Eternals

by Shaslan

Chapter 5: The Brightlands

The presence of the Brightlands only grew stronger as their journey continued. The sight of a blue tree covered in hooves or a bush that grew razor sharp teeth and tried to bite when they approached became almost commonplace, but Luna never grew used to the sense of alien wrongness that these mutated things gave off.

Tulip tried to set a path that took them around the worst of it, but it was adding weeks to their journey, and the further west they went the jumpier she got. “We’ll never get home at this rate,” she said anxiously, at the sight of yet another tree smothered in what appeared to be clouds spasmodically spitting out acid that made the soil hiss and burn beneath it. “And the further west we go the closer we get to the other tribes — and I don’t know if they would hurt you.” Her voice rose a little in panic. “I just want to get home to where its safe. I…I just won’t be able to make this trip next year. Its all getting too dangerous.”

Luna silently patted Tulip’s leg with her wing. Touch was the best comfort she could offer.

Finally, Tulip gave in. “It’s not thinning, no matter how far west we go. We’ll have to go through.” She looked nervously at the trees ahead; as impenetrable and identical to Luna as they had seemed on the very first day with the wolves. She had no idea how Tulip was able to navigate through them. “Its not very strong here, at least,” Tulip went on, though Luna could tell she was trying to comfort herself as much as she was Luna.

Luna looked up at Tulip; she wanted more than anything not to let Tulip down. “We can do it,” she said with a confidence she did not feel. “I believe in you. And we were able to see off the corrupted lion well enough. I’m sure we can handle it.”

Tulip had explained what a lion was in the aftermath of their last narrow escape, and Luna’s heart had bled for the noble beast that had been so hideously mutilated by the Brightlands.

“I still don’t know how you did that,” Tulip said warmly, smiling out of the corner of her eye at the foal.

“I don’t either,” Luna answered, staring into the shadows of the trees, scanning for any of those hideously bright colours.

They made fast progress along the edges of the Brightlands, moving as quickly as they could. As they went they could see the corruption creeping inch by inch over the trees, warping them into things they were never meant to be.

Luna was furious at what she saw. How dare the Brightlands ruin her and her sister’s beautiful world! As soon as they were reunited — as soon as they figured out how to access their power — as soon as they got out of these strange childlike bodies — they would be able to fix it all once they were together, she was sure.

---

Tulip drove them hard, barely stopping to rest for fear of the corruption spreading over them as they slept. After a few days they were both exhausted, hardly able to keep their eyes open. Their food was running low, and neither of them wanted to replenish their supplies from this place.

“How much further do you think it goes?” Luna asked, the first thing either had said of them for hours.

“I don’t know,” Tulip rasped, her throat sounding as dry as Luna’s felt. Their water canteen had run dry that morning, though they had drunk as little as they could. Tulip had insisted Luna take the last few drops. “It could be weeks more like this; its spread so much further than it was when I came through this region on the way to my family’s tribe.”

---

Luna sighed and hung her head low, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other instead of answering. Even when they did stop, she had scarcely been able to sleep; the awful feel of this place kept her awake. A constant nagging drip of sinister energy signatures. This place was…completely unnatural. If the forest she and Tulip had crossed in the past few weeks felt subtly off, this place was a screaming inferno of wrong.

Her thirst grew worse and worse as they dragged themselves onwards, and when at last they emerged into a clearing she let out a squeal of joy when she saw the pond. “Oh, thank goodness!”

She looked from left to right, and though there was the same thudding pulse of wrong as there always was here, the pond itself did not seem to be corrupted. The grass was green and soft here, the bulrushes grew tall and straight, and ordinary grey boulders were littered around the edges of the water.

She glanced over at Tulip. “I think its’ safe to drink.”

Tulip nodded. Since the incident with the corrupted lion she had not questioned Luna’s intuitions and accepted her suggestions of where not to go without question.

Gratefully, they both stumbled those last few steps forward and sank to their knees. They dipped their muzzles gratefully into the cool clear water and drank deeply.

When at last their thirst was sated, Luna leaned with a contented sigh against Tulip. She was still hungry, but the relief of slaking her thirst was so great that she was utterly satisfied. “Can we rest here?”

Tulip sighed; a great huff of air that ruffled Luna’s forelock. “I don’t know — you tell me.”

“I think so?” Luna was hesitant — this place felt as bad as any, but it wasn’t like they had a wide selection of safe places to sleep.

Her eyes were halfway shut when Tulip suddenly jerked upright. “Wait.”

Luna was at once alert again, scanning the forest with wide and fearful eyes. “What?”

“I thought I saw something move…maybe I imagined it.”

Luna looked anxiously at the trees at the edge of the forest, but they appeared like any fir trees would. But then something twitched in her peripheral vision, much closer to her than the edge of the clearing, and her gaze whipped to its source. Her eyebrows vanished under her mane and her mouth stretched into a silent ‘O’ of horror as she saw it.

One of the boulders was moving — a slow, grinding motion, a very gradual extension of a bird’s leg that had until now been hidden underneath it.

A hiss of air between Tulip’s teeth told her that the same thing was happening in the direction Tulip had been looking. The two ponies remained frozen in mute terror as the boulders slowly stirred to life, extending rocky wings that turned to calcified feathers at the edges, cracking gravelly heads out from what had seemed like natural protrusions in the rock, the brown and green feathers of what had once been ducks horrifically meshed with the stone.

A small cheep at Luna’s feet drew her attention, and slowly, reluctantly, she swung her gaze down as the four small pebbles at the edge of the water kicked out webbed feet bloody at the edges where they joined the rock, little yellow heads emerging from the smooth pebbles where they had been tucked beneath stony wings, little orange beaks cracking open with a painful pop to reveal sharp teeth almost too big for the mouth they were in.

Tulip gave a sob of fear as the duck-rocks lumbered into position around them, each adult now revealing row upon row of razor teeth. There must have been thirty of the creatures, now surrounding them on every side. Their eyes were an unnatural red and glowed in the dim light.

Luna stared up at Tulip, her heart thudding. How could they escape? What could they do?

For a few beats everypony was motionless. The duck-rocks were as immobile as the boulders the ponies had initially taken them for, the occasional slide of a stone eyelid across the ruby eyes the only sound.

Tulip broke the stalemate. “Quick, Luna, run!”

She surged to her feet and Luna darted after her. Tulip ran for a gap between the two nearest duck-rocks, and the nearest one snapped at her, but it was slow and its teeth only fastened on the saddlebag. Tulip’s magic flashed and the buckle around her barrel slipped loose, leaving the duck-rock holding the bags in its jaws as Tulip ran on unburdened.

The creatures were lurching into slow, grinding motion, but they were too slow, and Luna realised with a thrill that they were going to make it. Tulip was pulling ahead, and now only one duck-rock was between them and the safety of the trees. This one had three legs, each thick and bulbous with stone, and its neck was long and coiled like a snake.

Tulip didn’t hesitate, and she leapt high into the air, arcing into the air over the monster, and Luna watched her soar, her heart lifting as Tulip did. She adjusted her own course to swerve around the duck-rock, pumping her legs as fast as she could — they were going to make it — and then the duck-rock, which had calmly watched Tulip’s flight over it’s body, snapped out that long neck like a whip and fastened its jaws onto Tulip’s hind leg. Tulip cried out as those awful rows of teeth sank into her flesh, and the duck-rock flipped its head and casually threw Tulip back into the clearing.

She landed with a thud, eyes shut, the duck-rock’s fangs still firmly embedded in her leg. The monster contemplatively withdrew its beak, coiling its neck back up, taking a huge chunk of Tulip’s flesh with it. Luna, who had stopped short when Tulip had been bitten, looked at the blood welling up and spilling onto the green grass, as red as the duck-rocks’ eyes, and screamed.

She hurled herself back towards Tulip, throwing her arms around the mare’s neck, clinging to her. “Tulip, Tulip, Tulip!”

Tears were pouring down her muzzle, the world was swimming around her, and the monsters were closing in around them with the slow, inexorable grinding of rock on rock.

“Get up, get up!” Luna tried desperately to push Tulip to her feet, and Tulip, sobbing blindly with the pain, tried to obey, but her legs gave out beneath her and she fell.

“You have to go,” she gasped, her eyes fixed on the ruin of her hind leg. Half of her fetlock was just…gone.

“No, no, I won’t leave you!” Luna half-screamed, snot and tears mixing and running into her mouth.

“Go!” Tulip cried, trying to push her away.

One of the duck-rocks bit at the hair of Luna’s tail, and though of course it didn’t hurt, she screamed in terror and bucked blindly, kicking at it to get it to let go. Her hooves met only rock, and the thing jerked its head, much like the one that had downed Tulip, and the huge strength of it ripped Luna off her feet and sent her crashing towards the other advancing duck-rocks. Seeing those hideous teeth bearing down at her, Luna stumbled once more to her hooves. She looked over her shoulder at Tulip, now lying in a huge pool of blood, two monsters stood right over her, each ready to take a bite.

Terror suffused Luna’s being, quickly replaced by fury. How dare they? They were meant to be her creatures — they were meant to be animals of peace! And they had been twisted beyond all recognition.

“NO!” She shrieked, fury amplifying her voice until it reverberated throughout the clearing. There was a flash of blinding blue light and then a boom of imploding rock, and then gravel peppered her flesh, stinging her with its impacts. She opened her eyes — she didn’t remember shutting them — and saw the smoking wrecks of the two monsters that had been about to eat Tulip. The world was still bathed in a blue glow, and Luna looked up and realised it was her horn — her magic — that was doing it.

She felt…powerful. More like herself. She sucked in a deep breath, and another. Her ribcage heaved beneath her midnight-blue coat. She looked at the coil-necked duck-rock. She narrowed her eyes and her lip curled. She directed her thoughts at it, and then all at once she understood how to direct her blue beam of light at it.

Effortlessly, she channeled her power towards its head — right in through that awful beak full of teeth — and down its throat, and it cracked from the inside out with the strength of her light, and then it too exploded.

Luna paused, panting, and the remaining monsters began their slow clicking lumber towards her and Tulip. With a sinking hesitation, Luna saw that her blue glow was receding. She couldn’t maintain this level of magic. She couldn’t destroy them all. There was no time.

Pushing the growing exhaustion down and out of her mind, she forced herself into motion. She galloped at full tilt towards Tulip, whose eyes widened in fear and comprehension as Luna launched herself at her, hooves stretching wide to grab her as she pushed all her remaining power into one last effort—

With a deafening crack and a flash of light, it was over. Luna tumbled over Tulip’s body and down hard onto the ground on the other side. The impact of it knocked the breath out of her, but she dragged herself back upright.

The clearing was gone, as were the duck-rocks and the pond. Also gone was the dragging weight of the Brightlands’ corruption, completely absent from Luna’s perception for the first time in weeks. The spreading boughs of the trees above them were a familiar purple shade of brown, the sky above a comfortingly normal shade of purple-pink. Everything was as it should be.

Apart from one thing, the most important thing. Tulip’s blood was spreading over this fresh grass as red as it had been in the clearing. Worse, there were neon-yellow stripes spider-webbing out from the edges of her wound, spreading even as Luna watched. The Brightlands had infected Tulip, her only friend and the most important thing in the world to her.

“No,” Luna whispered. “No, Tulip, no.”

Tulip was still coherent, somehow. She was staring at Luna with awe. “You…you teleported,” she said accusingly, her head sinking to the floor as her strength receded. “How did you do that? I’ve never…never seen a mage…that can do that.”

Luna paid her no attention, staring in horror at Tulip’s leg. What could she do? Quickly, think, think. She could not lose Tulip. If she had a family here, it was Tulip. To be even more alone than she already was without her sister was a thought not to be borne.

Hardly knowing what she was doing, Luna cast about her and caught up a rock in her magic. The act was surprisingly easy after her great efforts in the clearing beside the pond. She spared a second to examine the rock, and reassured by its lack of feathers or beaks, she raised it to her foreleg and bought the sharpest edge slashing down on her skin. The rock bounced away from her fur without leaving a mark and the edge fractured into shards. Luna stamped her hoof in frustration and hurled it down. She used her magic instead, seizing two bits of her skin and pulling them apart as hard as she could. The tearing sensation bought a sharp stab of pain but she gritted her teeth and pulled harder. For Tulip. At last, her skin gave, and blood pooled in the shallow cut. Luna hopelessly, hopefully held her leg out and did the only thing she could think of; let her own blood drip into Tulip’s wound.

For a second nothing happened, but as the third drop of Luna’s blood plashed onto Tulip’s gaping wound, the flesh seemed to stir a little. Luna pushed with her free hoof at the cut in her skin, forcing more blood out. To her joy, Tulip’s flesh began at last to knit itself back together, and the fragmented yellow patterns began to fade back to a more normal purple.

Luna’s cut seemed eager to heal; it closed over within seconds and she had to shut her eyes and do it again, more tears spilling down over her already-damp cheeks. Her hoof shook as she held her leg once more over Tulip’s wound.

She did it over and over, giving Tulip as much as she could. At last, the pain and the repeated self-mutilation was too much, and she crawled to Tulip’s side and buried her face in the sweat-tangled pink mane. She clenched her eyes shut and gave herself up to sleep, not wanting to think about what sort of monster Tulip would be when she woke up.

---

But instead of being woken by the stab of fangs in her throat, it was the gentle nudge of a warm muzzle that slowly bought her back to the world of the living.

Blearily, she opened her eyes and looked uncomprehendingly at the blurry pink shape before her. She blinked and rubbed her eyes and Tulip at last came into focus. She was smiling, and Luna was shocked to see she was standing.

“Hello, little one — you’ve had quite a long sleep.”

“Tulip!” Luna burst into tears and flung her arms around Tulip’s neck.

Tulip’s warm forelegs embraced her back. “Shh, shh, its okay,” she said softly.

Luna sniffed and frantically pushed Tulip’s arms away so she could look at her back leg. “Are you okay?”

Tulip rose from her haunches and turned to display a completely unblemished leg. “I’m fine — I don’t know what or how you did the magic you did, but…I’m fine. I’m not injured, and I’m not some sort of monster.”

Luna ran her hoof over the spot where the wound had been, but it was true; there was nothing there but smooth soft fur.

“Am I infected with the Brightlands?” Tulip asked nervously. “Can you…feel anything from me? Is it just…a subtle mutation?”

Luna swallowed nervously and shut her eyes, trying to feel for any sense of corruption. But there was none. She smiled and sighed with relief. “No — nothing! I think we’re safe.”

Tulip hugged her again. “Thank the stars!”

After a pause, Tulip took Luna’s hoof and led her to a small pile of berries and dandelion leaves. “Here, I got us breakfast. Well — food, at any rate. Not sure breakfast is quite right; you’ve been asleep for at least two days, and that’s just since I woke up.”

Luna nodded; she was not surprised. The ache of her great effort still lingered in her every limb. The effort of using the power she had once used as easily as breathing had taken a huge amount of her.

She ate her leaves in silence and saved the berries till last. Tulip watched her in silence at first, but eventually began to ask hesitant questions. “How did you heal me, Luna?”

“I don’t know,” Luna said honestly. “I put my blood into you.”

“Your blood?” Tulip looked shocked. “But you haven’t a scratch on you.”

Luna raised her wings in a shrug. She had honestly been surprised at the discovery that beneath her skin was blood like Tulip’s. She supposed she had maybe expected to find her own true form of light beneath the flesh. When she had been full of her own magic, she had felt almost like her own self — at least, as much as that was possible in this place, inside this body.

“How did you know that would work?” Tulip pressed, taking her hind hoof in her forehooves to look again at the spot where the wound would have been.

Luna shrugged again. “I know…this world. It’s like me.” As much as something you make can be like you, at any rate. “And the Brightlands is alien. I knew I…my blood…was stronger than it. Probably.”

Tulip nodded hesitantly. “I think…you must be the most powerful unicorn mage to have ever been born. I’ve never heard of anypony your age doing the kind of magic you did in that clearing, and I’ve never heard of anypony ever being strong enough to heal like that, let alone heal damage from the Brightlands.” She looked shaken. “I should be dead.”

Luna swallowed the last of her blueberries and went over to lean against Tulip. “No you shouldn’t, Tulip.”

Tulip hesitantly rested a hoof on Luna’s mane, as she had so often before. Luna leaned into the caress, and Tulip’s touch became more confident. “I just want to stay with you,” Luna said plaintively. “I want to go and see Hollow Tree, and meet Cloudburst, and then find my sister.”

Tulip smiled and stroked her mane again, seemingly glad to have their conversation back on a normal footing. “We will. We’ll do all that.” She tipped her head back to look at the stars. “We’re about fifty miles north from where we were, I think,” she said. Luna appreciated how she had delicately avoided using the word ‘teleport’ again. “We’re only a few days from Hollow Tree now.”

Luna jumped up. “Really?”

Tulip’s grin reflected her own. “Yes!”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Luna was positively bouncing with excitement. “Let’s go!”

---

“If I’m being honest,” Tulip said softly, as they settled down to rest, “When I first met you, I thought you might be something out of that place. You’re not quite…normal-looking, if you see what I mean.”

Luna huffed air through her nostrils in reply.

Tulip chuckled and apologised. “I know better now.”

“I think the Brightlands are aware of us now,” Luna pointed out after a pause. “Can you can tell me about what they are, finally?”

She shut her eyes as Tulip settled herself more comfortably and began the story. “Hundreds of years ago, things were different. The tribes were fractious, but there was some trade between them, and only small skirmishes every so often. But then from the east, an infection came. An infection that tainted the land, the animals, and even some of the ponies that lived there. They became…different. Monstrous. The land was brightly coloured and hideous, and if you set foot in it you would be altered too. Nopony who went into it ever came back. The legends say that at first, things were alright. Ponies learned not to go there, and we simply avoided it. But then the Brightlands began to spread. They ate up everything and everypony in their path. Sometimes they would expand dozens of miles in a day. Sometimes only a few meters each year. But every tribe, every race, every family, lost ponies.”

Luna opened her eyes again to watch Tulip’s face, shuddering at the thought of dozens of unknown ponies being consumed in the way that had started to happen to Tulip.

“Legend says that the tribes from all around the forest and the plains came together to try and fight the Brightlands. Most were unicorns, of course. This is unicorn land. But there was one tribe of pegasi, and even a couple of earth ponies who came too. It was the most ponies to work together in peace that there has ever been, or that there ever will be, most likely.”

“The tribes sent their strongest mages against the Brightlands. They used all the spells they knew. But they were all useless. And then the Brightlands fought back.”

“Fought back how?” Luna whispered, her eyes huge and luminous in the shadows.

“A great earthquake came from the Brightlands. Wave after wave of rocks and mountains moving like water. Almost everypony, from every tribe, was simply wiped out. They say the whole of ponykind was almost purged from the world.”

Luna’s heart sank within her. A great earthquake. A continent shattered. She remembered that, through the misty lens of her other life. She knew what the root cause had been. And she could never tell Tulip. Never.

“And no one tried again to fight the Brightlands?”

“No, of course not,” Tulip shuddered. “But the Brightlands hadn’t forgotten the tribes’ attempt to stand up to it. It was the Brightlands that caused the sun and moon to go away. The tribes splintered apart, and the wars started again — with the lack of sunlight and the spread of the Brightlands, farming enough food for any significant number of ponies became very difficult.”

Luna sighed and put her head in her hooves. She had caused so much loss. “Ponies have really, truly suffered.”

“Yes,” said Tulip simply, accepting the fact. “Yes, they have. And the Brightlands grow, every year. The tribes have to fight for what resources are left. The only reason my tribe can exist so deep in unicorn lands is because nopony else dares to live so close to the Brightlands border.”

Comments

[kingsmen]

Honestly, the attention that this story is missing out on is criminal! I love the world building you’ve done so far and the way you have portrayed Celestial and Luna in this story. I can’t wait to read more and see how this story unfolds.