Equestria 485,000

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 22: Meeting

Inky Nebula paused, her large eyes tracing the walls that surrounded her. She saw intricate stone, worked into the shape of blocks and assembled into flat walls and high arches that were hung with eternally blooming lavender and lit by vibrant, glowing crystals. The breath in her one lung stopped for a moment- -or appeared to stop; in this realm, her body was a projection of her mind and its functions no more than a pleasant dream- -as she admired her surroundings.

The turquoise eye of a tall, all-black mare beside her swiveled. It was the only part of her that was readily distinguishable in the low light. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” said Nebula. “I had just forgotten how beautiful this place was…”

Indeed, it was. To Twilight Sparkle’s jaded, ancient mind, this environment was uninteresting and even mundane; to Inky Nebula, though, it was a place of eternal wonder and awe. Her bloodline had passed hundreds upon hundreds of generations since any of them had seen a true stone building like the one that Luna’s castle had been modeled after. Nebula herself had never even touched real stone before, although she had seen it numerous times through the advanced scanner arrays implanted throughout her brain and body. All those times had been from a great distance, though, and never had that stone been carved into something so beautiful as this castle.

The two continued walking: the all-black mare, a priestess of the Cult of Luna, and Inky Nebula, her normally pale body now represented in vibrant indigo and deep blue. In the same way that the Black Priestesses were not actually- -usually- -black in the Waking World, Inky Nebula had elected to change her color to the one that she herself perceived, or wished that she could have been.

“Thank you for doing this,” she said, nervously.

“You do not need to thank us,” said the priestess. “You are always welcome in this place. Your mother and her mother before her showed immeasurable dedication to the Goddess of the Night, and performed great acts in her name. Your own dedication to the secular aspect of the Royal Navy is also admirable.”

“I did not know you were watching my career.”

“We are always watching our children, Inkamena. Although if we may, we would like to ask you to at least consider a transfer to the Luna Exploration Fleet.”

Nebula sighed. “I have considered it,” she said. “And I consider it every day, and every night. I just don’t know if I can tolerate deep space that well. All that time without returning to port, to the Empire…”

“If your devotion to the Goddess is strong, the madness of the void will not creep readily into your mind. The Goddess can wander the eternal aether as no mortal pony can, but it is our duty to represent her in the physical world. However, the choice is yours, and you are yet young.”

“I’m not that young,” said Inky Nebula. That, of course, was a lie. She had barely passed her eightieth birthday.

The priestess stopped suddenly. The pair of alicorns was standing beside a tall and very simple metal door. “This is the one that was requested of us,” said the priestess. She gestured toward the door with a long, thin leg. “You may enter. She is waiting for you.”

Inky Nebula nodded as the priestess departed, her body fading to black mist as she moved through the infinite hallways that made up the Dream World. Nebula then composed herself, ensuring that her self-image was correct and appropriate. Then she opened the door and stepped inside.

The room on the other side was as simple as the door, although the architecture was distinctly anachronistic, resembling a style and design that was now considered quaint or even stodgy despite its overall industrial and Spartan appearance.

The shape of the room hardly mattered, though, when Inky Nebula saw the pony sitting in the center of the room. The chair on which she sat swiveled, and Nebula found herself staring into the vast and beautiful eyes of a pure-white mare with long, elegant silver hair.

“C- -captain!” sputtered Nebula.

“Inky,” said the captain, her expression not changing and her voice disappointingly businesslike. She then stood up and crossed the floor with a level of grace that was rare in ponies of the most recent generation, a product of having been in absolute control of a series of morphiplasm vessels for several millennia. “Your color is…impressive.”

“I- -of course, I just- -” Nebula felt her face growing hot. The captain noticed that she was quite clearly blushing.

“But your control of your form is a bit loose.” She sighed. “Or perhaps better integrated? I cannot pretend to know the ways of the Lunar Priestesses, or what they consider ‘good’ and ‘bad’ form.”

Inky Nebula cleared her throat. “My apologies, captain. It will not happen again. Your present form just…it surprised me.”

“It shouldn’t. There was a time when I was both young and beautiful. This is the body I had when I was not terribly much older than you are now.”

“You’re still beautiful, captain. Even in the Waking World.”

The captain’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Nebula realized that she had misspoken. “Watch your words very carefully,” said the captain. “Remember, I am your commanding officer. And I do not tolerate unprofessional behavior, even if the compliment is as appreciated as it is false.”

“My apologies,” said Nebula, bowing. “It will not happen again. Please forgive me, this situation is…unorthodox, to say the least. Meeting like this is not at all standard procedure.”

“No. But it is my prerogative to become creative when need allows for it.”

“Need?” Inky Nebula raised her head. “Captain, what do you mean by that?”

“My private transmission to Twilight Sparkle,” said the captain. “It was parsed.”

Nebula’s eyes widened slightly. “It was not an anomaly on my side. I was running surveys on the moon at the time, my sensors were not directed at the planet- -”

“I know that,” said the captain. “I knew the instant I was informed that it was not you.”

“Then who?”

“I think you know who.”

Nebula inhaled sharply. “You don’t mean…”

“I do. Which also explains why we are meeting here, in the Dream World. If we can be sure of everything, it is that Light Gloom and his sycophants are listening constantly to everything. They’re probably even arrogant enough to believe we don’t know.”

“But the Dream World is secure,” said Inky Nebula. “It responds to the will of the Night Goddess alone. It would not be possible to hear us without her permission.”

“Exactly. Which is why I asked you here.”

“Why me specifically? Should not Golden Star and Heliotrope be here?”

“I need them to protect my body while I am unconscious, and to run the ship. I asked for you specifically, because I need you.”

Inky Nebula started to blush again. “Me?”

“I need you to project a dampening field with a rotating modulation whenever we are in the same room in the real world. It won’t save our transmissions, but I think it will keep them out of our conversations.”

“And it will let them know that we know.”

“It will. But I don’t care. They’re going to know soon enough.” The captain paused and sighed. “I think the situation is about to get bad, Inky. It’s going to get bad real fast.”

“Captain?”

“Nopony is letting me in on anything!” cried the captain suddenly as she angrily overturned her chair, sending it skittering across the plated floor. “Twilight, the Cult, they’re both up to something! And I would bet my tail and ears that neither one has any idea what the other is trying to do. Or at least Twilight doesn’t.”

“Captain, I’m afraid I just don’t understand.”

“Twilight has solved the problem. I don’t know how. I don’t care how. But she did. She somehow discovered five pure ponies. From the Old Races.”

Inky Nebula gasped. “The Old Races? But that- -”

“Is impossible. I know. And it is perfect. I have no idea if that is what the Cult wanted, but I’m making an executive decision on this. We need to rescue those ponies. Get them off that rock before something terrible happens. At this point, they are the only hope for the Empire.”

“Then why not inform Light Gloom about this? His goal is no doubt the same as ours, to cure the Mortality Virus.”

“I think I’m starting to doubt that. I’ve never trusted wizards, especially ones with the audacity to cover themselves in clothing in my presence. And he knows. He was the one parsing my transmission.”

“Do you have proof of that?”

“I don’t need proof. I already know.”

“Then what is your proposed course of action?”

The captain turned and stepped toward Inky Nebula. “That depends,” she said as she floated gracefully across the floor.

“Depends on what?”

“I need to know your if you want to get involved with this. I’ll ask the others too. I can’t ask them to join me on this. I can order them, but I need to know if I can trust those around me.”

Nebula stood straight. “Captain,” she said. “I understand that our relationship is meant to be professional. But if I may speak candidly, in our service together I have come to see you as something like a second mother.”

“If you think any of my behavior toward you has been remotely motherly, you must have had a horrible childhood.”

“Regardless, my loyalty to you is exceeded only by my loyalty to the Goddess of the Void. I will not betray you, and I will comply with your decisions and will.”

The captain stared at her for a moment, as if trying to decide if she was being honest. Then she nodded slowly. “Thank you,” she said with great sincerity. “I’m glad.”

“What are your orders?”

“We collect the ponies, and then we cut the Cult loose.”

“That goes directly against Celestia’s orders.”

“It does. You can still go back- -”

“No. Celestia’s will is similar to that of her Sister’s. We are to protect the Tribunal Empire at all costs, and if these five ponies are key to that, both Celestia and Luna must surely support your decisions. Even if they are not doing so literally.” She paused. “But the Cult will not be pleased.”

“I know. They can take back their device and their ridiculous mages, and they can stay in orbit with their Goddess.”

“Captain? I don’t understand. Will not the Goddess of Magic be returning with us?”

“Most likely, Twilight Sparkle is going to elect to stay on the planet.”

“But why?”

“For her own reasons. She and I disagreed on the approach for curing the Virus. And I’m starting to doubt that it was ever her goal.”

“You argued with the goddess?” Inky Nebula felt a sudden surge of admiration, and of fear.

“I’m not separated from Flurry Heart by that many generations. Stories have been passed down in my family from her, from the Exodus. There are dark things buried on that planet.”

“And you think the Goddess is searching for those?”

“I can’t know that for sure. But let her search. By the time she has returned, we will already started the Tribunal on the path to recovery. And those five ponies are they key.”

As they continued to speak, they did not see the pony standing beside them. They could not see her, and remained unaware that she was listening to every word. A large alicorn mare, her body clad in metal and robes as it was in life, her presence out of phase and completely undetectable. She was the mare who had stood beside Light Gloom, and the one who knew his plans intimately.

To her left, the atmosphere of the Dream World distorted as Luna emerged from it. She, like the mare in the Cultist uniform, kept herself out of phase. She stood for a moment, watching as her own disciple Inkamena Vortex Nebula spoke with a white alicorn who had long-since given up any hint of identity when her brain had been merged with a starship’s mainframe.

After a few minutes, Luna turned to the metal-clad mare. It annoyed her that this alicorn was taller than her. “Is this enough?”

“Yes,” said the mare.

“I would like to say that what you have asked me to do is positively repugnant,” said Luna, disgusted.

“And yet you allowed it. As you should have.”

“Should I? I have betrayed the trust of one of my own disciples.”

“It will not matter. In a few thousand years, she will be long gone. This entire situation will be moot. And that is barely a blink in time to you.”

“Indeed,” said Luna, darkly. “But understand, I will only allow this once, and only for the sake of the success of the mission. As unpleasant as this is, the mission must be completed. For the sake of all our futures.”

“Of course,” said the mare. “The Will of the Goddess must be executed. There is no alternative. There never has been, has there?”

With that, she turned and stepped away. As she did, she faded, pulling herself back into the Waking World. Luna remained- -she had to; there was nothing left for her in that other world apart from a broken body and an empire in the last stages of terminal decay- -and listened to the conversation for a bit longer. Then she let out a long sigh, and turned herself.

“The Will of the Goddess indeed,” she said to herself as she moved to a different part of her own mind, leaving Inky Nebula and the captain alone to believe for a little longer that they had any hope of ever succeeding in their plans.

Comments

[AppleTank]

When did the Princess of Friendship become so awful at communications?