The Moon Has a Harsh Mistress

by Eruantalon

The Spell-Nexus

"Look out for yourself, Twilight; no one else will do it for you."

That was my mother's first piece of advice. And she'd add, "Steer clear of politics." And, also, "Books will open up new worlds to you."

I tried to follow her advice. Really, I did.

Well... I still love books.

That's where it all started. My mother writes excellent novels that start "Once upon a time..." and never have anything to do with politics. They're good, and they fully deserve to be the most popular books here on the moon (and not just because they're the only novels we can get here without having to pay the spell-freight to haul each copy up from Equestria.) But, I always wanted more details. Just how did Ahuizotl cast that spell of his? How had Dr. Caballeron been able to use the Alicorn Amulet without a horn? Between these and hundreds of other questions, my mother gave me my first spellbook when I was just five years old.

I got through it in a week. And I even managed to cast half the cantrips in it.

Ten years later, I was the only moon pony to ever go down to Equestria and graduate from the Divine Princess's School for Gifted Unicorns.

Somehow, despite my diploma, the only job offer I got was at some country hamlet's library. I even tried to visit them, but the air felt so heavy with all sorts of strange scents that I could barely gulp it in. I took a few steps out of the train, my knees gave way under me, and I crawled back in to the conductor's mocking laughter of "Moony-legs!" The next week, I was back home.

A few of the herd gave me some side glances for heading down to Equestria, but once it was clear that I still had my moon legs and Lunar sensibilities, everything was fine again with them.

It was almost three years after that when the actual story started. Since I've already bollixed up Mother's style of beginnings terribly, I might as well be scientifically precise: It was on the nineteenth of Foreyule, in the Year 1498 of Harmony, in the Warden's palace. He'd summoned me in again because the main air spell had gone scrambled. I wasn’t surprised at all; almost the day after I'd first come back from the Divine Princess's School, the Warden had summoned me and loftily declared I was now qualified to inspect our settlement's spell nexus. When I'd come back two weeks later having fixed it so the mage-lights in each corridor would actually dim at night, he declared I was the only pony qualified, and chalked it up to my education down in Equestria. What he didn't know was that I'd been almost as lost as everypony else until I'd thrown up my hooves and asked my questions to empty space, and a voice from the spell nexus had answered me...

So, when the guards came this time, I demanded thrice my normal rate. Mother and the whole herd were already dragging me around for all sorts of Hearth's Warming Eve preparations (for the first time, I envied how my brother Shiny could escape for work; he’d cantered off early in the morning for some paperwork about the Guard), and I could hardly spare two hours in a row for my books. Uncle Meteor's nostrils narrowed with fear, and the Warden's guards frowned, but they nodded to me - as I'd known they would; I was their only option.

That meant I'd be earning enough money for at least two new books from Equestria. So, I didn't react when Warden Blueblood looked down his long grey muzzle at me. "Technician Sparkle, the spell-nexus is malfunctioning. Again."

"How?" I asked, looking over his withers at a thick new scroll on the desk behind him. It looked like real parchment, made from the skin of some dead pony - either a criminal sentenced to be flayed, or somepony wishing to give his dead body totally to the Divine Princess. I'd seen it only a few times before, at school, coming from Her personal desk.

"Technician Sparkle?" Blueblood grumbled.

I looked down at his hooves, thickly shod as if he still wasn't quite comfortable with walking in lunar gravity. "You mentioned the spell-nexus?"

"It blew the Princess's letter clear off my desk!"

I gasped. "You're sure?"

"Do you think I'm joking, peasant?" he bellowed in my face. "Would I summon you here and send you to put your hoof in the spells keeping us all alive for no reason at all?"

I sighed. "Warden, the air circulation is the most carefully bound spell in the whole nexus. It's lasted almost a thousand years; I checked it just the last time you called me in, and I can't believe it would fall apart now and risk all our lives -"

I felt a faint breeze on my mane. Behind Warden Blueblood, the parchment started to unroll.

"What is -" He whirled and grabbed the parchment tightly in his magic. "See? Peasant? Get down there and fix the nexus before it kills us all!"

I ran down. The four guards dispatched to keep an eye on me tried to ask what I was doing, but I ignored them as I charged up Equestrian-style weather magic and arcane bindings at the same time. If the nexus was already coming apart like this, there was no telling what I'd need. The Warden had been right for once. Our air circulation and retention spells gone haywire really could let all our air out into the airless plains of the moon and leave us all in our underground tunnels suffocating in the void.

(In a corner of my mind, I readied a teleport home. I'd at least be able to save Mother and Shining Armor with my own magic.)

I paused by the door to the nexus and took the lock - newly painted with the Warden's compass-rose cutie mark - into my magic. "Stay out here," I told the guards.

"But -" protested one younger one.

"Listen to her," another corrected him. "She'll be slinging around some really strong magic in there."

After the first guard reluctantly nodded, I pulled the door open, slipped in, and tightly closed it behind me.

The spell nexus stood in a natural cavern of real moon rock. All the other caverns had been cut out and smoothed by ponies; this was unsmoothed and untrodden for almost a thousand years by any hoof save mine. (And some other mages before me. And maybe a couple Wardens more confident in themselves, but I didn't like to think about them. And, just maybe, the Divine Princess herself.) The thaumaturgical energy writhed in the center of the cavern, a great blue ball twice a pony's height, glowing with so much magical energy that I could almost see the spells emanating from it even without my mage sight. Air, lights, water, supports for tunnel walls, the spell-ladder to Canterlot, even the trolleys around the caverns... all the magic came from here, and all of it was given structure by this great nexus, as it had for almost a thousand years. When the Warden had first summoned me here, I'd spent almost a week picking through the layers upon layers of spells before daring to tweak the thinnest thread. I'd seen the precautions upon precautions, cast in strength that I could never imagine from any unicorn, to keep everything working flawlessly so we would all be safe. If anything had gone wrong with the air circulation, even I would barely be able to start the fix.

But...

I let my horn fade.

"Luna?"

An airy voice answered me from all around the cavern, sounding almost like an echo: "Twilight Sparkle?"

I let out a deep breath, knowing now the air would be there to take another. "Luna, I'm here again."
"Ahh, Twilight! I have an answer unto the puzzle thou didst pose for me on thy last visit!"

Despite my fears, I almost jumped in glee. From the first time the spell nexus had answered my questions - explaining for the first time ever, almost in passing, just how the Moon's thaumaturgical field differed from Equestria's - our unusual collaboration had only grown from there. She would ask me about magic and about life here in Mare-Equiis, our settlement on the Moon; I would ask her about magic in turn. She’d quickly told me her name was Luna, but she seemed unsure about saying anything else about herself.

"How?" I asked. "How can a foal cast a spell when her horn isn't developed to channel magic at all?"

"The answer lieth in even simpler spells. Tell me, Twilight, couldst thou lift a single dust-mite?"

"Well, if I saw it, I could - Oh, and if I could see it, it'd be even easier to lift than something larger and heavier! So if we could show dust to foals -"

"Yea, by magnifying-spells."

I sat back on my haunches, smiling. "Aunt Dimity's going to pitch a fit when I walk into the nursery and spark up my horn. Or maybe she'll just be happy I'm finally there."

"Let us hope thy aunt shall be happy." Luna paused a moment. "For if I am correct, this is the season of Hearth's Warming Eve, when ponies ought to be happy? Then let us pass on from study."

"Well..." I tapped a hoof on the rock floor. "That's what all my family's trying to get me to do. But I don't see the point of decorations and all that."

"Ah... I have seen." Luna's voice dipped low, and I felt weather-magic moving the air by my ears as if she was leaning in toward me. "For I have been watching thy family, Twilight Sparkle."

She could, I knew - or, as good as watch. Her magic stretched through all the air circulating through the colony, letting her sense every move anypony made. For a moment, I shivered - but only for a moment. We'd been friends for two years. Shiny and our cousins had friends over every couple weeks; why couldn’t Luna watch us too? Besides, the magic in her had been dedicated enough to keep Mare-Equiis alive for two centuries, and do who-knows-what before then, without doing anything worse than a few stray breezes.

"And I have seen a strange thing in thy herd, one I recognized not."

"Oh?" I ran through their names in my head. Mother, Aunt Twinkle, Aunt Starlight -

"Or not a thing, but rather a practice. One that seemeth fitting unto this Hearth's Warming season. A practice called 'Fun.'"

"Fun," I repeated. "You... you don't know what 'fun' is?"

"Now I do. And -" she was no longer whispering in my ear now "- methinks I enjoy it! And I shall engage in more 'fun' of mine own, such as further games with that slave-master Blueblood!"

The last pages flipped into place. On the one hoof, she definitely wasn’t about to turn off the air-spells now. On the other, if Luna thought this was fun, what else might she do? But on the rear hooves, nopony in all Mare-Equiis spared any love for Blueblood, and Luna liked me...

Aloud, I said cautiously, "I'm sure it's fun, but he's really frightened. That's why he sent me down here - to fix your spells again."

"Ahh, he sent thee to fasten back my Sister's chains upon me..."

I paused. When Luna had first told me her name, I'd remembered it from a few of the oldest scrolls I'd found at school, but they'd never mentioned who she was. "Chains?" I finally repeated.

"The bindings upon me," she said with mild surprise. "Surely a mage such as thee recognized the spells?"

"You - spells - chains?" I stammered, my original mission forgotten. “All the spells on you - I thought they were just, well, creating you! Defining who you are! You mean they’re saddling and bridling you?”

"Yea," she whispered. The word was echoed back from the cavern walls, and back again, until it sounded like an entire chorus of years.

"I - I thought you were made right here to protect everypony here on the moon -"

The cave echoed with Luna's mad laughter. I pawed at the rock nervously; it sounded just a bit like some of the worse bullies at the Divine Princess's School. "Not made, nay. Before any spells that still stand, before the first caverns opened beneath the Moon, I was. Yet the spells were indeed put here to protect you, yea. Protect you from me, forsooth, and bind me to here and to you, until the firmament rip apart and the stars throw down their spears..."

I shivered. "What happened?"

"What happened? Thou wishest to know all that happened? In the beginning was Light, and she saw the Light, and it was good. And the Light gave birth to Substance, and the Firmament did bow low before Substance, and that bow was called Gravity, and it was good -"

"Um -"

"Ah, but thou art mortal, and impatient, and sent here at the reins of my tyrannical Sister's servants. I understand."

"Sister? You’re an actual pony with a sister?" I stammered. There were a few nobleponies above Blueblood, but none of them could possibly be this Luna's sister - whoever she was - except... "And your s-sister is the D-divine P-prin -"

An icy wind stuffed the words down my throat. "Call her not that title! She didst never claim to be divine ere the stifling days, ere she cast me out into the night..."

The wind vanished, and Luna's voice sank to muttering in what had to be an older dialect of Equestrian than the oldest of my books. I reflexively stepped back for a moment before forcing myself forward, my ears wide-open for any words I might recognize while my mind was racing. I didn't have much actual love for the Divine Princess... but her school had marched us through the Matins and Primes every morning, and they were right; she did give us all light and warmth... except here was her sister... and just why were there no records anywhere of anything older than eight hundred years ago?

"Uh, Luna?" I pawed at the air. She continued muttering. "Uh, Your Divine Radiance?"

Silence blanketed the cavern.

"Is that how my sister styleth herself in these days?"

I nodded.

Luna paused again for a minute, before beginning again in a more familiar voice. "Art thou mine enemy, Twilight Sparkle? I hesitate to call myself thy friend, though thou art mine only acquaintance..."

"Of course not!" I burst out. "Of course I'm not your enemy!"

"Then wilt thou help me, and thy fellow ponies with me?"

"Yes" was in my muzzle, but Mother's voice rushed up to stop it: "No one else will look out for you." Aloud, I quickly changed to "I'd like to... How?"

"Whilst that title is not altogether distasteful to mine ears, yet it must to... be amended. Much shall be amended."

Her matter-of-fact tone almost scared me. "Amending, Your Radiance? Do you mean actual revolution against the Div- against your sister?"

She snorted. It was odd to hear a snort from empty air when you knew there wasn't even an invisible pony there. "Highness, rather. That was Our title in the happy days, and shall be again. Even in mere fact, Our sister was the 'radiance' of the sun; the moon and stars were rather 'glory.' And - yes. Yes, Captain Twilight Sparkle. It shall be a revolution."

Author's Note:

Thanks to Lauren Faust, creator of Friendship Is Magic; and to Robert Heinlein, author of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, who's often didactic but usually manages to write well anyway; and to NASA for getting us to the moon in real life. Equestria and all that thereunto pertains are copyright Hasbro.

Also, thanks to my beta readers, CCC and brokenimage321, the latter of whom also made the cover picture.

Questions, criticisms, and all other comments are welcome!

Expect somewhat-regular updates; I've already plotted out most of the story. Don't expect precise following of Heinlein's plot; while revolutions may have many similarities, even in this AU, ponies have their own personalities. And Luna, in her banishment, guards her own plans closely...

Comments

[Kalizecora]

An interesting start. Please keep going.

[Cross Lament]

Oh hello... this is very, very interesting indeed! I'm loving this setting you've created.

[Tim the Planes-pony]

Not sure what is going on, but I am curious enough to find out.

[Uncle Mike]

Liking and tracking, cobber!

[Julian the Dreamer]

So I wonder; who's the harsh mistress?

Good start.