4. Nightmares
Princess Celestia informs me that I must use the new servant’s name. My response was less than fulsome, for which I have been remonstrated. Forsooth, I do fail to see why one such as I must lower himself to addressing such a common pony as if she were my equal. Yet when I voiced this to Her Majesty she did look upon me with much scorn and I was forced to say that I will do this distasteful thing.
As I left Her Majesty’s chambers I did encounter Silvertongue the Gifted, of whom of I written before. He is a vainglorious youth whose magic does not exceed my own, though to hear him speak one would not guess this. He looks upon the world with the arrogance of the young and has yet to discover that there is always somepony better. Even I, with all my years of learning, study and discovery, must admit that my power pales in comparison to that of Her Majesty.
When he realised my ignoble exit from Her chambers, Silvertongue did smile in a most vexing way and enquire as to whether I was quite well. His meaning was clear even to one such as I, who has no time for the subtleties of courtly conversation. The way those lords and ladies snipe at each other does fair make my blood boil whenever I am wrenched from my work long enough to endure it. Have they no better use for their time than making allies and enemies of each other? They do wage wars of rumour and sharp tongues, striking down those whom, only last week, they declared friends. If this is friendship then it is an insincere, transient thing and I have no need of it. Nor have I any need of Silvertongue and his unsubtle desire to know whether I am out of favour with Her Majesty. He seeks to take my place as High Magician and is not secret about his goal.
The wagging tongues at court do wonder whether Princess Celestia will exchange my age for his youth; my bent back for his handsomeness; my experience for his thirst for knowledge. His thirst does not exceed my own! Yet nopony concedes to this in their gossip. The mares are aflutter at his blue eyes and shining mane while the stallions seek to prove their own mettle against his in endless duels.
There was a time when everypony in Canterlot sought to prove themselves against my might. Once I could not walk these halls without encountering some uppity spellcaster, nor leave the castle unmolested by rivals who saw me as their ultimate challenge on the path to greatness. Now my rival seeks to best me, not by might, but by undermining and replacing me within Her Majesty’s heart.
I cannot allow this. I will not allow it. My back may be bent but my mind is sharp. He shall not unseat me this way.
I did put Silvertongue in his place and returned to my chambers with my head held high. Upon entering them, however, I did find the servant wench and Her Majesty’s vexing words returned unto me. I enquired after the lowborn pony’s name and was further vexed by her shivering and shaking, as if I had reprimanded her for some misdoing. I charged her once more to furnish me with her name, whereupon she stuttered that it is Peaseblossom. At this I did wonder whether I had heard correctly, as I have always believed Peaseblossom to be a colt’s name. Her reply only proves what I have long held about earth ponies and intelligence. Her father (for her mother is no more, she told me, as if I had asked) thought the name too pretty for a son and so bestowed it on a daughter, not thinking that she would have to progress through life being laughed at. When I asked whether he had thought this upon naming her she responded that he had not and did put forth his nature as an honest, hardworking pony to me with a request for me not to speak ill of him! Her discourtesy in speaking thus to a unicorn such as I was intolerable! Therefore I have renamed her Cankerblossom and shall continue to use this name for however long she serves me.
Young ponies of today, whether noble or lowborn, magical or not, seem insistent on vexing me into my dotage!
-- Extract from the journals of Starswirl the Bearded, 488 AS.
The morning of May Day dawned with a nip in the air. Bon-Bon landed on her roof while Ponyville was still pulling the covers over its head and hitting blindly at the alarm clock. As the sky streaked from purple to cobalt, she slipped in through an upstairs window and shed her cloak. She spent a few minutes inspecting each of the pouches on her belt before taking it off.
“I’m running low on banishing powder,” she muttered to nopony in particular. “I’ll have to ask Zecora to cook up another batch.” Realising what she was doing, she looked around at the empty attic and sighed. “I seriously need to get a cat or something.”
She had not spoken to Zecora since the disastrous training session three days ago. She supposed she should have visited her, for no other reason than to say goodbye before going to Canterlot, but her stomach roiled at the thought. Time and reflection had created a knot of guilt in her gut about the whole thing. Zecora had only been trying to tell her what others had previously: that she should not devote herself so wholly to being the Slayer that she had nothing else in her life. The problem was that, though she could acknowledge that with her head, her heart and the rest of her gut resisted the idea. How could she embed herself in the lives of others so completely that she left a gap when she was gone? It was selfish and cruel. And how could she put herself through the same thing if she ever had to leave Ponyville? The thought of leaving already made her twinge with regret. If she allowed herself to care too much about the ponies here as more than just potential victims the Slayer must safeguard, it would be far worse when she had to tear herself away from them. No, it was better to have only tenuous connections that could be cast off easily and with minimal pain.
In the corner of the attic was an unassuming hessian sack in which she kept her back-up supply of banishing powder. Since she wasn’t going to have the chance to visit Zecora before her train, she extracting the little bottles and tucked a few into each of her empty pouches. There were three left in the sack when she was done, which made her wince. No matter how she felt about it, when she returned from Canterlot she had to swallow her pride and visit her Watcher.
She rolled the belt into the cloak, as was her habit. The attic door was a simple hinged square of wood in the floor, which she flipped back, revealing the much better furnished second floor below. She unfurled the wooden stepladder hooked onto one side and dropped it down. She could have jumped without injuring herself, but the house was older than she was and she could not guarantee the floorboards would tolerate several kilos of pony landing on them. Instead, she skittered down the ladder and grabbed the long wooden pole with a hook on the end that lived parallel to the upstairs bannister. A previous homeowner had fashioned it from a fallen tree branch to lift the ladder back into the attic and slide into a groove on the door to pull it shut. It was a simple but ingenious device that made her wonder about the ponies who had lived here before her. How many generations of Ponyvillians and grown up within these walls? Or maybe out-of-towners like herself had stayed here, stamping their identities into the place before moving on.
That would certainly account for the mishmash of decors. None of the rooms matched and there was a thrown together quality to the place that indicated several ponies’ tastes, from a relaxing ocean theme in the living room, to red and orange friezes across the ceiling in her bedroom, to a half-finished mural that took up most of one wall in the upstairs spare room. Bon-Bon couldn’t be sure, but she thought somepony had been trying to paint the view of the Everfree Forest that could be seen from that room’s window, but they had divided the wall into four quarters, with each quarter showing what the forest looked like in a different season. Whoever the artist was had got as far as Autumn and Spring and had made a start on Summer, yet the project had been abandoned before its completion. If Bon-Bon had possessed any artistic skill she might have continued it herself, if only to keep her from wandering aimlessly around town (and eventually to Music Makers) in her downtime, but even stick figures were beyond her, so she was forced to accept the wall as it was and wonder about what had made the original painter stop partway through.
Bon-Bon’s saddlebags were ready with the things she figured she would need for her trip. Twilight Sparkle had been entertaining guests late into the night when Bon-Bon crouched under her window during patrol. She had mentioned staying in Canterlot for three days. Bon-Bon wasn’t sure whether she would be expected to stay that long too and so had packed some toiletries just in case. Her train ticket sat on the kitchen counter, weighted down by a wind-up egg timer in the shape of a human in a tutu – a housewarming gift from Lyra in the days before Bon-Bon knew just what the choice meant.
“I guess that about does it,” she mused, wondering whether she could get a little shut-eye before she needed to head out. Her train wasn’t until nine. Rather than crawl into bed, she curled up on the couch and stared at the clock on the mantelpiece, willing sleep to come.
It didn’t.
“Celestia’s shiny white horn, not again!” she cursed, using one of Lyra’s favourite oaths. Lyra was irreverent to the point of mockery and loved making up new curses to use when she was mad.
Slumber had not been Bon-Bon’s friend lately. When it wasn’t refusing to come close, leaving her wakeful and crabby, it was dousing her with nightmares of darkness and the dark things hidden in it. Bon-Bon turned over so she couldn’t see the clock but it made little difference.
Time was fluid when you wished you were doing something else. A few minutes could telescope into hours and hours could shrink into minutes. Bon-Bon was considering asphyxiation through burying her head down the back of the couch as a means of reaching unconsciousness when someone knocked the front door. She sat up, eyes going immediately to the clock. Over an hour had passed without an ounce of sleep, despite her tiredness.
“Ponyfeathers! Who could that be?”
On her doorstep a small figure waited. Dinky was wearing a long patchwork skirt and a wonky crown on her head, which glittered with sequins and metallic stars glued haphazardly all over. Bon-Bon blinked at her, nonplussed. Had she fallen asleep and not realised it? Dinky continued to smile back in a rather surreal way, as if this was all perfectly normal. In her left hoof was a wand topped with sparkly pink cotton wool fluff.
“Hi, Bon-Bon! I’m a fairy princess. See my wings?” She turned to display the cardboard wings stuck to her back. They had been painted to resemble butterfly wings, though neither side matched and some of the patterns were blotchy, as though someone had spilled the water used to clean the brushes over it. “Mommy made them for me for Book Day.”
“Uh, Book Day?” Bon-Bon echoed, completely mystified. “Where IS your mother, Dinky?”
“Here,” said a voice from above them. With a clatter and a skidding noise, Derpy leaned down from the roof of Bon-Bon’s porch, a pair of filly-sized saddlebags in her mouth. “Solly, Niss Seeti-Dops,” she said, her words inhibited by the strap. “I dun mean ta ask dis –”
Bon-Bon held out her front legs. “Drop.”
Derpy dropped the saddlebags.
Bon-Bon caught them easily. “Now talk.”
Derpy worked her jaws, making Bon-Bon wonder whether she had carried Dinky’s bags for a while. There was certainly no room for them over the wings of the fairy costume. “Thanks. Um, I d-don’t mean to ask this, b-but could you drop Dinky off at s-school again today?”
Bon-Bon was flummoxed. “Me? Is your mailbag overfull again?”
“No, b-but I’m a little busy straight after m-my shift this m-morning, so I was wondering whether you’d, uh, t-take her in my place.”
“It’s Book Day!” Dinky joyfully declared again. “I’m the fairy princess from ‘Filly Pepper Finds the Fairy Princess’.”
“They had to all d-dress up as their f-favourite character from a book,” Derpy explained.
“Filly Pepper is my most favouritist ever!” Dinky enthused. “Mommy reads one to me every night, don’t you, Mommy?”
“Would you m-mind?” Derpy fixed one eye on Bon-Bon, the other wandering to her left. “Only Dinky k-kept talking about how much she l-liked walking with you last t-time.” She pursed her lips as if making a concerted effort not to stutter. It looked very odd upside down and half silhouetted against the pale morning sky. “You were a b-big hit.”
Bon-Bon was taken aback. She had not expected to be asked again, much less hear this. That couldn’t be right. She was awful with foals. “Uh, sure, but –”
“Oh my gosh, thanks!” Derpy interrupted with too much fervour. Her gratitude far outstripped the favour being asked. “I’ll m-make it up to you whenever I c-can, Miss Sweetie-Drops.”
“Derpy, wait.” Bon-Bon stepped out from under her porch roof to better see the departing pegasus. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine!” Derpy called back. Her mailbag swung against her hind legs, causing her to wobble and veer off course. She brushed past the branches of a nearby tree, performed a wonky barrel roll and straightened up to hover in place. “Everything’s f-fine. Thank you, Miss S-Sweetie-Drops,” she added, waving as she flew away in reverse.
“Look out for those!”
Derpy yelped, accompanied by the startle quack of the ducks she had flown into. There was a flurry of brown, green and grey feathers before pony and duck disentangled themselves and Derpy flew off in a meandering line.
Bon-Bon watched until she was out of sight. Only then did she drop her eyes to the smiling filly still looking up at her from under the brim of her crown.
“Uh, do you want some breakfast?” she offered awkwardly.
“Do you have some more candy like last time?” Dinky asked. “Those were scrummy-yummy-in-my-tummy!”
“I don’t think candy for breakfast would be a good idea.” Bon-Bon didn’t know much about kids but she was fairly sure this was true. “I can make toast, if you like. Or I have cereal.”
“I already had a bowl of Crunchy Wonderbolt Stars at my house,” Dinky declared proudly, as if this was an exceptionally wonderful thing to be able to say. She looked around and cupped a hoof around her mouth. “But I only like the yellow marshmallows shaped like Spitfire so I picked out the rest before I put the milk on.”
“Oh.” Bon-Bon’s reserves of small talk, never very liquid, dried up completely. “Well, uh, you’d better in then. You caught me a little earlier than last time so it’s not time to walk you to school yet.” In a flash of inspiration she added, “Why don’t you tell me about Filly Pepper?”
“You’ve never read Filly Pepper?” Dinky gasped.
Bon-Bon shook her head. “Nope. Is she a good writer?”
“She doesn’t write the books, silly! She’s the star! That’s why I’m dressed up as her from when she found the fairy princess, who the big, evil, nasty troll king had stolen away and locked in a dungeon. Filly Pepper rescued her and so the fairy princess said Filly Pepper could be a princess for a day, too, as a reward for pushing the troll king into the Well That Goes On Forever.”
“Oh.”
“The writer is a pony called Ms. Pandora Peachbottom.”
“Oh. Again. Um …”
Dinky drew in a breath and started speaking, the cadence of her words suggesting she was reciting from memory. “Filly Pepper is an ordinary pony, just like you and me. The only difference is that Filly Pepper has a magic pepper-pot that takes her to wonderful, faraway places whenever she shakes it. Where do you think Filly Pepper’s pepper-pot will take her today?” Dinky grinned. “The first page is always the same. Mommy and I say that part together and then Mommy reads me the rest. I have seventeen different Filly Pepper books in my room at home and I’m asking for another for my birthday.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of books. You must really like this Filly Pepper.”
“She’s amaaaazing!” Dinky jumped onto her hind legs and spun in a circle, waving her makeshift wand. Some of the cotton wool fell off but she didn’t seem to notice. “I wish I had a magic pepper-pot. Mommy says that someday, when I’m older, I’ll be able to do magic of my own, on account of I’ve got a unicorn horn!” She stopped, staggering dizzily. “Ooh …”
“Careful!” Bon-Bon reached to catch her before she fell. Dinky sagged into her grasp, giggling. She tipped her head back to meet Bon-Bon’s eyes.
“You’re upside down.”
Bon-Bon marvelled at how light she was. Limited interaction with foals had left her inexperienced with not only how to talk to them, but also how delicate they were. Dinky’s poofy dress and cardboard wings did not mask the fragility of her tiny body.
“Bon-Bon?” Dinky’s brows pulled together. She twisted around to look Bon-Bon in the face right-side-up. “You stopped smiling. Are you okay?”
“I was smiling?” Bon-Bon asked in surprise.
“Not anymore. You look all funny. Is something the matter?”
Bon-Bon set her on her feet and stepped back. “No, nothing’s the matter. I was just thinking.”
“Oh.” Dinky’s frown deepened. “That’s what Mommy said when I asked why she was acting all weird, too. She said nothing’s the matter and that she was just thinking and that I should go and play with my dollies. Only I didn’t want to play with my dollies because Mommy was sad and that made me sad as well.” She brightened. “But then Mommy came and put me to bed and read me Filly Pepper and the Sea Ponies, so I was happy again.”
“Sea Ponies?” Bon-Bon echoed.
“Yeah! They live in an underwater city called Aquastria and it’s real pretty and sparkly and nice!”
Bon-Bon shook her head. “Aquastria? That Ms. Pandora Peachbottom sure has a good imagination.”
The station bustled with ponies despite the early hour. Bon-Bon climbed aboard her train and found a seat in the furthest carriage, hoping nopony else would travel that far and she would have it to herself. Sure enough, when they pulled away she was still the only occupant. She stuffed her saddlebags into the luggage rack, stretched out in her seat and resigned herself to watching the Equestrian countryside pass by outside the window.
There was no doubt about it; the land around Ponyville was beautiful. As a city girl, Bon-Bon had been surprised at how much she liked being surrounded by greenery. In a place like this it was easy to fool yourself into only seeing the surface and ignoring the dark things that lurked underneath. There was something to be said for that kind of wilful obliviousness.
The rhythm of the train and her own tiredness combined to produce a yawn. Thanks to Dinky’s presence, she had not achieved the nap she usually relied on each morning. No way was Bon-Bon going to leave a filly unattended just so she could catch forty winks. Dinky was the nicest little filly, inasmuch as Bon-Bon knew what fillies in general were like outside her own experiences of being one, but making confectionary necessitated the kind kitchen equipment that could do real damage to curious hooves.
Being with Dinky was draining. Bon-Bon was constantly on her guard against doing something wrong that would end up in choking, bleeding, broken bones, tears or some other disaster. She could handle patrolling the town and fighting demons. Childcare was a whole other story. She had a newfound respect for Derpy and a pressing desire to sleep off her own brief encounter with parenthood.
Bon-Bon closed her weary eyes and was asleep a few seconds later.
The darkness is calling. She can hear its voice like a wind across moorland. The words are indistinct but there ARE words, calling her … summoning her …
Keep it secret. Keep a secret. Keep the secret.
She wants to run away but she has no hooves. She wants to get as far away from the encroaching darkness as she can but it just comes calling, calling, calling. She wants to cry out but she has no voice. She wants to scream for help but there isn’t anyone here except her and the darkness. Always the darkness. Always, always, always the darkness.
Keep it secret. Keep a secret. Keep the secret.
It’s getting nearer. She can feel it. Soon it will be close enough to touch her. Terror quickens her mind, sharpens her soul, and sends her spirit into the physical through sheer force of will. She CANNOT let the darkness reach her. She knows this with the certainty of a thousand lifetimes: she and the darkness can never meet.
Now she can run! Hooves thud a ground that isn’t there. Legs extend in a furious gallop. Her body leeches into being, inch by painful inch, muscle by necessary muscle. For a few seconds she is a running torso until her tail flaps behind her and her neck lengthens into ears, mane, forehead, jaw, nose and, finally, useless eyes that can see nothing ahead but emptiness.
Keep IT secret. Keep A secret. Keep THE secret.
The darkness keeps calling her, louder than before even as she puts distance between them. Where can she go to escape it? Where can she hide that it won’t find her? Everything is flat and black and grey and EMPTY. She has to find colour. She has to find shape! She can hide behind shapes and blend into colours. The darkness can’t.
The velvet voice seeps into her ears, wrapping around her even as she bucks at nothing like a mindless animal. The words are still indistinct but the message is clear.
The darkness is coming.
The darkness is coming for her.
The darkness is coming … coming … coming …
The darkness is … here.
Bon-Bon woke with a start. She had fallen off her seat into the aisle. She lay for a moment, groaning and holding her head. Apparently she had struck it on the way down and now her temple throbbed in tandem with her pounding heartbeat.
She got up slowly, clambering back to sit at the table and shaking her head to loosen the crumbs of sleep still clinging to her mind. Another nightmare. Already the specifics were fading but a sense of familiarity remained, as though she’d had it before. She pressed a hoof to her temple and wondered what time it was.
“Are you all right, cherie?” asked a voice.
“Hmm?” she looked up at the stallion who had entered the carriage while she was busy making a fool of herself. “Oh! I’m fine.”
“You looked as if you had bumped your head.” He frowned. “And you are to be holding it very much.” He spoke with a pronounced accent that put him north of the border, as far as she was aware of accents in that direction. How far north wasn’t as clear.
“Really, I’m fine,” she insisted. “Thank you anyway.” She shot him a really-it’s-okay-you-don’t-have-to-stare smile and willed him to go away.
He didn’t. Looking doubtful, he instead went to sit on the other side of the aisle in the seat across from hers. Watching him, Bon-Bon realised that the scenery outside the train was no longer moving. They had pulled into a station, one of the many stops between Ponyville and Canterlot. The stallion must have boarded the train here. She wondered whether he had come to this carriage hoping for privacy just like her, only to find a mare lolling about on the floor like an idiot.
Her cheeks hot, she averted her gaze and stared fixedly on the station name visible from her window: Coltchester.
She felt eyes on the back of her neck. When she turned back, she caught the strange stallion averting his gaze to look out of his window, presenting his variegated blue mane to her instead. The gold watch on a chain that he was holding snapped shut and he replaced it in his vest pocket.
She slowly returned her own gaze to outside but felt too uncomfortable to have her back to him. Standing up, she grubbed in her bag for the book she had brought along and pretended to read while watching him from the corner of her eye. He reached for his vest pocket once or twice but always refrained before taking the watch out again.
The uneasy silence held until the train pulled away. They were fifteen minutes out of Coltchester when Bon-Bon sighed, put her book facedown on the table and swivelled to face him.
“Can I help you?”
“Oh! Uh, non. I mean no. No, I do not …”
“You keep staring at me.”
“I am sorry, I just thought that I … I am knowing you.” He squinted at her, as if trying to read her face for something. She kept her expression pleasant but blank. “Are you from Ponyville?”
She lifted her chin to mask her surprise. “Yes, I am.”
“Have you ever been to the Café Magnifique?”
“That posh place in the centre of town?”
“Oui!” He seemed delighted that she knew it. “I have worked there for many years. I thought maybe I have been seeing you inside before.”
“Sorry, but I’ve never eaten in there.” She preferred the informal family atmosphere of Sugarcube Corner, though she didn’t tell him that.
“Oh, then maybe I have only been seeing you walk by. I am feeling sure I would be remembering a pretty mare like yourself. Mon Dieu, how strange to find you in Coltchester!”
“I wasn’t in Coltchester.” Bon-Bon’s words came out harder than she intended. She really did NOT take compliments well, it seemed. Echoes of her coffee with Noteworthy sounded like a distant bell in her mind.
“You were not? Ah, then you are coming from Ponyville herself. Are you to be going all the way to Canterlot?” He pronounced the city’s name strangely, dividing the three syllables up like he had chopped them apart with a carving knife and then sharpened all the consonants: Can! Terrr! Lot!
Bon-Bon nodded.
“I am also! What a strange coincidence, non?”
“Not really. Coltchester is on the train route from Ponyville to Canterlot.”
“Ah, but I meant that we, two ponies from the same small town, should be meeting inopinément – that is, uh, unexpectedly – in an otherwise abandoned carriage.” There was that strange pronunciation again: Carr-ahj! Listening to him talk was distracting, insofar as she was listening to the way he sounded out what had previously been boring, ordinary words rather than what he was actually saying. “It seems like something out of a storybook?”
Was he stating that or asking it? “I guess so.”
“Although I would guess from your accent that you, also, are not originally from Ponyville?”
“You’d guess right.”
He nodded sagely. “I, myself, am not a native.”
Really? Her inner voice sounded far too like Lyra for its own good. You’d never be able to tell.
“Though I do love the petit town dearly, my true home is Quebuck. And you? I think I am recognising … Manehattan?”
“Uh, yes, actually. Although I haven’t lived there in a few years.”
“Ah, but we never truly forget where we are from.” The stallion patted his chest with a serious hoof. “It is where we leave our hearts and our loyalty, oui?”
Bon-Bon didn’t know if she agreed with that. Thinking about Manehatten did not inspire the warm, fuzzy glow of home. She had only left there a few years ago but it felt like a lifetime. She had certainly had a lifetime’s worth of experiences since she walked out of her parents’ apartment and didn’t look back. Not even the regret zinged through her anymore. All she felt when she thought of Manehattan was a vague yearning for her grandmother’s house and the memories locked into the old bricks there.
When she thought of Ponyville, however, she was shocked at the swell of warmth that suffused her. Where the hay had that come from?
“Cherie?” The stallion waved to get her attention.
“Hmm? What?”
“I asked your name, cherie. I am Horte Cuisine, attendant at the Café Magnifique.”
Attendant? That meant he was a waiter who didn’t want to admit he was a waiter, right? “I’m Bon-Bon.”
“An excellent name!” He smiled. “Well, Bon-Bon, what is to be taking you to Canterlot today?”
“I’m visiting friends.” Did the royal sisters count as friends? Even if Celestia did in some loose way count as a friend, Bon-Bon had never actually spoken to Luna before. During her two visits to Ponyville she had been entirely taken up with suddenly not being Nightmare Moon and then experiencing her first Nightmare Night with Twilight and her friends. Until her letter, Bon-Bon had not thought Luna even knew she existed. The lie slipped out easily, however, and seemed to satisfy Horte Cuisine.
“I am attending a job interview,” he confessed. “Though I do love Ponyville, it would be advantageous for me to be working in a busy city like Canterlot. There are many, many ponies there who could help me in my, ah, career?”
“You mean like restaurant owners and ponies like that?”
“Oui!” He fastened on the suggestion. “Ponies like that.”
“Do you hope to own your own restaurant someday?”
He considered this for a second. “Perhaps. Certainly, the enjoyment of eating is a grand pursuit of mine. I seek to be making sure that all those around me are well-fed and satisfied. Hunger is the enemy of a true attendant.” The passion in his words was almost palpable.
“I guess it’s good to have a goal,” she conceded. “Well, good luck in your interview. I hope you get what you want.”
“Oh, certainement, Bon-Bon! In a great city like Canterlot, where dreams are always to be coming true, how could it be different?”
Bon-Bon had been into Canterlot Castle before but today it felt extra intimidating. She could reason and rationalise until she was blue in the face; she could listen to all the arguments that Luna had changed, that she was a different pony now, that her tenuous friendship with Twilight Sparkle and exile to the moon had improved her attitude and outlook on life. However, it always came back to one simple fact: she was going to see the pony who had once been Nightmare Moon. Since Bon-Bon was more aware than most of what evil could do, the prospect made her even more nervous.
She cleared her throat and informed the guard at the serving entrance who she was and that she was applying for a job as a lady’s maid, just as Luna’s letter had stipulated. The guard was a burly white pegasus whose hooves looked like they could split a watermelon with one stamp. His expression flickered for a moment as he assessed her.
“Wait here,” he said shortly, disappearing inside.
Bon-Bon waited a full ten minutes before he returned.
“All right. Follow me.”
He led her down several corridors to a small anteroom that, despite not being decorated as luxuriously as the upper levels, still retained the elegant architecture that characterised the castle. Equestrian history books told the story of how, over six hundred years ago, Celestia had built the castle on the side of the mountain and the city had gradually grown up around it. The original stones now made up only one wing of the current building and were in constant need of repair, yet Celestia refused to knock them down and rebuild that part in a more modern style.
“Wait here,” the guard said, turning to Bon-Bon and giving her the beadiest stare he could muster. If it was possible to communicate dirt-on-my-horseshoe with a stare, he was close to making it a reality. “Her Highness will attend you shortly.”
“Okay.”
He snorted at the response as if it irked him. “You are to address her properly and only speak when spoken to.”
“Okay.”
“You will not look her in the eye, chew gum, use slang or foul language in her presence, and you most certainly will not act above your station.”
A flicker of irritation made Bon-Bon’s mouth tighten. “I wasn’t going to, but okay.”
The guard raised his chin. “And above all, you will understand that I am her Highness’s protector and there are many more only a heartbeat away, all of whom will coming running the moment they sense anything amiss.”
“Gallant?”
A ripple went through his entire body, as if he had received an electric shock. He whirled around and bowed at the same time, one foreleg outstretched on the floor, the other tucked under him. “Princess.” He turned his head, hissing at Bon-Bon, “Kneel for her Majesty!”
“That will not be necessary.” Princess Luna strode into the room. She wasn’t as tall as her sister but carried herself with the same effortless grace. When she stood over the guard she looked at him for a long moment. “Neither is your genuflection, Gallant.”
“But your Highness, it would be improper for me not to!”
“Then I give you permission to be improper.” She met Bon-Bon’s eye over his prostrate body. “Leave us, Gallant. This mare and I have things to discuss.”
The guard left, with many a backwards glance. He clearly knew Bon-Bon was not there for any job. Bon-Bon was not an expert on royal affairs but could guess neither Celestia nor Luna conducted those interviews themselves. It was equally clear that he didn’t know the real reason why someone like her would merit a private audience with the Moon Princess. For all he knew, Bon-Bon was a secret assassin here to put an end to the former tyrant, or some salespony here to con her out of millions to re-outfit the castle with dodgy double-glazing. Luna had been banished for a thousand years, after all, and had only been reacclimatising herself to life in Equestria for a short time. There were bound to be things in modern life of which she still had no knowledge, ways which she was more innocent than any of her subjects and ponies willing to take advantage of that naïveté. No wonder he was suspicious. Bon-Bon’s respect for him increased in tandem with her irritation at being treated like a criminal.
“I learned a phrase from the pony called Rainbow Dash the last time I spoke with her,” Luna said in a much more conversational tone than she had just used. “While it is rather vulgar, I believe it fits this situation quite well. Now how did it go?” She raised a hoof to her mouth as if thinking deeply. “Ah, yes: what bug crawled up his butt and died?”
If Bon-Bon had been drinking, she would have performed the most tremendous spit-take of her life.
Luna smiled. There was a fiercely mischievous element to it that was totally absent from Celestia’s smile. Luna’s smile seemed almost … defiant. “Shall we go to my parlour to talk? This room is rather drab. And you can speak before you are spoken to. I do not hold with that rule outside formal audiences.”
“Drab?” Bon-Bon looked around. This room was ‘drab’ the same way Discord was ‘a little naughty’. “If you say so, Highness.”
The parlour was even more lavish. Thought it was light outside the curtains had been drawn so that the room was lit by dozens upon dozens of small lights. Bon-Bon paused to take in the multitude of lanterns strung across the ceiling and hanging off curved stands like luminescent birdcages. There was a menagerie somewhere in the castle in which Celestia famously kept a host of exotic birds from all over the world. Foreign dignitaries who had heard of her love of birdlife often brought her new species as gifts. Bon-Bon wondered if the menagerie was where Luna had got these stands. Perhaps they had been a sign of goodwill from her sister when she first came home. Gauzy fabric also hung everywhere in a riot of colour: bright pink, sunflower yellow, sunset orange and the kind of ocean blue that painters often tried and failed to copy in their work.
“You admire the ornamentation?” Luna asked. “I decorated this room myself.”
“It’s certainly … busy, Highness.”
“Mmm, yes, I suppose it is. Celestia loathes clutter. She is more practised at simply letting things go but after so long in exile without them, I find myself reluctant to give up THINGS.” She put such emphasis on the word it made Bon-Bon jump. “In particular I have always had a proclivity for pretty ornaments. I like having them around me and do not care whether there are too many.” Despite her conversation tone, she still sounded oddly formal, as if she was still learning how to talk like her subjects. “Although I must admit, perhaps the colours do clash a little. Most ponies who come in here are surprised that I have not outfitted my rooms in colours of the night. Are you surprised? Please be honest.”
“Um, maybe a little?” Bon-Bon admitted.
Luna gave a knowing nod. “My love of the night is the most famous thing about me, so it is understandable that ponies would think that. As you can see, that is no longer the case. Though I still love my beautiful night, I am not the pony I once was.” She faced Bon-Bon squarely. “This is something I always say plainly when meeting somepony new. I am no longer Nightmare Moon, nor am I the insecure filly who preceded her.”
“I didn’t say you were, your Highness.”
“You did not need to. I am fully aware of my reputation and how long it is going to take to remedy the damage my past actions have done to it. Ponies look at me and still, no matter my efforts, they see HER.” She hissed the word like it burned her tongue. “But I am not her and I require you to understand that if we are to continue this meeting.”
“Your Highness, I don’t think Nightmare Moon would ever have made that comment about your guard and, uh, bugs.”
Another fierce little smile curved Luna’s lips. “Quite so.” She gestured with one wing in that curious way only pegasi usually did. “Please, take a seat. I have ordered refreshments to be brought up to us.”
“Thank you, your Highness.”
She grimaced. “And please do not call me Highness or Majesty. I am trying to distance myself from the pomp of royalty, since it led to such a bad situation last time. I grew drunk on what I thought were my given rights as royalty and lost sight of what was truly important.”
“Uh, should I just call you Princess instead?”
“I would prefer Luna but I understand that is a little too informal for some. Princess or Princess Luna will be fine. And you are Bon-Bon Sweetie-Drops, formally of the Sweetie-Drops family of Manehattan, owners of the Candy Counter Confectionary brand. Am I correct?”
“Yes, High- … Princess Luna. That’s right.”
“And you are also,” Luna said with emphasis, “the Slayer.”
“That’s me.”
Luna tilted her head to one side. “I confess, I did not know of your existence until recently. Slayers appeared after my time and my sister did not wish to overwhelm me with all things that have happened during my absence. I have been learning piecemeal what has happened to Equestria in my absence and I ran across a reference to …” Luna’s horn glowed and a scroll levitated to her from across the room. It unfurled and she read: “From every generation there is chosen she who will stand against the demons and the forces of darkness. The power will choose her and make her that which the forces of darkness hate most. She will defeat them and protect this realm from their evil. She will know them and they will know her and fear her. She is the Slayer.” Luna looked up. “One must admit, that is an intriguing introduction.”
“Is that why you wanted to speak to me?”
“Partly. If all I had wanted was bare information, I could have asked my sister. She has known of the Slayers since the first and initiated the scheme for finding and training suitable ponies as Watchers, correct?”
“Yes, Princess.” Bon-Bon thought back to her initiation into the Slayer heritage. She had been full of resentment and grief at the time but Windwhistler had soldiered on regardless. She had known that this new, resistant, angry Chosen One needed to understand what had happened to her and what it meant for her future. “It was something Starswirl the Bearded wanted her to do; to make sure future Slayers always had somepony to guide them. He knew she was too busy to do it herself, being Princess and all, so Watchers were invented to fill the gap.”
“’Fill the gap’,” Luna mused. “An interesting way of putting it. I have heard much of this Starswirl the Bearded since my return. He was quite the magician, from what I gather; an expert in dozens of forms of magic and inventor of many of the spells still used today. He discovered how to teleport – something I have been trying to learn myself. It would make getting around this huge castle so much easier.”
“I’m sure it would, Princess.”
“But, like all mortals, he died and left behind many legacies. The Slayers intrigue me greatly because I do not fully understand how or why they came to be. Demons were not a problem a thousand years ago when I ruled the land with my sister. I did not see even one in all the time we reigned. When did they become such a burden that Starswirl created the Slayers?”
“Nopony’s exactly sure,” Bon-Bon explained. “Maybe they were always around but didn’t do much so nopony realised what they were. There may have been demons when you reigned the first time but they didn’t put enough of a dent into the population for you to notice. My first Watcher told me that somewhere around five hundred years ago the demon population exploded and we’ve been banishing them back to their realm ever since.”
“Their realm? Ah, so they are indeed creatures from another world. But what is to stop them from coming back to this one after you have banished them?”
“Well, you see, there’s a reason I’m called, uh, Slayer. Not Banisher.” Bon-Bon willed the princess to understand her meaning without her having to spell it out further. “I tend to send back bodies so nopony in Equestria ever sees a demon corpse.”
“Why?” Luna was genuinely curious. “Why not make the existence of demons public knowledge, as the changelings became public knowledge after their attack on Canterlot.”
“Well, because demons aren’t interested in taking over anything. They just want to gorge themselves on ponies’ magic. They’re hard to root out unless you’re, well, me. I can sense demons but nopony else can. It’s … it’s difficult to explain. I think Starswirl created the spell that made Slayers and kept it secret so there wasn’t a widespread panic. He didn’t want ponies to become paranoid or start turning on each other – the way a lot of them did when the news about changelings came out.”
When Queen Chrysalis and her changeling army invaded Canterlot, they were defeated by Twilight Sparkle and Princess Cadence, but the long-term effect of their discovery did not make itself felt until later. Newspapers reported outbreaks of banishment and violence perpetrated by ponies against ponies, as some Equestrian citizens began to suspect each other of being changelings in disguise. Authorities and police were inundated with complaints from those convinced that their neighbours, friends or families weren’t who they said they were. In one particularly tragic incident, a father set fire to his house with his wife and three sons inside, reasoning that if they were changelings, they would revert back to their winged state and fly away, and if they were really his family he would simply run back inside and save them. All five burned to death when the roof collapsed. In another case, an old mare who lived alone on the edge of a village was driven out as the rest of the populace suspected her of being a front for many changelings because she had lived for so long even though she was just an earth pony. The whole business had the air of a witch-hunt and showed how, no matter how rational most could be, if you introduced an unknown threat to the general public some ponies went crazy and did terrible things in the name of self-preservation. Sometimes ignorance really was bliss.
If demons were commonly known, it was possible nothing about life in Equestria would change. It just wasn’t likely, or so Starswirl and, ultimately, Celestia had thought when they decided the Slayer and everything about the demons should be kept secret. If ordinary ponies knew en masse about demons and what they did, panic would only be the start of it. Bon-Bon imagined gangs of untrained, frightened ponies stalking the streets in search of demons to slay. There would be deaths, and lots of them. Not even Bon-Bon knew all the types of demons out there, yet those she did know made her shudder to think of ordinary ponies going up against them: demons that spat or bled acid; demons with extending barbed tongues that could rip off a face at fifty paces; chameleon demons that caught their prey unawares; demons with siren screams that could incapacitate you while making your ears bleed; demons who could perfectly mimic any voice they heard and con their way into the homes of victims. The potential for bloodshed was immense, as was the potential for the kind of paralysing fear that would make Equestria as active as a graveyard after dark.
Bon-Bon took a breath. “Demons are from another realm, yes: the Demon Dominion. My first Watcher explained to me that some ponies have these theories that there are lots and lots of realities other than this one and that all together they’re called the ‘multiverse’. Most of the time different realms don’t even know each other exist. Yet sometimes, for some reason, the fabric of space and time between realms gets thin and holes appear so that the two start to bleed into each other.”
Luna’s eyes grew wide. “And that is what is happening here?” she breathed.
Bon-Bon shook her head. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. Every realm have has thin spots where it rubs up against other realms. Generally that’s as far as it gets unless someone or something actively tries to break down the barriers between worlds. To do that, they have to know the other realm is there in the first place, where the thin spot is, and on top of that they have to know the right magic to cut through. It’s complicated sorcery that Celestia banned anypony from researching hundreds of years ago.”
“Was that because of the demons?”
“I suppose it could have been a contributing factor, although I think she just realised what meddling with the fabric of reality could lead to and put a stop to it. The problem is, there are a few spots where our realm butts up against the Demon Dominion where holes exist. They’re only tiny little pinpricks really, but they can’t be sealed and sometimes small demons get through.” Bon-Bon pulled a face. “Well, I say small, but what I really mean is they don’t have much magic. Our realm repels any really powerful magic from entering it. The kind of demons that make it in, though? They eat magic to increase their own; specifically they eat auras, which is the core magic every living thing carries with it to stay alive.”
“I am aware of what auras are,” said Luna.
Bon-Bon blushed scarlet. “Of … of course you are. I didn’t … I wasn’t implying …”
“Do not worry. I am not offended. Continue with what you were saying.”
Embarrassed that she had been so patronising about magic to an alicorn, it took Bon-Bon a moment to recover. “Well … you see … uh, demons seem to especially like the aura of sentient creatures. The more magic in an aura, the more appetising it is, so ponies rate above all other living creatures because they’re one of the few species to master using magic. That’s why demons like unicorns best of all, following by pegasi and then earth ponies. An earth pony would be only a mini snack for a demon but a unicorn with lots of magic?” She shook her head. “That’s a five course meal with a cheese board and coffee for afters.”
“Which would make my sister and I,” Luna said softly, “a veritable banquet.”
Bon-Bon held up her hooves in protest. “Oh, no, no, no; don’t worry about that, princess. You see, it’s a catch twenty-two.”
“A what?” Luna frowned.
“A catch … I mean, it’s a self-sabotaging thing.”
Luna raised an eyebrow.
“Um … how can I put this?” Bon-Bon thought for a moment. “It’s like … they’re self-defeating. The demons that can break into our realm only get in because they’re magically weak. They need to eat auras to get strong; the more powerful the better. However, the really powerful (and so most desirable) auras belong to creatures that can defend themselves and would barbeque them the moment they tried to attack. Most demons are pretty mindless when it comes to feeding and they never work together so they would just sort of throw themselves at ponies from the shadows and get … well, squished for their trouble. So instead they’re attracted to powerful auras, like moths to flames, but skulk around eating the less powerful auras of weaker ponies, maybe someday building up their strength enough to take on better prey. That’s where I come in. The Slayer is always an earth pony because we have the least magic of all the pony races and the spell that chooses the Slayer masks her aura even more. The Slayer barely shows up to the demons’ senses but can sense them better than anypony else. She is uniquely designed to fight, defeat and banish demons back to their own realm. She is–” Bon-Bon stopped, realising she was parroting Windwhistler’s words exactly. She hadn’t even known she remembered that first lecture so well. All those speeches, which she had found longwinded and tedious at the time, were locked in a box at the very back of her mind where it didn’t hurt to hear them, yet here one was, pouring from her mouth unbidden.
“Yet there have been many Slayers,” Luna observed, drawing her back to the present. “And you are the only one left.”
“Oh, there’s only ever one Slayer at a time,” Bon-Bon said, a hint of bitterness creeping into her tone. Things would be so much easier if Starswirl had cast the spell so that multiple Slayers could exist at once. Then perhaps the fatalities amongst their ranks would be less. You’d be less likely to die in the field if you had somepony watching your back who could do all the things you could. “Nopony knows why. Starswirl’s spell just decided it should be this way. There’s a lot about the original spell that nopony knows because he never left any written records of it or explained how it worked to anypony.”
Like why it chose random ponies who had no training; like why it always went for those who had only recently received their cutie marks but always picked those with the least appropriate for the task of fighting; or like why it chose fillies instead of colts. If Bon-Bon could have ever met Starswirl the Bearded, she would have fed that famous beard through a mangle for all the torment his magic had brought into the lives of past Slayers.
The parlour door creaked open and a head poked in. Luna rose to her feet, gesturing with her wing for the pony to enter. A green mare slipped hesitantly inside, her aquamarine mane and tail restrained into two tight braids that swung heavily as she moved. She carried a covered silver tray on her upturned hoof.
“Just set it down there, Pixie,” said Luna, pointing at a low table.
The mare did so and backed away again, head low. “Will there be anything else, ma’am?”
“No thank you, Pixie.”
“Very good, ma’am.” She backed all the way out of the room and back out into the corridor without stopping. Bon-Bon’s sharp hearing heard her pace increase even more once she was out of sight and could go forward again.
Luna stared after her. “It is … a long process, overcoming a past that has such longevity,” she said tiredly. “The legend of Nightmare Moon is not an easy one to surmount. She is a nursery monster ponies have frightened foals with for centuries. That is why I value ponies such as Twilight Sparkle, who are able to see past the HER shadow to the pony who replaced her.” She sat back down but instead of attending to the tray looked hard at Bon-Bon. “My sister sent you to guard Twilight Sparkle.”
“Yes.”
“Is this usual for a Slayer?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? I’ve never heard of it before, but then again, Princess Celestia never took a student like Twilight before.”
“Hmm.” Luna was pensive for a long moment. “The Slayer is usually itinerant, yes?”
“You mean I move around? Yes. There are lots of potential Watchers scattered throughout Equestria. When they hear of something that sounds like demonic activity, they send word to the current Watcher and Slayer, who come and check it out.”
“That sounds like a practical system.”
“It’s worked for hundreds of years.”
“So why would Celestia set you to stay in one place in favour of one particular pony?” Luna frowned. “It would not be like my sister to leave the rest of the populace unguarded through your absence. Who is fulfilling the Slayer’s duties while you are in Ponyville?”
“The potential Watchers and other ponies Celestia picked out; royal guards who were given the option of a ‘special mission’, I think,” Bon-Bon replied. “They go around in groups to compensate for them not having Slayer abilities.”
“That sounds like a reasonable solution.”
“Maybe. I suppose so. I just … I hate the idea of other ponies putting themselves in harm’s way for a job that’s not theirs. The whole point of a Slayer is that she fights the demons because she’s best at it.”
“And do you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you still fight demons in Ponyville?”
“Well … yes.”
“Then it seems you are indeed still fulfilling your duties. Celestia has just given you … what is the phrase? Back-up?”
“I … I guess so.”
Bon-Bon had never really thought about it that way before, yet it made sense. Perhaps, after centuries of a single Slayer taking on the forces of darkness, Celestia had finally found a way to portion out the workload a bit more. Except that the whole point of the Slayer was so that nopony else had to die fighting the demons. The Slayer knew the score. Bon-Bon knew the score.
“Shall we have tea?” Luna’s horn glowed and the lid lifted off the silver tray. “I think this might be a good time to pause for refreshments.”
The tray was filled with different kinds of fruit. Bon-Bon recognised grapes, apple slices, orange segments and chunks of peeled banana but the rest was a mystery. Luna levitated a bowl filled with one of the unknown things to her mouth. She paused at Bon-Bon’s expression.
“Do you like stewed pears?”
“Is that what that is? I thought it was new-born foal mush,” Bon-Bon blurted. Her face flamed at the remark. Apparently low blood sugar was, for her, synonymous with insulting royalty.
Luna examined the bowl. “Yes, I suppose it does. Actually, it is pears boiled in their own juice and syrup. I have something of a sweet tooth, so no matter how health the rest of the platter, the kitchen always add something sugary for me. Would you like to try some?” She levitated a spoon off the tray, scooped up a little and held it out to Bon-Bon.
Bon-Bon didn’t know whether to accept or not. She was willing to bet no help guide included a section on what to do if a royal alicorn offered to feed you like a foal. If she refused, would Luna play the here-comes-the-Wonderbolt-so-open-the-hangar game?
“Uh …”
“Open the hatch,” Luna said mischievously, that fierce smile making another reappearance.
Bon-Bon dutifully opened her mouth. The bit of stewed pear had the consistency of foal mush, too. Her teeth clacked together as they tried to chew something that needed no chewing. The taste was also nothing to write home about. It had a vague sweetness but when Bon-Bon swallowed the aftertaste was bitter and her mouth felt unpleasantly slimy.
“You do not like it.”
“I’m sorry, Princess, it’s just not the kind of thing I’m used to eating when I crave sweet things.”
“Oh? And what does satisfy your craving?”
“Well, uh, candy.” Bon-Bon wondered whether Luna had missed her cutie mark. “I make it in my spare time. In fact, I have some … here … somewhere …” She drew her saddlebags towards her from where she had put them when she sat down, grubbing through first one and then the other. “Ah, here we are. I made this fudge yesterday.”
Luna blinked at her. “Fudge?”
Bon-Bon blinked back, equally nonplussed. “You’ve … never heard of fudge?” How was that possible if she had been back in Equestria for so many months?
“I have heard of it,” Luna replied. “I simply have not eaten it.”
“Didn’t you come to our Nightmare Night celebration last year?” There was always a ridiculous amount of candy around on Nightmare Night. Everypony was expected to eat some.
“I did but I gave my candy back to the foals who attended the event. They seemed so happy and it was theirs by right anyway.”
“Oh. Well … here.” Bon-Bon held out a piece of soft brown buttery fudge, cut into a square by her own hooves. “Would you like to try some?”
Luna accepted the piece and nibbled at it. Her eyes rounded and for a second her mane and tail flared, the stars embedded in them shining a little brighter than usual. “This fudge is … wonderful! So sweet and soft and … wonderful!”
“I’m glad you like it. You can have the rest, if you like.” Bon-Bon offered the lot, belatedly realising how ridiculous a figure she cut, mixing commonplace items like a polythene baggie with the extraordinariness of a millennia-old alicorn. The two did not go together. At all. Luna’s hooves were built to mould constellations, not hold unevenly cut fudge pieces.
“Thank you very much!” Luna’s magic surrounded the bag, bringing it to her eager hooves. “If all your family make confectionary this delicious, it is no wonder they are such successful business-ponies.”
Bon-Bon’s pleasure evaporated. “Yeah. I don’t … really speak to them anymore. There was some bad blood between us … and an argument … or sixty … and then I was chosen to be Slayer … and I left to travel doing Slayer duties and they kind of … got on with their lives without me.” She stumbled her way through the explanation, thinking how lame it must sound to a pony who was once banished to the moon by her only sister.
Luna stopped chewing. She managed to nod sagely despite her full mouth. She did, however, swallow before speaking. “I understand about falling out with family, Bon-Bon.”
Bon-Bon dropped her head. “I don’t think my situation really compares with yours, Princess.”
“Arguing with family is not limited by station, class or wealth. A pauper is just as likely to feud with her mother as a noblepony; and the pain of knowing even one family member can exist without you is a heartache that equalises the lowest born with the highest.”
Luna poured two cups of tea, which smelled odd and turned out to be some herbal blend Bon-Bon couldn’t distinguish by flavour alone. It left her mouth tingly and the back of her throat slightly sour. They sipped in silence for several minutes, each taken up with her own thoughts.
“You did not ask to become the Slayer,” Luna said abruptly.
“No-one asks to be the Slayer, the spell just chooses a new pony when the old Slayer dies and the power passes from one to the other.”
“You have rarely referred to yourself as the Slayer during our talk,” Luna observed. “You have mostly referred to ‘her’ as if the Slayer is someone else.”
“I have?” Bon-Bon cast her mind back. “I guess I have. Huh.” She couldn’t think what to say to that. Was there anything to say to that?
“Do you not wish to be the Slayer?”
What a question! “It’d be moot for me to say so now. I am what I am. The only way for me not to be the Slayer is for me to be dead. That’s how Starswirl’s spell works.”
Luna frowned. “We are what we are born to be,” she said distractedly. Bon-Bon got the feeling the words weren’t fully directed at her. “And we grow into what we need to be. It is neither a smooth transition nor a pleasant one, but it is something every living thing must go through.”
“That’s pretty profound.”
“They are the words my sister said to me in her chariot when she brought me to Canterlot for the first time. I had ceased to be Nightmare Moon only a few hours earlier and was still too dazed to understand what she meant.” Luna’s midnight eyes shifted to focus on Bon-Bon. “Have you finished your tea? There is something I wish to show you.”
“Sure.” Bon-Bon set the teacup down and rose from the gigantic fringed cushion that served as a seat.
“It is not in this parlour,” Luna told her as she also got up. “Come. Follow me.”
The corridors of Canterlot Castle were straight but long. Standing at one end, it was often possible not to be able to see the door at the other. For that reason, Equestrian ministers had spent many years trying to find ways to fill the imposing amount of wall space. As the castle had expanded to accommodate the needs of a larger city, ministers had expanded their pool of ponies brought in to decorate. When walking down these corridors, you could chart the artistic evolution of Equestria based on the relative age of the castle area you were in.
As Luna led her along, Bon-Bon identified impressionist paintings of thirty years ago. The distinctive style of art was characterised by ponies throwing paint at canvases and then smearing them into pictures with their bare hooves. One image of Celestia made her look like an albino giraffe with the measles. Another depicted her as a ribbon of pastel colours with tiny hooves at either end and overlarge purple eyes. The important thing in this style was not realism, but that the artist got to transmit their feelings about the subject through their work. One could not help but think, therefore, that these artists thought of the beautiful princess as a work in progress.
Further on were artworks from a time in which it was fashionable to paint only in monochrome, which made the pretty Equestrian countryside look like some nightmarish world. In the corridor off from that were pencil sketches of everyday ponies from across Equestria going about their daily lives. Bon-Bon didn’t want to even guess how long it had taken the artist to sketch the twelve-foot by twelve-foot image of Canterlot market.
They turned down a corridor littered with sculptures, which were all beautiful but slightly off-putting in the way they looked like dozens of ponies had been decapitated and their heads dipped in plaster to place on plinths. The fact that most of the faces had no expressions, only cold dead eyes, only added to the effect.
In another corridor was Augustan art, named after the famous painter August Sunlight, who created outrageously detailed paintings of dramatic scenes from Equestrian history. His paintings ‘Defeat of the Windigos’, ‘Storming of the Everfree Fortress’ and ‘The Rise of Nightmare Moon’ were even famous outside Equestria and all three originals were here in the castle.
Luna paused in front of ‘The Rise of Nightmare Moon’. In it, August Sunlight had painted a shadowy figure swathed in a mane and tail of dark smoke that obscured most of its face and body. The effect was like that of a cloud that had come to life as was just in the process of turning into a pony. The clearest part was a pair of luminous turquoise eyes with vertical slits contracted like a cat’s in bright light. These shone out of the darkness, staring straight at the artist. It was said that no matter where you walked in a room, those eyes followed you. Seeing them now, Bon-Bon could believe it.
“My sister tried to take this down,” Luna broke the silence that had fallen between them. “She attempted to remove all art concerning Nightmare Moon from the castle. I stopped her. As much as I hate it, Nightmare Moon is a part of Equestrian history. It is not right to erase a part of our culture simply to appease me. The same can be applied to Nightmare Night and all the other ways Nightmare Moon has seeped into the nation’s mind-set. A thousand years is a long time for a story to take root. Having this around also reminds me why I should never allow my selfish desires to cloud my judgement and turn me into a monster again.” She indicated the cowering figures clustered at the bottom of the frame. Nightmare Moon was such an arresting figure, it was easy to miss them. Although she dominated the painting, the terrified expressions of the ponies witnessing her birth were equally detailed.
Bon-Bon wondered what it must be like to live with a past like Princess Luna’s. She must be aware every day of what she had done and how much she had to make up for. She had paid her penance by losing a millennia and returning to find the world had moved on without her. Not only that, but in her absence it had turned her into such a reviled creature, her story had passed into legend because ponies weren’t able to deal with how close they had come to total destruction at her hooves. Luna was still paying now she had become herself again. Equestria would never forget Nightmare Moon, nor what she had done to them. It was possible many ponies would never truly forgive her, no matter how much she apologised or tried to show them she was a changed pony. It was enough to drive anypony into depression, or madness, or both, and yet here Luna was, functioning with such apparent normalcy Bon-Bon had to keep looking between her and the painting to remind herself the two ponies were actually one. Or rather, they had been, once upon a time.
“Come,” Luna said abruptly, striding away from the painting. “What I wish to show you is not far now.”
Bon-Bon moved off but glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, Nightmare Moon’s slitted eyes seemed fixed on her retreating back.
Luna brought her to a door unlike the rest they had passed. It was heavyset and studded with metal rivets of steel and brass. This contrasted the elegant gold and silver versions in the rest of the castle. In the centre, where the edges of the double doors met, was a small stylised crescent moon. Luna touched her horn to this and a complicated locking mechanism whirred. They creaked open, the noise indicating they didn’t do it very often and could use some oil on their hinges. Beyond was a spiral staircase. The doors closed once Luna and Bon-Bon had gone through, plunging everything into complete darkness. Luna ignited her horn to light their way and descended the stairs. Bon-Bon stuck close until, what seemed like an age later, they reached flat ground again.
“Are we underneath the castle?” Bon-Bon asked. This passageway was unadorned and smelled damp. During her travels Bon-Bon had been forced to shelter in a few caves and they had smelled very similar.
“Yes,” Luna replied. “My sister tells me this was originally a shelter for her ministers during the conflict with Gryphona several hundred years ago. If we were to go further than I am planning to take you, we would find large chambers that housed the then-much-smaller population of Canterlot when the griffins burned half of the infant city to ashes in their attempts to kill my sister.”
Bon-Bon had read about the conflict in her history textbooks at school. It had seemed like just another boring part of lessons at the time, since relations with griffins had been good for hundreds of years. Equestria had a thriving population of griffins, many of whom had not lived in Gryphona for many generations. Why did they need to bother learning about dull stuff when it was sunny and everyone, including the teacher, would much rather have been playing outside? Now, however, she began to understand how different Equestria might be today if that conflict had gone differently. Equestrians needed to remember their past so they didn’t repeat the same mistakes in the future – just as Luna had said of herself and the Nightmare Moon artwork.
They reached another doorway with a crescent moon lock. Luna opened it and they passed through into a small area with different corridors branching off. With unerring certainty, Luna picked the narrowest. She had to bend her neck as the ceiling grew lower, though Bon-Bon had no problem. This was not a corridor built for tall royal alicorns. It emptied out into a tiny chamber. At its centre was a wooden chest that looked like it belonged in a pirate story.
“Is this what you wanted to show me, Princess?”
“It is. My sister hid this here centuries ago, after the conflict with Gryphona, although it has been hidden in many different places during the last thousand years. Nightmare Moon … I had what is inside made when I challenged my sister and started a civil war. The first and only civil war Equestria has ever known.” She closed her eyes in something too long to be a blink, then opened them again and continued. “The chest was built in this chamber, so it cannot fit through the passage to the exit and none but I or my sister can unlock it. The spell she cast renders the chest around the lock unbreakable, too.”
“That’s a lot of trouble to keep something hidden.”
“Its contents are worth the effort. For you see, in preparation for when I refused to lower the moon, I constructed a weapon. I knew my sister would be forced to fight me. I even looked forward to it. If I could control the sun as well, I could truly ensure my beautiful night lasted forever.” Luna’s mouth twisted bitterly. “It was an ill-conceived, selfish aspiration, born from the mind of a spoiled foal with too much power. Without sunlight, the land and all in it would have perished. Forever would have been a matter of months, if not weeks. Yet I was blinded by my own selfishness and the single-minded egotism that created Nightmare Moon. Therefore I sought to either coerce my sister into obeying my whims or destroy her and take control of the daylight.”
Luna put her horn to the lock on the chest, just as she had done with the doors. Something in her touch was recognised by the magic coating the chest and it burst open willingly. The lid thwacked so loudly in the enclosed space that Bon-Bon jumped. Or maybe that was because of the rush of power that swept through her as the chest’s contents were exposed.
“This,” Luna said grimly, “is the Lunar Sword.”
The scabbard inside didn’t justify her tone, nor the level of protection surrounding its location. Edged in silvery metal, stylised moons and stars decorated the dark blue surface. The pommel of a sword jutted out, gleaming dully. If it had not been for the sheer power radiating off it, Bon-Bon would have assumed it was nothing more than a glorified knife in a fancy sheath.
“It was forged in dragon’s fire from skyiron, the metal of a star that fell the day I became Nightmare Moon. I thought the fallen star was an omen of my victory, so I flew out to the far mountains where it had crashed and used my magic to bring the skyiron to Fire Song, an ancient dragon who owed me a life-debt after I saved his family from being Discord’s playthings. Between his fire and my magic, we fashioned a blade that I planned to plunge into my sister’s heart. I enchanted it and even added my own blood to the molten metal so it would be unbreakable and would obey me and me alone. If it had not been meant for such an evil purpose, it would have been the greatest sword ever forged.”
Bon-Bon stared at the unassuming scabbard. The primal urge to back away from it tugged at her legs like a tired foal who wanted to go home already. A sense of foreboding entered the little chamber, scraping against the walls and rolling unpleasantly over her.
“Because of this sword, my sister was forced to do what I had thought impossible: she used the Elements of Harmony on her own and so was able to defeat me. If I had not forged it, she would not have taken such a risk. By their very nature, the Elements are not meant to be used by one pony alone – not even an alicorn. My sister risked her own death to stop me from killing the land and the ponies who inhabited it. I was banished to the moon and the Lunar Sword refused to unsheathe for anypony but me. My sister could not destroy it and she would not try to use it, so instead she hid it away.”
Bon-Bon felt eyes on her and looked up to meet Princess Luna’s gaze.
“When Twilight Sparkle and her friends brought me back, I knew I could never use this sword again. It was created with an evil purpose. However, the sword itself is not evil, it is simply a tool. As with any tool, it is the wielder who chooses how it is used. I brought you here today, Bon-Bon Sweetie-Drops, because I wished to determine your character as well as learn more of the Slayer’s purpose. My sister has great plans for Twilight Sparkle – more than anypony in Equestria can truly understand. Therefore I can see why she sent you to watch over her. To that end, I also wish to help you.” The scabbard levitated out of the chest and across to hover in front of Bon-Bon. “Slayer, I wish for you to have the Lunar Sword.”
Bon-Bon’s mouth dropped open. “Princess Luna, no! I … I couldn’t!” It only occurred to her afterwards that saying ‘no’ to royalty was, in itself, a no-no.
Luna, however, was not angered at her reply. Instead, she seemed honestly confused. “Why not? It is a gift. It is to help you. It is also one of the many things I want to do to atone for my past. As Nightmare Moon, I made this sword to do evil. What better way to atone for that than to give it to somepony whose only purpose is to do good?”
“You barely know me!” Bon-Bon protested. “You can’t give me something this powerful when you’ve only known me a few hours!”
“My sister trusts you to watch over her precious student,” Luna said softly. “She would not choose just anypony for that task. Twilight Sparkle is as close to a daughter as my sister has ever had. Certainly, she loves her like Twilight is her own. To ask you to guard Twilight’s safety is an exceptional compliment. If my sister would trust you this much, I can do no less.”
Bon-Bon stared at her. “B-But …”
“Do you not see?” Luna urged. “The Lunar Sword is literally a part of me. My blood bonds it to the night. It gains power when the sun disappears below the horizon. It is the perfect weapon to use against demons who cannot come out until night-time.”
“But that’s exactly why I can’t accept it, Princess. If this sword really is a part of you, I can’t possibly use it. It’s … it’s too much.” Bon-Bon winced. Being near the sword was like being too close to a bonfire. She half felt like checking to make sure her eyebrows hadn’t been singed off.
Luna’s eyes lowered to the floor. “My sister bestows many gifts on her chosen champions. They always accept what she offers them.”
Wait a minute. Wait one apple-bucking, spell-casting, brand new shiny minute! Was this all part of some elaborate competitiveness between Luna and Celestia? Royal alicorns they may be, but both had proven on more than one occasion that they were not immortal and were prey to the same jealousies, irritations, sadness and joy as regular ponies. Celestia had given six ponies the Elements of Harmony, the most powerful magical artefacts Equestria had ever known. It was entirely possible that Luna had selected Bon-Bon as a suitable recipient the Lunar Sword so she could feel like she was at least playing on the same field as her big sister. After the bashing Luna’s ego had taken over the last year, it was possible she was trying to claw back some sense of self-worth through generosity.
Bon-Bon could play along with that but … there was still the sword. It pulsed. She avoided looking at it, as if she might find it looking back. There was something alive about it even though it was silent and unmoving, just like any old sword.
“Do you reject my gift because you do not want it or because of its origin?” Luna asked.
“I … it’s just … Princess, I may be the Slayer, but that doesn’t mean I’m all that comfortable wielding magic. I do it because I have to, not because I like it. You already know that I’m probably the least magical pony in all Equestria because I’m the Slayer. This sword … your sword … it’s frightening.”
“You do fear it,” Luna said, as if Bon-Bon had just confirmed a terrible suspicion. Weary resignation laced her voice.
“Well, yes, but I’m more scared of what it would mean for a pony like me to have it.”
“I do not understand.”
“I’m not magical. I’m not used to using magic beyond the demon banishing powder and that’s pretty passive since I don’t make it myself. The Lunar Sword IS magical. What if I can’t cope with it? Princess, I’m having trouble just standing here right now – and it’s still sheathed! The power it’s giving off is intense. If anyone was to unsheathe it, I don’t know what I’d do; but if I was the one to unsheathe it? I could cause a lot of damage.” Not to mention my insides might embarrass me in terror. Peeing yourself in front of royalty; not a sure-fire way to impress them.
“It feels abnormal to you?” Luna queried.
“I’ve felt magical energy before. Twilight Sparkle uses a lot of it all the time, not to mention ponies like The Great and Powerful Trixie, who seems to have a thing about torturing Ponyville, and Discord when he was around. I know what it feels like when someone unleashes so much magic it’s a smell in the air.” Twilight’s magic smelled like burnt ozone, Trixie’s like sulphur and Discord’s, as antithetical as he was, like candyfloss mixed with tar. The Lunar Sword made Bon-Bon’s nose sting so much she couldn’t even register a scent. “Your sword feels … wrong to me.”
“I fear that is because of the blood inside it,” Luna said sadly. “I had hoped that it would only carry my magic. However, if that is what you sense, it may be that Nightmare Moon’s presence lingers in it too.”
That was what it reminded Bon-Bon of! That overwhelming sense of power was just like when Nightmare Moon had appeared at the Summer Sun Celebration. “So do you see, Princess, why I can’t accept it?”
“I do understand but …” Luna frowned thoughtfully. “There is a way to remedy it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nightmare Moon’s blood was used to forge the Lunar Sword. Nightmare Moon was me so it recognises me as its master. Therefore I alone have the power to make somepony else its master instead.” Her eyes slid to Bon-Bon.
“Wait, no, you can’t!” Bon-Bon took an involuntary step backwards.
Luna’s mane and tail flared briefly, as if she had been struck by a sudden wash of temper. Bon-Bon was reminded of Nightmare Night in Ponyville, when Luna would fly into rages over perceived snubs and insults by the townsfolk. True, Luna had been civil to Bon-Bon since she arrived but had not stopped being that mare. “I would not do anything without your permission, Slayer. Do not look so alarmed.”
Bon-Bon stopped. “I’m sorry, Princess. I didn’t mean to imply … I know you wouldn’t force me into anything.”
Luna’s mane and tail shrank a little. “Thank you,” she said tightly. They shrank further as she regarded the scabbard. “Yet the fact remains, I could transfigure the Lunar Sword to answer to your aura. It would unsheathe only for you and would do only what you wish of it. You could not lose control of it; it would act as any ordinary sword would unless you wished for it to be more. And it would defend itself if any other attempted to use it, if that is what you wished of it, just as it refused to open for Celestia a thousand years ago.”
Bon-Bon bit her lip. “I … I’m not sure what to say.”
“You are frightened.”
She nodded. “And not much frightens me.” Mostly just not being good enough; or able to get there in time to save others from the demons; or leaving Lyra behind when she had to move on from Ponyville. Oh, and dying. That was a biggie, too.
The Lunar Sword. If it worked the way Luna said, it could help prevent at least some of those. It couldn’t do anything about leaving Lyra if Celestia released her from guard duty and set her back on the more traditional Slayer path. It wouldn’t be able to save her from dying if she was mortally wounded, either, but it might be able to stop that wound from being administered in the first place. It might make her better able to render the night safe to go out in.
Despite her protests, a small corner of Bon-Bon’s mind needled the rest: Imagine what you could do with that sword. Imagine how much easier it would be to take care of the ponies you care about. If you had a sword like that, you could stop demons from ever hurting another pony on your watch. You could keep Ponyville and Twilight Sparkle safer than they’ve ever been before. If you’d had a sword like that, Windwhistler would never have –
Bon-Bon shook her head to dispel that thought before it could harden into an actual memory.
“Slayer?” Luna was gazing at her curiously. “Are you well?”
Bon-Bon looked at her; then at the sword. She had an obligation as the Slayer to fight the demons using any tools necessary. More than that, however, she had a burning need to keep her loved ones safe no matter what it cost her personally. “What would … I have to do?”
Luna’s eyes lit up like shooting stars. “It would not take much,” she said quickly. “A few drops of your blood to cement the bond between you, just as my blood cemented its bond with me.”
“Blood?” She had to bleed? Bleeding was amongst her top ten things NOT to do. Not an auspicious beginning.
Did Celestia know about this? Surely she would have been alerted by her own wards breaking when Luna opened the chest, if not the doors to get down here. Bon-Bon held herself in check; Luna had done a lot to repent for her time as Nightmare Moon. She wasn’t the same pony. It was an easy sentence to say but a much harder one to live with – and act on. Even so, Twilight had done exactly that when she followed an enraged Luna into the woods on Nightmare Night. She had emerged unharmed and Luna had demonstrated nothing but good intentions in the months since.
Bon-Bon breathed out. “Tell me what I have to do.”
“Hold out your hoof.” Luna glanced at the sword. “And try not to hold your breath.”
Before Bon-Bon could ask why, her telekinesis undid the clasp keeping the sword in the sheath. The hilt vibrated and a sliver of metal showed beneath it. The moment even this much touched air, magic erupted into the chamber. Bon-Bon’s lungs contracted in a gasp. Every hair on her body stood on end and the roots of her mane and tail hurt with the sudden rush of power. As Luna drew the sword from its sheathe with her magic, more and more power flowed from it. It wasn’t visible but even the least gifted pony in Equestria would have felt its presence unleashed.
What have I agreed to? Bon-Bon thought.
The Lunar Sword was the colour of moonlight on dark water. Luna held it flat between them.
“Lunar Sword, I bequeath thee and all thy power to this pony, Starswirl’s newest champion, the Chosen One, the Demon Slayer, she who stands against the forces of evil.” She listed off titles like a herald announcing at a party.
Bon-Bon’s ears rang. She was barely aware of the moment Luna made a shallow cut in her leg with her horn. A thin line of blood ran off the end of her hoof and dripped onto the sword’s impossibly shiny surface. Surely something so ancient should not be gleaming so brilliantly?
“Thou art ours to give!” Luna said more forcefully, as if engaging in an argument that Bon-Bon could only hear one side of. A stiff breeze had picked up around them, even though they were deep underground. As it increased, Luna fell back more into the cadence she had used before adopting modern Equestrian speaking patterns. “We are Luna, Moon Princess, Monarch of the Night! We did make thee from our blood and our magic. Now we do transfer thee, our blood –” Luna sliced her own knee, splattering more blood than Bon-Bon’s onto the blade in her haste. “– to hers! Our magic to hers! Thou shalt do her bidding, aid her in her battles and serve her faithfully! Lunar Sword, thou art now the property of Bon-Bon, the Demon Slayer!”
The Lunar Sword flared like it had been struck by lightning. For a moment Bon-Bon’s world whited out. There was no up, no down, no left, no right, nothing at all to centre her. She floundered, stomach lurching. Something touch her mind right before her flailing hoof met something solid. When the world faded back into being around her, she found she had pinned down the scabbard.
Yet it was not the same scabbard Luna had taken from the chest. It was shorter and the night-time motif had been replaced by two hearts – one right side up at the tip, the other an upside down version nestled against the hilt. Apart from that, it was plain now. The hilt looked much the same, if also a bit shorter. Yet it was the feel of it that had changed the most. No longer could Bon-Bon feel the pulsing, incredibly powerful wrongness of an item out of time. Now the sword felt like it was in exactly the right place and time. It felt responsive. It felt … like it was hers.
“Un … sheathe … it,” Luna panted. She held up her cut leg but her eyes were fixed on Bon-Bon. “It is … yours … now …”
Gulping, Bon-Bon picked up the scabbard between both hooves, hesitated one last time, and undid the clasp.
Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please …
The wash of power did not come. She breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled the blade free. She had practised with swords before and so knew how to unsheathe one using her mouth without cutting her own throat. What came free, however, was not the long blade Luna had brandished, but a short thing only barely bigger than a dagger. She raised her eyes to Luna questioningly.
“Apparently … this was the form … it decided on … for you …” Luna shrugged. Of course she did. This had never been done before. How could she have predicted what the Lunar Sword would do?
Even so, I was hoping it would stay an actual SWORD.
As if listening to her thoughts, the blade glowed and a ghostly double of itself flipped out like a flick-knife. The translucent double attached itself to the end and then repeated the process, straightening out into the sword’s original size. Magical glow swept up its length and the joins flowed together until the sword was whole once more. The tip extended so far it dug into the wall, loosening a shower of dirt.
Surprised by the speed this had happened, Bon-Bon jumped back. Yet even as she did so, she felt something settle into place in the back of her mind. It was as if she had spent her entire life with a hollow there, which she had never realised before because she had never had cause to look at it. Now something had come along and slotted exactly into that hollow and she felt complete in a way that she could not have predicted. Her connection with the Lunar Sword pulsed gently as it, too, felt out the bond that now existed between them. It turned and turned, like a cat pricking experimentally at a cushion.
Could you … change so I can put you back in the scabbard?
The Lunar Sword glowed again and shrank to the size that would perfectly fit the new sheathe – which, in turn, was just long enough for a much shorter pony than Luna to carry. The connection flumped down on its cushion and purred.
“It has accepted you,” Luna said, breathing a little easier after her exertions. “I was not sure it would.”
Bon-Bon put the sword away and stared at it. She couldn’t quite believe what had happened. It was too surreal. This was a weapon from ancient times, made by Nightmare Moon herself, and it was hers now? Bon-Bon Sweetie-Drops. Remembering how Luna had shouted her name in that booming voice made hot embarrassment flood her. Bon-Bon was not an impressive name for the bearer of such an impressive sword.
“Thank you.”
Her head jerked up. “I think I’m the one who should be thanking you, Princess. This is … this is huge.”
“Actually, I think it shrank to fit you,” Luna smiled wanly.
“No, I didn’t mean … oh, never mind. Thank YOU, Princess Luna.”
“Come now.” Rather than accept the gratitude, Luna limped towards the exit. “Let us return to the surface. I assume you wish to get home to Ponyville before it gets dark.”
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So she has acquired the ultimate sword and you have fulfilled the cover image really enjoying it so far and the updates are coming out pretty quickly I have high hopes for this story
Missing a 't' for 'bet?
Much instead of must.
Missing 'n' for 'known'
So the master sword, I mean Lunar sword has finally been given to Bon-Bon, now business will pick up... Also hearing the aftermath of the Changeling invasion was horrible & depressing...
So Bonnie got her pet catsword.