In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

Granting Parole

SBMS088

"Calm yourself, filly. You haven't figured out anything I haven't been guiding you towards, with all deliberation." She was backed into a corner, between the woodpile and the back wall.

"I-I thought it was an affectation. Something someone picked up from a Nightmare Night celebration at one of the outworld colonies, or something like that. Like putting a skull or a bloody axe or a pierced and bleeding heart on a flag, to show off how dangerous you were."

"Some other companies' banners are like that," I agreed. "The Company went through a phase like that in Fatinah's day. But they retired her hanged-ponies banner when her revenge was complete, and restored the original standard. I'd show you her old fright-night banner, except she sewed it into the lining of my Annals chest, and I'm not letting a spy into the Annals." I smiled. "Well, not now at any rate."

For some reason this scared her more than everything up to that moment. Cup Cake leaned so far back from me that she almost dove into the woodpile.

"You're Equestrians!" she shrieked. "That isn't just a repurposed Nightmare Night banner, you're cultists!"

The doorway was full of curious foals' heads, watching wide-eyed at the tableau. I must have looked like a revenge-play villain threatening the doomed ingénue. I turned to my audience, and hammed it up.

"Really now, my dear, isn't that a bit pejorative? We prefer the term 'exiled loyalists'." I wiggled my half-grown-back eyebrows at the foals, and they giggled on cue. "Simply because Celestia the Eternal has locked away her much-abused sister in a prison of her eldritch devising, should we throw aside our natural and rightful loyalties to the Princess of the Night?"

The foals caught the thread of the scene, and pranced in a line into the crowded room, like a flowing tide of adorableness.

"Queen of the Moon!" sang Tam Lane.

"Lady of Dreams!" trilled Feufollet and the Dodger in duet.

"Mistress – Of! The! Night!" chorused three of the newer apprentices.

"I ought to bring all of you with me everywhere, to sing backup. Yes, my apprentices, our Mistress, our Lady. You see this nice mare? She's been sent envoy by our Spirit's good sister. Our distant cousin, as it were, sent to find distant, estranged family."

"Equestrian?" "She's from Equestria?" "Oh, tell us about the land of the Sisters!" "About Earth!" "About Unicornia!" "About Pegosopolis!" "Do you know Starswirl the Bearded?" "Will you come to watch the pageant?" "Will you come to watch our practices?"

"No-now children, don't crowd me. Stars, there's a lot of you. Start with introducing yourselves, that's only polite. I'll start, my name is Cup Cake. What's yours?"

I sidled out of the overcrowded backroom as the foals swarmed the matronly little pony. She apparently was good with children. Who saw that coming? And had been sent into the field without any preparation to speak of by her superiors, Grogar damn them. I waved Rye Daughter out into the infirmary's foyer, as far from the back room as we could get, and closed the door against the clamour. As the apprentices grew into their adolescence, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Rye was a few years older than the rest. She was maturing fast.

"So, you think you can get them to spin her up, and see what comes out once she's more comfortable? I think I've bad-ponied her sufficiently now."

"I don't know, Boss. The foals can be pretty loose-tongued when it comes down to it. Aren't you afraid what she's going to find out?"

"What, like the truth? I don't much fear the truth, when it comes to Celestia's agents. They're in Equestria, or their outposts next door to Equestria. We're all the way out here. They didn't come for Grogar or the Bride, who are a heck of a lot more terrifying than we'll ever be, they won't come for us. This is just… information-gathering. The Spirit wants to go home. Anything we can do to gather intelligence and satisfy her impulses short of packing up and trying to invade a sovereign nation with less than fifteen hundred armsponies would be all to the good."

"Anyways, destiny dropped her into our saddle-bags. Let's see what she's worth before we trade her in for a breath of air and promises."

"I thought we didn't believe in fate, Boss?"

"Fate and destiny are not at all the same thing. Fate is a doom, a damnation, the weight of the world pressing down on its puppets and victims. Destiny is… a breeze, a current of air in a dark, stale, closed-off cavern. Breezes can't make you do anything, but sometimes, if you follow currents of air when they present themselves, you might find a way out into the world outside of your darkness."

---

I found the Spirit resting upon the surface of the lagoon of dreams, her blue feathers spread out over the waters and her great eyes closed in contemplation. Tail and mane faded into the eternal reflection of the deep and cloudless night, and she almost seemed to be humming to her self. I scuttled up to the edge of the water, and hailed her.

"My Lady Luna, I greet you on this glorious night. We have a visitor, and I would talk with you about her reception."

The Spirit opened her eyes, and draconic blue-green slit-pupils narrowed at my interruption of her meditation.

"Luna is not available at the moment. She hast gone to await the dreams of her new playmates, who are being bad foals and refusing to sleep as they ought. What might I do for you, my faithless Acolyte?"

"Mistress Moon, how fares your worship? I see you have discovered the presence of our Equestrian prisoner by your… evident displeasure. And by the dark and brooding look I've surprised upon the faces of my fellows, as if they were contemplating the unprovoked murder of said spy."

"A treacherous worm, in mine house! One of Celestia's pets, breathing, heart-beating, in the presence of mine own soldiers, and yet HER LIFE'S BLOOD IS NOT UPON YOUR BLADES!" The distant palm-tree tops bent outwards from the shockwave of her bellowed rage, and the reflection of the skies above vanished from the disturbed waters below.

"A young pony, unarmed, beaten, captured and defeated. By my measure, ignorant and fearful, even unknowing of your magnificence. And, if I do not miss my mark, she doesn't even know of your existence as anything other than a bogey-mare of myth and legend. Do you have any idea what 'Nightmare Night' might be?"

The great mare, whose coat had flushed black as night and whose wings had resumed their leathery bat-pinioned aspect, rolled her eyes in irritation. "We know not, although we can imagine given the name and the implication. A demon from Tartarus, art we now in our long-lost home?"

"Perhaps. We could learn more, if you would give our prisoner her parole, to continue her breath, to accept her life as your generous boon. She is, after all, as much a source of information, as a spy come to steal ours. Her treasures are more precious than the paltry facts she might pilfer from our existence, don't you think, Mistress?"

"Hate! We can feel her hate in our horn, our feathers and our hooves! She knows not who we are, and yet, she hates! Why should we not return hate for hate, fury for fury, DEATH FOR DISRESPECT?"

"Mistress, she doesn't know you from the Peacock Angel. She, perhaps, knows of a boggart named 'Nightmare Moon', but what is that, to her, but a story? Be good Princess Luna to her, and she might return love for love. Don't confuse a fear of the unknown for fear of you yourself."

Blue feathers flickered away the Nightmare seeming, and the surface of the lagoon was as was, as if it had always been that pane of glass reflecting the endless night above.

"Think you so? The foals seem to like her. Oh, and thank you evermuch for bringing the children here, so close to my heart. I could barely hear their dreams when they were perched so far away in that wooden fastness of yours. Last night and tonight have been heavenly. Such sweet, strong dreams children dream." I was somewhat perturbed to see my mistress in her less-lethal aspect… drooling sharp-toothed over the dreams of foals.

"Princess Luna, are you quite feeling yourself this evening?"

"Oh, what? Oops, how did that happen?" She wiped her muzzle, and blushed. "Ever since the demolition of our enemy, I and the Nightmare have been encountering some… sorting issues. House-keeping, really. We will work it out, I assure you. And truly, the foals are darling. They are helping, even now. As for our wayward, ignorant subject, we will visit her dreams as well tonight, and I promise thee, we will do our very best to come Luna at her sun-struck self, and leave Nightmare to kick her fetlocks in the hall. This will help, I hope, keep any unhelpful stray homicidal impulses from seeping into the underminds of the soldiery."

She paused, and thought.

"Perhaps you ought to assign thy new standard-bearer to act in guardianship of thy guest? He seems somewhat resistant to our darker self's… darker impulses. Such a strange colt..."

She turned away, dismissing my presence without another word. She settled once again on the surface of the lagoon, to walk the dreams of her littlest subjects.

Comments

[Dorath]

The foals caught the thread of the scene, and pranced in a line into the crowded room, like a flowing tide of adorableness.

[Bookeater_otaku]

The Company need more apprentices in almost all the different sections of the outfit at this point. They need more recruits too. I don't get why they haven't sent a small recruitment team backpedaling through the various town they liberated to recruit. It's late in the season and the downtime of winter, the time to train new blood is approaching.

I guess it's the same reason Sawbones haven't requested various escort for all the foraging and mining that need to be doing.

Talking about recruiting what would happen if the Major decided to convert to the Black Company, being a Necromancer? Necromancy have neat application for warfare, witchcraft and medecines. Lost a limb? Wait a sec I think I have a dragon arm in stock.