousness. In the room next to us, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Applejack were all sleeping, though the latter a bit restlessly. I doubted that Applejack could have woken me from the other room, even if she was stirring. Fluttershy was dreaming about her bunny, Angel; Rarity was dreaming about... I left that dream hurriedly, wanting to observe the rights she had for her privacy.

None of those mares could have woken me. So... what had?

I heard a noise from the room across the hall. What was it? I quietly rolled out of bed and stole to the door, closing it behind me. As an afterthought, I barred it with magic, so nopony except for me could pass through it. I moved to the room across the hall and quietly opened the door. The brown unicorn stallion from the bar earlier was sobbing on the floor of the room. From the situation of the bedcovers and the seat, he had been crying there, as well. He had not noticed me yet and I studied the room: he had an assortment of weapons with hoof attachments lying on the desk, which also had a dark grey cloak folded neatly upon it. It then clicked in my mind. Of course! The cloaks have a disguising enchantment. It’s difficult to identify any animal if you can’t name the colour of the coat.

“What are you doing here?” The brown unicorn had lifted himself to his hooves. I could see on his face that he had been openly crying, but the only thing I saw in his eyes now was suspicion.

“Why are you crying on the floor of your room?” I retorted.

“Get out,” he spat at me, slumping onto his bed. I did not get out, but rather just held my ground. “GET OUT!” He roared the words at me this time, but again, I did not move. He saw this, and started moving towards me. He knows he can’t take me on, I knew this. I could kill him.

What if that’s what he wants? This thought stunned me. I then realised that it was probably true. He told me that he didn’t care if he drank himself to death. I resolved my mind: I would not let him go before I understood. I squared my stance and lit my horn, draining the energy out of the unicorn. He tried to defend himself, but his movements were quickly becoming lethargic. Soon he was struggling to stay awake, let alone standing. I stopped absorbing energy, letting him fall properly asleep.

I levitated him to his bed and let him down gently. I then prepared myself to enter his dreams. As I entered his mind, I noticed that he wasn’t dreaming; I let myself form a presence in his mind and he instinctively responded in kind. We stood there, two ponies in a world of black.

“What are you doing here?” The dream-unicorn asked me, but now he seemed calm and inquisitive, much unlike the self-hating pony I had seen in the inn.

“I sent you to sleep,” I told him. “This is your dream, by the way. I am here because I want to understand what you could do so wrong that you have decided to end your own life. You virtually said that you wanted to die, but why? I don’t know, and I am not going to let you pass before I understand. But let’s start with the important things: what is your name, unicorn?”

“I’m Dietrich,” he told me. “I don’t need to ask your name, but how would you like to be addressed?”

I smiled: for once somepony didn’t immediately call me ‘your majesty’. “Luna. So, let me ask you: why do you want to die?” He seemed very rational in this current dream, and I wasn’t sure that somepony in his state within the dream would want to kill themselves.

Dietrich nodded sadly, as if he had been waiting for this question, knowing that it wouldn’t be easier to answer no matter how long he waited. “I just killed all the members in my syndicate. They were my friends; I could talk to them about whatever I wanted. I promised that I would care for them when I became their sergeant!” He had started screaming at the darkness around us. “Why did I make the wrong choice?! They were my best friends – my only friends!” He continued shouting at the empty world around us until he found nothing more to say.

“If you love your friends so much, why did you kill them?” I asked him, trying to sound calm, but slightly afraid that Dietrich would kill himself after this rage. He did not respond for a long while. When he finally spoke, what he said surprised me.

“Let me show you,” I frowned, slightly confused. “Come with me.” When he said this, I felt a tendril of magic extend, as if it were a handshake. Warily, I took it.

The black world around us dissolved, and we disappeared.

* * *

My syndicate stood in front of me, all wearing their cloaks. Each of them was brilliant, in their own way; we stuck out for each other. My syndicate came from all around Equestria: three from the wooded regions in the northwest, three from the villages not too far south of Canterlot, and another two from the city itself. I had noticed that one was missing from our ranks. I turned to my corporal.

“Cosme,” I caught the middle-aged stallion’s attention. “Where’s Quinn?” Cosme looked fairly distant as he replied.

“I sent him to scout the area.” Cosme was brilliant at stealth and climbing: he had developed a knack of being able to navigate walls with barely any hoof-holds; Cosme was definitely the best choice for a scouting mission. And yet... something wasn’t quite right. The seven ponies in front of me were all quiet. They were standing easy: they were all allowed to talk, but even Michel had nothing to say. While that was a pleasant change, it was abnormal, even unnatural.

“What’s wrong, Michel? Another filly let you down?” I joked. Michel shook his head; he didn’t even laugh.

Now I knew that something was wrong.

We waited in silence for Quinn to return from his scouting mission. “How far did you send him?” I asked Cosme. “Not all the way to Canterlot, surely?” Cosme finally looked me in the eye, and I could see that he was distraught.

“He’s not coming back, Dietrich,” Cosme looked confused, not sure what to do: what I had told him, or what somepony else had told him. “Sir,” – I noted that he still called me by my title – “w- we...”

“Spit it out, corporal,” I told him, now feeling worried, but also knowing what was coming.

Cosme sighed. “We have orders to kill you.”

I had known this was coming; I was surprised that the rank hadn’t ordered it sooner. It was then I saw something move in my peripheral vision. “So that’s where Quinn went, is it?”

In answer, a crossbow bolt shattered against the side of my cloak. I bellowed with pain and tried rolling with it, barely able to breathe. I raised my hood, and curled into a foetal position. Discreetly attaching my dagger to my right hoof, I looked up. Aurelius and Cosme had taken to the skies and Horst charged me. Horst was strong, and I knew I couldn’t take him in fair combat. As he raised his mace, I drove my dagger up into his diaphragm, piercing the skin and moving directly to the heart.

Horst started convulsing as I knew my poison was doing its work. On one of my friends, I added as an afterthought. These were my comrades, but they had to follow orders. I expected them to follow orders; else they never would have been in my syndicate.

Michel was the next to engage me: as I stood, hoof upon hoof descended on me in a random and deadly combination. I tried raising my forehooves to block, but I knew that Michel was faster than me at hoof-to-hoof combat. Left with no choice, I sent magic jolting through his body, and Michel fell, features contorted with pain as the magic ate away at his insides.

Another crossbow bolt shattered against the flagstones beneath me as the others moved away, to let the two pegasi and the earth pony on the building do their work. I cast an orb of light and sent it above the buildings surrounding the town square until I saw a black figure on one of the houses. I drew my own crossbow from beneath my cloak, steadied the end with magic, and let fly a bolt.

I heard a scream as the bolt found Quinn’s face; I was the best shot in our syndicate. The two pegasi started swooping me in turn, slashing at me with their long swords. I blocked one with my crossbow, which shattered and I dodged the other as I pulled out my long sword in turn. As Aurelius swooped another time, I slashed and caught him on the wing. He ploughed into the hardened wood of the palisade, and lay there, stunned.

Cosme stayed in the air to recuperate, and a vial shattered at my feet. The smoke was thick and poisonous. I coughed and a long sword battered the side of my head. The enchanted hood stopped most of the blow, but I was nevertheless seeing double from the attack. I saw Cosme coming around for another pass and I judged that he was in front of me when I stabbed.

The pegasus’s momentum wrenched my arm to the floor, painfully jerking my shoulder, but at least I knew that Cosme was dead.

Aurelius had recovered, but could not fly given the state of his wing, and I soon found the remaining four ponies surrounding me.

I heard a hoof on pavement behind me and jumped to the left. I grabbed somepony’s wrist and hyper-extended the elbow over my shoulder, breaking the arm. I heard Matryona scream as I turned and ducked, stabbing her upwards from the liver to the heart. Blood spurted from the wound and I turned to the other two.

Sherwood and Aurelius attacked at the same time. I blocked the swords as they came, but I was losing ground fast. I charged my horn and sent a bright flare into their eyes, closing my own just in time. Blinded, they swung their swords randomly, and it was not difficult to dispatch them.

Knut was the only pony left, and I waited warily. Knut was known for his concoctions which could do all manner of unpleasant things: poison smoke, which I had just endured; potions which flashed and made a thunderous noise whenever the containers broke; and liquids which burned long and hot in contact with the air.

He threw a vial at me and I rolled to one side, dodging the vile smoke that rose from it. He threw another to where I was and I caught it telekinetically. I threw it back at him and he was engulfed in a flame almost immediately.

I gasped as I saw one of my best friends dying in unendurable agony in front of me. Saving myself and Knut the pain, I walked over to Aurelius’ body and picked up his sword. I walked over to the pyre and beheaded the stallion I had once known as a friend. I extinguished him before his carcass was disfigured beyond recognition, saluted to my friends’ memories, and walked away from the town square.

* * *

I gasped as Dietrich drew both of us to reality. Neither of us said anything for a long time; I was feeling the very pain that Dietrich was going through.

“W- Why did they have to kill you?” I finally asked. This I could not understand.

“Because I didn’t think that killing you was the best option for us,” he replied, dully. “When I first joined, yes: I thought that killing you would make Equestria a better place. Now, no.”

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t in the great hall during the attack, but I could see it,” Dietrich explained. “The one thing which changed my mind is something I am guilty of, many times over.” We both waited for the other to say something. It was at least a minute before I asked him.

“And what is that?” I realised later that I sounded extremely blunt, but he did not show it in his reply.

“You didn’t fight back.” I looked at him, and nodded slowly. I turned to walk away as Dietrich lay on the bed. I didn’t think he would kill himself; in fact, I was sure that he wouldn’t.

I crossed the hall, silently dispersed the magic I had put on the door and walked inside. Something barrelled into me and I nearly fell over. The next thing I knew, a pair of forehooves were wrapped very tightly around me.

“Don’t – ever – do – that – to – me – again,” Twilight was sobbing hard against my chest. “I th- thought that they... they had killed you.” She was sobbing harder than ever. I whispered reassuringly into her ear, telling her that I was there and I was safe, until she finally calmed down.

“What were you doing then?” Twilight asked me. She still was annoyed with me for not telling her I was going, and I felt guilty for the worry I put her through.

I paused. I knew what I did, but why did I do it? Eventually, I settled on an answer.

“Saving a life.”