The Trinity of Moons: Mending Shards

by Cloud Ring

Chapter 48: Resistance

☄☄☄

Cursory Streak and Blacklight were the first to touch the mirror in an improvised two-ponies-wide column. The surface of the mirror was gelatinous, fleshy by touch. It enveloped them with a sticky, dangerous coat of cold blood. Step by step, pushing through the endless edge, they walked forward, seeing nothing but orange brilliance. Blacklight kept close, near Cursory's forelegs, and Cursory was unable to support her.

Then Cursory felt cold.

It was quiet behind the mirror. She saw a black starry sky above the black ocean; diffuse light without a clear singular source — after all, there were no visible Moons — small snowflakes melting in the water, the lazy rustle of a wave running on a snow-covered beach. They saw neither mirror behind, nor doubles ahead; the Red was not there either.

The tops of buildings could be seen above the horizon. So it was Metropolis. They were on the fishing beach — or in the memory of it. After a time, which here was just as stagnant and stringy as the mirror was, they looked at each other and went towards the city.

Long exhausting walk later, they eventually reached it, with no ponies met at the road.

The city was abandoned. Snow covered the streets, flew through the broken windows, bumped over the wreckage of carriages and aviettes. The houses were fortifications, improvised and hopeless — the windows were boarded up, and at the entrances, under the snow, there were barricades of furniture, the cracks were plugged by random stuff. This did not save the ponies inside; in the snow-covered rooms, under inconspicuous heaps, there were piles of bones.

But the winner did not want to live here. Or, maybe, they did, but could not.

An elusive orange light streaked along the quiet streets devoid of electricity and magic. They went there.

A thunderous thought swept silently across the sky. Anger: powerless, bitter anger of a victim who suffered betrayal and denial from those whom she once trusted blindly; the victim who does not expect anything better from the witnesses creeping in — if they do not want to laugh at the victim themselves, why did they not intervene before it was too late?

What do you want? Get away from me!

Blacklight wanted to say something, but Cursory Streak, an experienced mare who had dealt with similar issues, stopped her with a decisive flap of her wing. A short and sharp swing forward, ‘keep going; silence preferred.’

Have you come to save me? Too late, I'm dead! To comfort me? To apologize, maybe? You are not them!

Yes, Cursory thought, and said nothing. They kept walking, leaving round hoofprints in the fluffy snow.

A strange thing hung over a mountain of rubble from a high-rise building, illuminating it with a faint orange light. As if an explosion of gas had been frozen in time, a ball of boiling fire, warming the coat with its rays.

Not realizing the danger, as in a dream, they went to it. The orange rays did not melt the snow, but warmed them. In this light, there was no nasty feeling of illness.

Walking slowly, they ascended to the ball of living fire.

They were three steps away from reach when the ball exploded and incinerated them.

☄☄☄

The world was an abyss of deep water; one where there is no longer a spark of light from the surface, only swarms of predatory shadows, black on darker black, and malevolent laughter.

The ball of the protective field closed around. If not for a visit beyond the edge of the sky, they would be no more at the same beat. Cursory was powerful now. Gripping her forelegs tightly, she hugged Blacklight to her, and with a white whirlwind covered them from the darkness.

It was useless to shout platitudes. The Red heard each and all pleas for mercy the world invented. It probably remembered them by heart.

It's useless, it thought with obvious pleasure, My ocean will crush you sooner or later. You are not the first ones to come here.

It lied. Cursory understood that. Here the will, right and confidence, that Cursory had in spades, were power too and over the unquenchable hatred of the Red she threw her cards.

...Blacklight in her hooves... “I will not give it up. Drown my flesh, dissolve my magic, dispatch me into oblivion. I am the one that will not give her away. This is what will always remain of me. And you cannot erase it, you cannot drown it with all your rage.”

...and Gentle Touch outside... “I'll go back to her. I will break through all your worlds, through time and other lives. And you won't hold me. The Moons will not hold me too.”

...plus a trump card — an agreement with Black Moon to collect lost souls for a miracle to revive the Moon. “We were coming for a common goal to fulfill it. Now I understand: a promise to pay us up with status was only a push for our first step. We are going to save the Moon, we are united for the purpose and this is our goal. Do you have a goal?”

In cycles past, Cursory Streak and her shadows were sometimes pushing each other for being a foremost one; in a few cases Rarity was taking control to deliver a fervent speech, or Rainbow Dash was there for her to induce bravery. It required a metaphor — a train, or a hotel with doors closed and a hall with a round table to discuss matters between the three sometimes.

Now there was neither time nor place for this playground going forward; what Cursory Streak said was the truth, and she was in dire need of all the power that was in her soul to defend it. That much all three of them knew, and the shadows did the single thing that would matter.

They broke the metaphor, and it shattered.

Shadows did not respond to her call. There was nothing to respond to, and no reason to call. For either there were not any shadows to call, or the shadows were already where they were most needed. There was no fragile balance between the three for the right to manifest and speak in reality anymore.

The unity — Cursory Streak — was before the Red by herself, of her own free will, and it was so.

The ocean boiled with countless white needles, faster and stronger, until they merged and became an ice crust full of quietude.

They could hang like this forever. They were going to, and the Red understood this.

But it did not concede.

💡💡💡

Blacklight was in the mind of the Red; in the middle of the ocean in a protective sphere of ice. Death looked in her face, just like it did in many stories about the Six. Cursory was frozen and silent like a cold marble statue. The Red was silent too, mournfully and irreconcilably. They had no words left that they could say to each other to change anything.

The game was over. Life was over. Blacklight’s story itself has come to an end.

She waited a while, not knowing how long. Maybe a beat. Maybe three lusters. Nothing has changed; then she began to listen.

...One aspect of Black Moon is the void. To find out something, you do not always have to look at what is happening. Sometimes you have to know what did not come to pass. More often than it seems, the null hypothesis is correct. Untold words speak of intentions too.

Blacklight listened to the silence from beyond the shell. There was no Black Moon here to appeal to Her power, but there was time, so much time, and there was Her kiss in memory, and the words of Heralds that she, too, was the chosen one.

The Red was silent about what it did not fulfill. About what it did not get. This was expected. But here was the weird thing — apparently it was not as unhappy as one might think. It was mostly satisfied with the state of affairs. Blacklight had to understand why. Something comforted her, something reconciled her with the role of the most hated creature in the world which proudly remembered its primordial name — Equestria.

...Another aspect of Black Moon is language, knowledge and doubt. What is known, what is spoken out loud or written down, and what is not necessarily how it appears at first.

What would Twilight Starfall do?

“Shall we talk?”

A contented thought flashed from the depths of the Red, So I'll break you open all the same!

What do you, little one, want to talk about?

How useful Cursory's vast memory would be now! But Cursory was like a stone statue right now. Still Blacklight knew something. For all her reclusiveness, she heard rumors, broadcasted sector warnings, brochures with basic advice in the event of an infusion.

They talked about effects, or gifts, as the Red called them. About cancerous tumors, about insects hatching from still living ponies, about instant and delayed poisons, about madness, transformations and suffocation.

Here it was! The Red, telling what it did, and what else it would perform over the world later on... was nonchalant about this. This was a hypothesis, even a theory, but it could not be confirmed for certain. And yet only truly indifferent ponies can do these things with such insidiousness, and keep doing, for eras uncounted.

Contrary to popular belief, the Red never enjoyed pain as such. Only moral satisfaction from revenge. This option was dropped from the list.

“And to what end?”

In the end there will be a truly united kingdom under the singular rule beyond the Moons, who will be banished forever and expelled from the world. The power designated and acknowledged, three cycles of calm triumph over the frozen land, and the true end of unlife. Thus it would then leave the world that betrayed it empty and cold.

So it is revenge. Not against us personally, but against the Moons and the world.

Cautiously insomuch as caution had meaningful definition in the circumstances, Blacklight turned the conversation to the Moons.

💡💡💡

Blacklight talked and the Red could not shut itself out from her words, even if it pretended not to listen, about Black Moon and Its aspects. About darkness where everything is possible, where any obstacle is mutually equivalent to a question. About how there is more space than it seems, and there are more ways and times than other eyes can see. The fact that Black Moon actually has Her own color and Her own radiance — a little further than violet. In passing, she touched on technology and electricity — something that the Red had no knowledge about at all, and thus was very curious; and the Red moved closer, listening intently, full of envy and a barely perceptible desire to cooperate. What if we create fungi that can feed on electromagnetic fields?

The aspects were mostly safe to talk about. The Red was responding, and time passed in a normal way, if not too fast, similar to how it goes when talking with a new — future — friend. The silence left out without a word, and the conversation came in. The Red had not yet emerged from the ocean, but the icy sphere with Blacklight and Cursory inside was filled with an aspect of Black Moon — and the Red was fine with that. Moreso as Moons’ aspects could never defeat it or damage it.

This aspect could be mine, you know?

But Black Moon Herself, unlike Her aspects or the other two Moons... She was not a topic. She was pain.

Blacklight felt the excitement, as if leading a big fish on a line from the dark water. It was not good to think so, moreso about a living pony, even if the one is very bad and not exactly living.

They went on, slowly, stopping, retreating and returning. Touching the pain, accepting it for a beat in order to step away, cry it out even if each of the two pretended not to cry and come to it again. It boiled down to being about envy. Envy of the one who turned out to be a little more successful; a little happier.

“Black Moon personally gave an award for the best school project to my acquaintance…” Blacklight said about her, probing some more and starting a new story. One of many stories that were told.

Nopony will reward me. I am no more. I can’t do your projects, the Red replied. It still was not a pony. It did not pretend to be one. But it spoke with words, and sentences were coherent, and much less blind hate was squeezing the sphere from all sides.

”Then they went to Her...”

You mean — summoned Her or called for Her?

“No, they went to sector 12-S where Black Moon lives… She can live in any S-sector, you know.”

She is doing what? What did you just say? Anger of the Red receded, for a moment. It was utterly surprised. Black Moon should be dead, I ensured as much! You said yourself that you were going to revive Her!

“Yes, She is dead. But you see, such is the nature of S-sectors that there She can live. So there She lives. She sleeps, eats, and reads books. She works in Her lab too—”

They were no longer in a world of thoughts. The world shattered into pieces, and Cursory's crystal shield cracked under dazzling anger of the Red. Cracked, but held up.

No insidious voice around, either; they were alone.

They stood in the sand, under an ice dome; they broke through it with no effort — a touch was enough for the ice to crumble around. The ocean rustled lazily behind them.

“May I hug you?” asked the barely familiar, ringing, broken Cursory's voice.

Blacklight blinked, "What? Yes, I guess…”

Despite the question, or because it was exactly that question, she was not hugged.

One silence later, Cursory sighed, “I… I thought I had been strong enough to win over everything. Even the Red. That was the only reason why I survived. Rarity and Rainbow Dash, my former shards, were the strongest of the Six, you know? Standing against the Red, I finally became one with them… and they were so generous to keep me as the forward personality. Maybe because I have a pony to live for...”

Blacklight nodded, not understanding why Cursory was crying. She was afraid to say anything. What if an accidental word would offend somepony? Cursory or the Red, or both.

Cursory continued, “But if it wasn't for you, sooner or later…”, and sniffed, “Thank you, Twilight.”

Blacklight nodded again. “You… Thank you. You bought time for the Red and me to…”

She had to say something else, but Blacklight just did not know what. Even though she reasoned and guessed for what exactly Cursory was grateful, this knowledge did not become a feeling, and could not please. There was really nothing special about the conversation in the ocean’s depths.

Blacklight blinked and turned away, picking at the sand with her hoof, almost in tears too.

Then she was hugged, after all.