• Published 28th Aug 2016
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In the Company of Night - Mitch H



The Black Company claims to not remember Nightmare Moon, but they fly her banner under alien skies far from Equestria. And the stars are moving slowly towards their prophesied alignment...

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The River Of The Starry Sky

SBMS055

The world was gone, and darkness was in its place. Darkness unbroken by light, elemental, essential, eternal.

And then a spark. Small, far, far away. And in the opposite direction, another. More and more winked into life, or rather, their light reached me where I floated. And in their light, clouds moving, swirling. Now some of them lit from within with their own light, reddish glows peeking out between arms of dust and ice, moving, swirling.

More and more of the clouds were visible in the riot of light erupting across the firmament, near me, far away, and right beside me, a cloud, spinning tighter and tighter, growing more solid as more of the light reached us.

"Acolyte! There you are, my acolyte!" rang out between the walls of eternity, and the distant lights, and the glowing clouds in between. A helm appeared among the lights, confusing my sense of distance and nearness, and a face pulled itself out of the helm, and then a body behind it, like some impossible contortionist pulling herself out of a hole in reality. The Spirit, in her Nightmare aspect, had found me in this place of darkness, clouds, and winking lights.

"You've been a bad, bad colt, hiding things from your Mistress." She swirled towards I and my companion-cloud, still growing tighter and spinning more and more rapidly. The Spirit perched upon a wisp of star-light, grinning down at the spiral cloud. "Wonderful, awful things. Bonjour, pouliche."

The spiral formed into a spectral foal, a black cloud-filly, tendrils of smoke curling out and forming darker bat-wings, the blackness fading quickly to a smoky white, a blue gemlike fire somewhere inside the barrel, beating. Thump, thump, thump, thump…

Another spectre pulled herself out of the clouded star-field to my right, and blue and pale white formed her outline against the heavens below and above. Blue feathered wings embraced the cloud-filly, and her sweet voice half-sang, "Oh, my darling children, war-like, savage, brilliant. Night-touched pegasi, lunar pegasi, nocturnes, bat-ponies - so many names, and yet you would be addressed as thestrals, that dread, horrid word nopony knew the origins thereof, that tartarus-spawned abomination of a name, and yet, this was what you called yourselves. You were perversely proud of your reputation, the horror and the terror that followed in the train of your name, pronounced. ‘Reputation wins wars arms could never conquer', said my favorite, that old blood-wing Sharp Talons. I led you into damnation when mine pride fell, and us with it."

The Spirit glared at herself, across the blue-lit filly-cloud, wing against wing, horn against horn.

"When I became this, you fell with me. Mine own corruption spoke to yon thestrals in ways I can only regret, when the wind is in its southerly quarters . Ask thou the wind North-North-West whether she regrets."

"Coward!" Nightmare-she screamed in her other face, raging. "You left me to carry your burdens, and in the end, you were nothing but burdens! When the seas turned red under our oars, and the blood stained the moon, it was I who carried the weight! The battles we fought in the down-chain to spare her precious sugar-bowl paradise! The cities we burned, the worlds we reaped to keep the gore from her shores!"

"And it was thee who didst lead our armies home, and dipped thou the towers of the innocent in the clotting blood of the righteous, and pulled at the shaky pillars of heaven! Of course our sister had to strike us down. We wouldst have struck us down, once upon a time. Thus always for the enemies of Equestria!"

"And the moon's curse taking our children from us, never forget that." The Nightmare looked down at the pony-cloud, glowing, more pony than cloud. Around us the clouds had likewise condensed around burning star-stuff, the living and the dead, in our common star-field, glowing, bringing the primeval Night to a glorious riot, a festival of light.

Away from us, flowing, a river of those star-lights, down-hill towards some distant sea I could not see beyond the clouds and scatter-glow. Somewhere safe to sea…

"Mistress, Lady, I cannot apologize for the sorrows of the past, or the actions of ponies long lost, long dead, or off in utopias somewhere I wot not. I can only apologize for my own actions, my own thoughts, my hesitations and perplexities. And I brought her before you, as soon as I had her, as soon as I knew she was. Please, be good to her. She is hope, she is our hope. I can only hope that she is, at least in some small measure, your hope.

"You know you are not well. The Company has been grinding away in ignorance for decades, centuries, almost a millennia. When you touched us, touched our heart, it nearly washed you away. We are a live wire, a steel stake thrust into the heart of a lightning-storm. Our touch kills. We need to be grounded, lest we kill what we would love."

"And you think this small filly could ground out what would flash ourselves into a world-killing horror like the Chain has never seen? You damnable optimist, the ambition of your optimism knows no limits!" The two-aspected Spirit began to converge over the sleeping nebular filly, the two mad aspects merging into one great towering spectral alicorn, her mane and tail taking us all into her train.

"Very well, just so, you have your lead. Show us where you would lead us, show us what you would make of this license. We give her our blessing, and our distance. She will grow untouched by our wings, she will find her salvation or her damnation as a daughter of the regiment. Ha!" laughed the Nightmare, barely any blue feathers in her great wings, almost entirely leathery black with the occasional touch of dragon-scale. "Once that was an insult, an accusation of bastardy. Would ponies even recall the evil intention in the name, or the insinuations of rapine and lawlessness? Oh, we no longer know these things. We have slept too long. We will be cast adrift in an Equestria we no longer know when we break free and rend our sister for this long obscenity."

She bent down and kissed the brightly glowing filly on her long, tufted ear, delicately, barely touching the child she had promised to leave be. And with that, the star-field was gone.

And the world returned.


With the world came Cherie, and the rest of the Company. I gathered her up, as she awoke from her trance, and looked her over, checking for hurts or signs of trauma. "Non, non, je vais bien."

"Avez-vous entendu de tout cela?" What did you hear just now?

"Entendu parler de quoi?" What do you mean?

"Nevermind. Nous aurons besoin que tu, tu nommez, tel est le nom que tu garderez dans l'Company. You must name yourself, the name you will be known in the Company." She nodded.

"Je suis Cherie."

I prompted her, "My name is…"

"Mah nahme is - Cherie."

"Welcome to the Company, Cherie. Nos règles stipulent que tu devez avoir un maître, un chevalier, pour que tu soyez apprenti avec. Je vais demander à l'autre pegasi, est-ce correct? You will need to take a knight, as he or she will take you as military-apprentice. Can you do this?" She nodded.

I turned to the Company, and looked over the pegasi in the room, many looking a bit exhausted or hung-over. Whatever had taken them earlier in the day, hit like apple brandy. Several of them brushed forward Tickle Me to volunteer her.

"Tickle Me, the Captain will be all over our shit if you take up her apprenticeship. She expressly forbade it when we talked down outside Charred Horton. Can we get somepony else?" Long Haul wasn't there, I think he was running the deep penetration patrols that night. The rest of them eventually nominated a mare named Throat Kicker. Supposedly she was from an old thestral family. I said the words over the two of them, and informed Throat Kicker that she was now the proud owner of an apprenticeship contract with a pony that didn't speak Equuish. I waded through the crowd, and found the foals.

"Feufollet, your new sister has maybe four words of Equuish. Please, show her some sisterhood and get her up to speed if you would. The lot of you, be good to her. She's been alone for months, maybe years. She looks good now, but can't be in good shape. And see if you can't get her a bath, she stinks."

Author's Note:

Don't take everything the Nightmare says as gospel. She's quite mad, and her memory might not be the most reliable testimony you could find, if only you could find millennium-old primary sources to check against.

(Edits to correct some Luna characterizaton oversights, 10/13)

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