Chapter 20
It felt right good to leave that mine shaft behind us and feel the night air on our faces. It was chill like someone splashing cold water on your face first thing in the morning. The moon showed near midnight in the sky. Trees showed thin and weedy around us, not old and strong and terrible in their pride the way they did back in the woods when we'd first started coming this way. I wondered me if it was the damage from the dumped piles of mine tailings I saw about that caused it or the Shonokin themselves. Nary natural plants seemed to grow around them very well from what I remembered. Off in the distance we saw the lights of Chorazin, looking like pale foxfire in swamps, where some folks say it lights where dead men's bones are lying. Some Pennsylvania Dutch folks I know once told me that up where they live it's called Devil's Fire. It's supposed to show where treasure lays hid waiting for air brave soul to chance the haunts a-using around and claim it. We could hear dim and distant voices a-coming from it, too, low and hissing and nasty sounding like it was the world's biggest snake den. Maybe it was, some ways.
“They're a-chanting something there,” I said real low to Twilight and the others as we stood there on those stones. “Might be they're getting ready to do whatair it is they mean to do with Luna.”
“Whatever they think they're gonna do,” Dash said, stomping her way past me and towards Chorazin, “they ain't getting' away with it. Come on, guys, we gotta get Luna back.” She stopped and looked back at us. “Uh, that kinda reminds me. How ARE we gonna get Luna back?”
“If anyone does have a plan or suggestion,” Rarity chimed in, sounding nervoused, “this might be the best time to share it.” She looked around, and when nary one spoke up, her ears hung low. “Twilight? Mister John? Anypony? We're not just rushing past those Shonokin and the Tantabus and expecting them to politely stand by while we rescue Luna, are we?”
“Maybe they'll listen politely if we ask them to just let Luna go?” Fluttershy suggested, half hiding behind that long mane of hers.
“I doubt me they'd be the least bit polite, Miss Fluttershy,” I responded her. She and Rarity both looked like they were a feeling sickly as I said, “Not after all they've done. The Shonokin and the Tantabus want us all dead and no mistake.”
Air pony started a-talking then.
“Geeze, guys, we just rush them and knock every one of those Show-whatevers outta the way until we reach Luna...”
“ Ladies, perhaps I could use an illusion? I've done it with my fashion shows, I could attempt something grander here....”
“Ah'm kinda with Dash, simple's usually the best way...”
“Gee, if I had my party cannon – oops, never mind, it's not in there.”
Pinkie said the last. I just watched while she yanked a cake, a frying pan, and a paperback book from out of her mane. It dropped by my feet. I saw some words on the cover. I figured them for a title. Who Fears The Devil?
“Ah-ah-ah,” Pinkie Pie said, snatching it away and putting it back. “Sorry, but some things ponies and people are happier not knowing. Besides, that's a library copy.”
“If you say so,” I said and figured it for Pinkie just being her own self.
“Ladies, John,” Twilight shook her head. “Whatever we mean to do, we're going to have to wait until we get to Chorazin to do it.” She set off again, moving fast enough that we hurried to keep up. “And if we don't get a move on it won't matter in the least what we planned to do. So let's hurry.” Twilight pointed at the moon. “It'll be midnight soon.”
Those words were the pure down truth. We followed her right down the trail. The trees thickened a bit, but here they were smaller than the ones we'd seen. Twice as high as I stood, I reckon, and nowheres near as thick-made as the ones down below. Like as not they'd grown back after the mine closed and folks didn't need to be chopping them down for their homes and to cook their dinners.
I wondered, I reckon we all wondered, if maybe the Tantabus was plumb out of tricks to try on us.
Sorry to say, it wasn't.
As we walked along we began to hear noises under those trees. Animal sounds, but not ones from deer or rabbits or the kind you usually hear in these woods. Big ones, heavy crashing and stomping. I saw how the ears on those ponies turned air way, trying to focus in on those sounds and which way they were a-coming from. I tried the same, but whenever you thought you could tell the direction they were coming from, the noises seemed to change and be coming from some other way. It wasn't the least bit reassuring, let me tell you.
“All around us,” Twilight said, trotting on. Her ears lay back as those noises got the closer and louder. “John, girls, if anything goes wrong, be ready to run.”
“I've been ready to run since I got here,” Fluttershy half whimpered back, but she kept on a-going with us. I touched her gentle-like on her back. Her wing flapped out soft as an owl's wingbeat and brushed lightly against me like to say thanks.
I smiled my thanks at her, looked up, and saw the Tripodero rising up on its three legs just aside the trail. Its long snipy snout pointed at us like the barrel on a gun.
I yelled a warning and the Tripodero spat stones at us. Spat! Spat! Spat! Just like someone quick-shooting a rifle, one-two-three like that. One buzzed past me as quick and big as the world's meanest hornet. I heard Rarity give a yell, and right after her Pinkie too.
“Ouch!” Pinkie hopped up and down, rubbing a spot on her rump and giving it the meanest look I can remember on her. She took her hoof away and I saw her hide showed the least bit bloody under it. “You're not very nice!”
“No it isn't,” Rarity snapped, “and neither is this!” A fist-size rock shot past me even faster than the Tripodero's stones. It glowed purple and hit the Tripodero dead center. It went rolling over, making a whistling sound like you can hear from a kettle on the boil. Those long crazy legs snatched at the air. They had three or four joints in them like a spider's, and I saw a single long nasty claw tipping each of them. I caught sight of its face the once, and saw six or seven glowing red dots looking back at me from it, scattered all over it in some crazy pattern. Its cheeks bulged out like someone with a mouthful of chewing tobacco, and as it looked on me they sudden-like puffed out even more. Before it could shoot again Rarity flung another stone and hit it right in its snout. It gave another whistle that choked off and those spider legs went limp.
Something grabbed me by the belt from behind. I near jumped out of my skin afore I heard Applejack's voice.
“More o' them monsters are comin', John! Time tah run!”
She needed say no more. I turned and ran as hard on her heels as I could, and I'm not shamed to say I did. Applejack was staying back by me as the ponies ran, and so did Fluttershy. Pinkie and Dash galloped afore them, and Twilight and Rarity right in the front.
As we ran I heard, saw, what else followed us under that awful moon, bright enough to show what was hungering to be killing you. Bammat bellowing and shaking his long trunk, and the Flat hunching its way over the ground like the world's largest flatworm, and the leaping hairy devils folks sometimes talk of among the pines, seeming to crawl right up out of the ground as they jumped and screamed after us, the moonlight showing on those long wolf-fangs of theirs.
So we ran for dear life and hoped we'd run fast enough.
# # #
Twilight put her head down and ran for her life, stampeding alongside her friends. Howls and screams and noises she couldn't even begin to describe rose all about them. Worst of all was something like a sort of wet leathery stretching right below her.
Something tugged hard at her hooves.
Twilight looked and yelled.
Something like a gigantic rug lay there. But thicker, covered in a sort of prickly hair like on a caterpillar. And no rug she knew of humped and bunched itself as it grabbed after your hooves, or shivered with a terrible eagerness. She blasted down with her magic and it recoiled before it began reaching for her again, sucking at her hooves.
“Nah-ah-ah!” A pair of pink hooves snatched the horror up and swung it hard against a nearby tree. It wrapped around the trunk so hard it made a heavy slapping sound like a sheet catching a strong wind. “No ponies for you, Mister Crazy Rug!”
“Thanks, Pinkie!” Twilight shuddered as they raced past the thing. It was slowly, very slowly, peeling itself from the tree. “What is that thing?”
“The Flat!” John yelled from behind her. “And there's worse a-coming! Bammat, devil monkeys, even the Behinder!”
“The what now?” Twilight said, and turned to look at one of the trees as she ran past it. As she did she saw the Behinder. It had to be the Behinder; it resembled nothing else she had ever seen even in her worst nightmares. Rarity's horrified shrill whinny showed she must have seen some of it too, a part at least, even though Twilight knew she blocked most of it from her friend. It lashed out with all the limbs on its body. And some things that Twilight couldn't even begin to guess what they were, long and snaky and spiky and tipped with what looked like hungry little hagfish mouths – Twilight gasped and blasted tree branches so they fell down covering it. Not that it helped. That image still hung before her mind's eye. She knew now why John refused to ever describe the Behinder. She wished she didn't know.
“Twilight, what the buck did we see?” Rarity gasped beside her, shocked completely out of her manners. Twilight caught a glimpse of her mane hanging wild as they galloped, her eyes wide with terror.
“Nothing we ever want to think about, ever again!” Twilight shivered as she heard wild bestial howls rise all about them. Somehow she found even deeper reserves of strength and speed to draw on – but unlike in Equestria, she didn't feel anything flowing in from the environment to compensate. Even alicorns have limits here, she realized. Does that mean the Tantabus will, too?
Earth pony magic let her feel the thrum of her friends' hooves and John's feet through the dirt underhoof. And something else to go along with the howls that came ever closer. Feet, a great many heavy feet, slapping hard against the dirt.
Gong. Gong. Gong. High overhead, the Toller called the other predators to their kill.
The bushes crashed around them as something heavy forced its way through. Shrieking and howling, it leaped at them.
“Hey! Get offa mah back!” Twilight heard Applejack's yell, followed by the hard smack of a hoof. The shrieker howled in another tone entirely. Twilight saw it go flying to smack into one of the larger pine trees head first. It groaned and slumped, a pile of dark rank fur. Eyes blazed at her over forty-line-long fangs in a face like a feral Tirek's. That one had to be one of those 'Devil Monkeys'.
A glance to the rear and sides showed more of them hurtling from the bushes, hot on the heels of ponies and human alike. Something about the way they came leaping and screaming after them reminded her of something, but the sight of those long ivory fangs put it from her mind. Two of them leaped at her and Rarity, and with an effort that back home could have let her pick up a house-size stone she used her magic and sent them hurtling back. They landed hard and rolled away to get back up.
If we had one of those guns John had earlier, she thought, or just some of the Royal Guards from back home. She snorted at that thought. Might as well wish for them all to be there and for this to be nothing but one of the bad dreams such as she once thought she understood. But still, something about the way these beasts were chasing them...
Then she saw it. The grass and leaves underhoof didn't respond to the Devil Monkeys' pounding paws. Leaves and shrubs were half-visible through them, and she realized the truth.
“John, everypony, we can't keep running this way!” She tried to run out before her friends, get them to make a stand, try and intimidate the beasts into fleeing. “They're illusions, they're not real! They're chasing us right into Chorazin, and –”
Two or three skinny somethings in black cloth collided with her, sending Twilight rolling over. Ambush! She neighed and tried to hurl a blast at one, but someone kicked her hard where ribs met flank. She bucked back in pure equine reflex, slamming one into the other with a scream like from multiple throats at once.
“Twilight!” She heard John yell, and next saw him striking out with that walking stick of his at another pair of lean black-clothed Shonokin, their cat-eyes glowing corpse pale in the dark. Even worse, past that she saw her friends. More Shonokin piled on them. Much of Chorazin's population must have been here. Nets enfolded equine bodies, lassos landed around equine necks, and clubs smashed onto pony heads and backs. Dash and Applejack and Rarity reared and kicked and snorted, ears pinned as they lashed out with their hooves and Rarity's limited magic at the Shonokin. They tried to stay out of reach and pull the ponies down at the same time with limited success. Of course, Twilight realized. If one was slain they'd all flee in terror and the ritual would be ruined. But behind them to her horror she saw some Shonokin with guns, long-barreled heavy pistols hanging from their hands.
She saw more pile onto Fluttershy and Pinkie. Those ones seemed braver, the way bullies usually did with weaker targets.
That was their mistake. Gentle ponies or not, Pinkie was still an Earth Pony, and Fluttershy was still a Pegasus. And then there were the other advantages the two possessed.
“Oh, you want to play, huh?” Pinkie cried in glee as one Shonokin landed on her back and tried grabbing her by the neck. In a moment somehow Pinkie ended up on top and he tossed beneath her like one of the human-world horses she'd seen. He yelled as she laughed for joy. “Whee! This must be what Applejack feels like! Ride 'em, cowpony!”
Behind her Fluttershy pleaded as several Shonokin closed in, clubs and ropes in their hands.
“Oh, please don't! Don't hurt my friends, I –”
Fluttershy tossed herself aside as two Shonokin tried to fling ropes around her neck. Even from a distance Twilight caught how her eyes darkened as she yelled, “NOW YOU JUST STOP RIGHT THERE!” The two Shonokin froze, shivering as though they fought against paralysis as the angry Fluttershy said, “You let my friends and Princess Luna go right now, and that means Mister John too, or you're going to be in so much trouble! Do you understand me, Mister?”
The two Shonokin took a step back, another, as Fluttershy stormed forward like an angry mare with two rambunctious foals. Other of the Shonokin saw it and similarly began slinking back, ropes and clubs and even guns forgotten. Twilight dared hope. Would they actually get out without any more violence?
Her hopes shriveled as a large bag aglow with the light of pony magic descended over Fluttershy's head. The voice of the Tantabus, of Nightmare Moon, spoke.
“Stop them, you weak-minded foals! Bring them all to me!” Just beyond the Shonokin she stood, tall and dark and terrible, her eyes green witchfire in the moonlight. Her silver barding glittered like ice even as her ebon coat drank in the light. Those eyes locked on her and a sneer went over Nightmare Moon’s lips. “Take them alive, they you may offer all of them as well as Luna to restore me, and I shall restore the fallen Those You Serve!”
“No!” Twilight yelled as she set two more Shonokin who came at her with ropes sprawling. She could just see in the pale light her friends, bound and held. John was backing away towards her, making short spear-like thrusts at first one and then another Shonokin as they tried to grab him. She could hear him running through a stream of words:
“I charm you horsemen and footmen, you evildoers great and small; for I walk today upon God's way, that you may not hinder me or spellbind me or harm me or those with me.” The Shonokin seemed to flinch as he said the words. The Nightmare shivered, slightly, but she grimly pressed her way forward. John saw it, and his voice seemed to be desperate as Twilight heard him yell, “In God's name I ask it!”
He darted out with the point of that stick and drew a figure swiftly on the dirt before the Nightmare. To Twilight it seemed vaguely familiar. The Shonokin who saw it stepped back, looking suddenly frightened. Nightmare Moon sneered at their cowardice and stepped forward. Her hoof landed right on the sigil.
Something flashed inside the clearing. No, Twilight realized, not inside the clearing but inside her mind, right behind her eyes, a sudden light that reminded her of the Elements in action but less gentle. She heard multi-pitched echoing yells from the Shonokin, and another shriller cry from Nightmare Moon. The last time Twilight heard her cry out like that was when she and her friends first used the Elements on her.
But when it cleared Nightmare Moon still stood there, angry and raging, her nebular mane and tail almost aflame. The Shonokin gathered themselves together, as all about she saw her friends, Applejack and Rarity and the rest, all hobbled and tied.
If we stay, they'll catch us too. The realization shot through her.
So when John tugged at her and near yelled in her ear, “Run!” She ran.
# # #
I pure down hated myself, even as I went running under those trees, Twilight aside me, a-hoping and praying not to trip and break my fool neck. I heard the Shonokin getting theirselves together and the Nightmare with them from what I'd dared do when I cut that warding sign from the Albertus Magnus book into the loam. I'd done no more than startle them, which made me wish I could have done the more to stop them. Not very kindly of me, you say? Well, right then I didn't feel kindly towards them airy ways. Those weeks of nightmares, then their a-dragging first poor Twilight, and then her friends, and finally poor Luna, into even worse trouble because they came to be helping me, and now what they were a-planning, that might make the whole world into something out of nightmares?
I reckon right then I had some good reason not to be feeling kindly with them.
Airy way Twilight and I said nair word until we couldn't see or hear the Shonokin or Nightmare Moon behind us. We stopped then and I took myself a moment to get my breath back. It went pulling hard out of me, hurting my sides and reminding me of all I'd done so far tonight and that I wasn't quite so young as I'd once been.
“We have to get our friends back, John,” Twilight gasped it out. She felt less tired than me, I could tell, but she still felt it from our running and fighting. “Nightmare Moon, the Shonokin, they'll...” She didn't finish. Nor did she need to.
“Not the yet,” I told her. I moved quiet as I could over to a gap in the trees all about us. Looking back towards the trail I could see the Shonokin and the Nightmare going back towards Chorazin. I could just make out Dash's voice as she cussed the air as blue as she was. It looked like the ponies were tied and being dragged along the ground, with the Nightmare walking along behind them like what folks over the seas in Europe call the Hell Horse, that a-wanders old and lonesome cemeteries to bear any folks it finds nosing around right down to Hell. If the Nightmare had her way, though it wouldn't be just the one soul she'd be taking. It'd be near about air soul on Earth and I reckon on Equestria too.
“We have to rescue them,” Twilight said aside me, sounding scared, but only a little. “The Nightmare and Shonokin might, might kill –” Her voice broke off.
“Not right now they won't,” I told her. “Else they'd have been doing it to us right down where they jumped us.” I saw how her eyes focused on me, and how the seemed to sharpen, almost, as she started thinking again. “It wonders me how even those monsters we met, they mostly nair did try killing. Not seriously, airy way. They tried to bluster and scare and hurt, but if even airy one of them had been killing-serious, I don't think we'd be here right now.”
“Yes,” Twilight nodded, like it was a new thing to her. “The Skim, the Toller, those last few on the road here? The Nightmare called them, and they just tried to scare us away.” She looked at me. “If she'd been serious, she could have just told the Shonokin to use some of their guns and kill us all before we ever got near them. Why not?”
“Might could be she's afeared yet of whatair consequences it'd bring,” I suggested. I slowly began heading back towards the trail, moving slow and watching now where I put my feet in my old brogans, making as little noise as I could. I saw and heard how Twilight did the same. I said as we went, “She might not find herself doing so well, even with what magic she has, if half a dozen sheriff's men or state troopers came up here with rifles and shotguns and whatair else they might carry. The Shonokin surely wouldn't.”
“Not that,” Twilight shook her head and frowned. “This world doesn't have Equestrian magic, but even so Nightmare Moon should be able to defend herself against those kind of weapons. For a while, anyway. No, John,” and her voice started a-getting loud, the way it will when folks get excited, “she doesn't want us dead, not out here. She wants us alive!”
“But whyair would she?” I asked her back as we moved closer to the trail. By now I was a-keeping my ears open for whatever sound might be made by some sneaking Shonokin. And if there was one such and they tried airy thing, I'd find out if my ash stick was a little bit harder than their head.
“To drain us along with Luna,” Twilight said real quiet, and I felt a shiver as the breeze blew cold. “Drain five more lives, five times more magic, plus the power of the Elements inside us.”
I reminded what she'd told me two years gone, that night in Rarity's shop afore we went to face Thorne.
“You say you and your friends used your Elements to beat her the first time. How can she know you won't be doing that again?”
“Because they didn't get me. My Element brings the others together as one; without all six of us, they won't awaken.” Twilight and I looked out onto the trail. Lots of hoof and foot marks in that soft dirt, and I saw that sign I'd made. It stood untouched, save for a little smudge on one end. That was right where Nightmare Moon's hoof must have touched it. I saw nair hide nor hair of any Shonokin. We stepped out onto the trail. “They're strengthening our magic here; we'd be much weaker without them being, well, 'batteries' of Equestrian magic. But neither Nightmare Moon or Luna has that, and even her resources have to be running short. I don't think she wants to suddenly become weak in front of the Shonokin. They could control her with that summoning magic Dee once used.”
“I kindly wish we knew someone we could be calling on with that summoning magic,” I said, as much to myself as her. We both looked down on that symbol as I said, “If we knew airy soul that Nightmare Moon was afeared of, or who might be able to make her stop and listen. But you said she did her wickedness a thousand years gone. Only dead folks would remember her now, wouldn't they?”
Twilight just froze all over then. I saw how her ears worked back and forth as she was a-thinking. They looked for all the world like someone was working the slide on a typewriter or a calculator. She looked up at me.
“John, wait, that's brilliant! We DO know somepony who knew both Luna AND Nightmare Moon a thousand years ago! Ruby!” I didn't get who she meant, so she explained. “Remember? The ghost pony we met at Zecora's hut, who led us to Sunny Town?”
I whistled soft then. I sure enough did remember her. I'd seen her my first night in Equestria, right when I met Apple Bloom. Then again later, with her gray coat and gold mane and tail and eyes of fire, that poor ghost pony who'd once been Luna's friend, might be her only friend, afore she became Nightmare Moon.
“It was Ruby's dying that made Luna go mad,” I nodded as I said it. “That made her kill airy pony in Sunny Town and curse them to be walking dead things. You think she could make the Tantabus go back to Luna?”
“She's the only pony I know of right now that Nightmare Moon would trust even a little,” Twilight said.
“Wait,” I thought on it some more and spoke up about something that bothered me, “Ruby is back in Equestria, and not here. Howair are we supposed to let her know we'd like some help?”
“That's the easy part,” Twilight said. I wondered me how this could be easy until she said, “We'll just do what the Shonokin did when they attacked us, and when they gave the Tantabus physical form. They did it with their magic, so we'll create a double of Ruby with ours.”
I thought myself on that, and I reckon maybe I worried too. I've seen things be summoned, and almost nair was I happy to see it. George Washington's ghost helped me the once, and I reckon one-two other times I saw well, creatures I suppose is the best, that helped me. But those were more by accident than intent. One of the Ancients that snatched away two cheats that tried robbing friends of mine, and then Kalu who took Shull Cobart off whereair he took bad men when he tried a-killing me to force Evadare to love him. I'd been right happy it happened thataway both times, but I nair once did want to try calling something that might be happier where it was to come and do whatair I said just because I could.
Besides, Ruby was something like a ghost from old stories, or even like a vampire the way she and her Sunny Town kin could suck your life away. What if we called her here and she was downright angry we treated her like a dog to be ordered around?
But all I said out loud was, “What if she doesn't want to help? She might be happier where she is.”
I could see Twilight think on that a moment long. “Then we try something else. But right now, John, calling Ruby and asking for her help sounds like our best bet. With all the Equestrian magic around here, from the Tantabus, and Luna, and my friends and I, it shouldn't be hard to at least make a image of her to rattle the Nightmare enough to let Luna regain control.” She looked at me, maybe a little desperate. “And do you have any other ideas?”
I can honestly say that I didn't, not right then.
“All right, then,” I took my guitar in my hands, slid my fingers down the silver strings.
“Do you remember that song about Ruby, the one that held back the Sunny Town ponies when we fought Thorne?”
I nodded and got ready to play. The tune was from an old and scary mountain song called Pretty Polly, but back then the words I sang to it just came to me or maybe through me.
“Just a moment,” Twilight said. I waited patient-like and tried not to think whatair could be happening with Applejack and Fluttershy and the rest as her horn glowed and she drew some marks on the ground in a circle. I recognized some of them as the cutie marks from her friends. Then another circle drawn inside of them, marking off the ground and enclosing them. Some odd signs she drew then, around the outside of the cutie marks. She didn't say what they were but they minded me some ways of what I could remember of the written Equestrian I'd seen. Finally, within the inner circle, she drew two more marks I recognized. A moon in the night sky, and Ruby's magnifying glass.
That done, she sat down nearby and started to furrow her brow. I felt it then, some little bit like what I remembered from the first time I air saw the Elements be used. Like how I felt around Evadare or Chief Manco or Twilight and the ponies, that warmth you fell when you're by folks you can trust and who know they can trust you.
“Now,” she breathed softly, like she needed to be thinking and concentrating her hardest then. “Play the Sunny Town song.”
I set my fingers to the strings. I wondered me one last time how wise this was.
“Play,” Twilight repeated, even softer, and I did.
“Ruby, pretty Ruby,
won't you please help me.
Ruby, pretty Ruby,
won't you please help me.
To find Starlight's present,
a treasure to see...”
It still didn't sound or scan quite right to me, but right then wasn't the time to be making a new one. I promised myself that if this worked then I'd be making a proper song for Ruby and the ponies.
Of course, if it didn't work, I'd nair be caring about new songs or airy other thing.
“…They dragged her to the firepit
and burned her alive.
“No pony would speak of her
or their part in her doom,
No pony would speak of her
or their part in her doom,
But all would be known
to the Mare in the Moon…”
“Ruby,” I heard Twilight say softly, maybe pleading a little. “Ruby, you were Luna's friend, just like we were. When you died, that was what broke what little good remained in her. You were what kept her sane.” I kindly felt something as she kept speaking, a sort of soft chill like the first winter wind a-creeping through the walls of my home. Twilight's voice sounded desperate as she said, “Ruby, we need your help. Luna needs your help. Please, before she hurts anypony else again!”
I played it all the way through, all to the end.
“The wrath of the Nightmare
fell upon their homes,
The wrath of the Nightmare
fell upon their homes,
Leaving nothing behind
but charred ruins and bones...
Ruby, pretty Ruby,
stands yonder on the bank.
Ruby, pretty Ruby,
stands yonder on the back.
Eyes like fire
and her mark on her flank.”
And I was finished, and there she did stand.
Right in the middle of that circle Ruby stood, her eyes glowing warm yellow. When you looked on her you could half see through her. It was kindly like that word I've heard educated folks use, being translucent. She blinked, slowly like she woke up from being asleep.
“This isn't Sunny Town,” she said, looking first at Twilight and then at me. It looked like her eyes widened some when they saw me and my guitar. “Wait. I remember you. You were the human who helped Apple Bloom and her friends. I led you to Sunny Town when Thorne ruled there. Why did you call me here, away from my family?”
“Because right now we need your help, Miss Ruby,” I answered her. I set my guitar at my side but I didn't set it down. If I needed the protection in its silver strings, I wanted to be sure I kept it handy. “I crave your pardon for calling you like this. But we need your help to get Miss Luna out of some bad trouble she and other folks are in.”
“Trouble? Luna's in trouble?” She seemed to be getting more lively then, dancing from one hoof to the other like a nervous horse. She looked from me to Twilight. “What's going on? What happened to Luna? Answer me!”
When she snarled those last words, her face looked like it turned as bony and fiery as her Sunny Town kin. Twilight flinched, but then she stepped right up to the edge of the circle. I gave Twilight a warning look. She didn't pay me airy heed, she just started speaking.
“Luna is down in that village, off that way.” She pointed her horn towards Chorazin. Ruby looked after her, looking normal again. “She, she had part of herself taken out by the people there, the Shonokin...”
“Humans?” Ruby asked, sounding angry again. “Like him?” She thrust a hoof at me, and right then I wished myself elsewhere. I wondered if it looked like those cutie mark signs seemed to shiver, like a strong wind blew against them.
“Not humans, and not like John,” Twilight said right quick. “They're – something else again. More like what your herd is in Sunny Town.” She waited until Ruby calmed herself. “They took part of Luna's magic from her and used it to remake Nightmare Moon. Now they want to kill Luna and my friends so they can give it, her, even more power. We need you to help stop that.” I wondered me how wise Twilight was when she stepped even closer. “We need you to help us save Luna, Ruby.”
“I will,” Ruby said. Twilight began to erase the circle, but stopped when she pointed at her and said, “But I need something from you.”
“What?” Twilight said, sounding pure down nervoused.
“Whenever ponies from Sunny Town try to leave, we – run out of power. Our strength fades.” Ruby lifted one foreleg and showed us. It already looked more faded then a few moments afore. “I'm not as bad as the others, I can wander the Everfree, but I still need to get some strength.”
“Um...” Twilight gulped. “How, exactly?”
Ruby looked her right square in the eyes.
“The way we all do in Sunny Town,” she said and pointed right at her.
“By draining it from living ponies.”
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Very intense snoot boop, that.
I've read about something like that in the Seventh Tower series...
Well I sure hope so!
!!Fun!! times up ahead...
I feel spoiled rotten by all these chapter updates.
At least Ruby can help and she can control herself while draining energy from other ponies. Nightmare Moon won't be pleased to see Ruby.
9680210
Everyone still here is owed them. Sorry it's been taking this long, there have been health and money issues with both my editor and myself.
9682103
sends hugs and well wishes
You handle the traditional folktale monsters really well, and you have best Ghost Pony! Yay!
9684009
Thanks! I especially hope you like how I handled Ruby in this story,given all the work you did with her and the Sunny Towners.
9686982
Oh, I did.
It struck me again that, given the relationships I established between them and the customs of their day, all the Wraiths of Sunney Towne are one extended family. Grey Hoof acknowledged Three Leaf and Gladstone as concubine and natural child; Mitta is his legal wife and Ruby his child by Mitta; Starlet was his daughter by his earlier marriage; and Roneo is already formally-betrothed to Starlet, which counts as part of the family in that day.
I kind of like that. And that Ruby unselfishly treats them all as her kin.
9686982
To elaborate, I am really proud that you find my version of them to be good enough to be worth using, especially given that Sunney Towne isn't really my creation.
9687346
I feel like you did the best job with personalizing them. Usually they're just monsters in other stories.
These last two chapters were intense! You really know how to leave readers wanting more. I do hope the health and wealth problems are over for both you and your editors.
9798144
Thank you, but unfortunately there are still some delays with my editor and myself. They will hopefully be resolved soon.
9804023 Looking forward to more when you can bring it! I share John's doubts about calling up an Equestrian ghost - even a seemingly-friendly one - to Earth, and her immediately asking to drain Twilight's life-force makes me even more dubious... but still, I don't have any better ideas.