Dawn of Midnight

by TheApostate

Midnight Sun

‘Silence will fall!’

-Defiant shout of the Crimson Spirits during their final stand at the Gates of Moment.

She had to fight.

Fighting was part of her responsibilities as the protection of every creature’s nightly imaginings. She fought to preserve harmony in Equestria. She fought to not bring back the days of old. She fought for it was her burden.

Hekatomb and Risen Eclipse – the first a lieutenant to Captain Eclipse, one a Batpony and the other an Earth Pony– had heard and knew all of their rulers’ battles. But beyond the simple fact of knowing, nothing more tangible and useful was gleaned out of those fights.

Or no one had survived, or no one dared to override the orders of Luna. Secretive she was, and – many speculated – suppression of knowledge was another of protection. To protect them and her sister from what lurks underneath the nice veil that is Equestria.

Luna would never say. Not that anyone would question the validity of her actions.

She continued on. Lacking anxiety; unplagued by doubt or fear. She sped up ahead of her troop, not bothering to let them catch up and not bothering to tell them a thing.

Risen Eclipse called out for her.

She did not hear him.

The captain and his lieutenant got passed carvings on the cavern’s wall, barely enlightened by Luna’s and the mages’ magic.

“The Sleepless Smile.”

“Rise, Midnight Sun!”

‘Is this worship?’ swallowed Hekatomb.

Eclipse shrugged, his lips twitching a little.

‘Not that it will survive for long.’

He let pass a thing. One of the monsters Luna had insisted they keep safe. They were, once, Batponies, according to her sayings, transformed by the actions of that cult.

The thing then returned to the back where others like it were told to stay; surely ordered by Luna, for they only heeded her words.

‘Eclipse,’ said Luna, slowly approaching them.

They bowed. Then the urge dissipated as she uttered more words.

‘Eclipse, are you all fine? Is everything well?’

Simple questions, yet ones she made a habit of asking – usually, shortly before engagement.

Though they were not frightened. They knew deep down there was no fear in her presence.

‘All well, my Lady. Though you are quite fast.’

‘More?’

‘No, but you could slow down for us.’

‘Yes… Excuse me.’

‘Excuses are not needed. Your safety is also paramount.’

The faints of a smile leered themselves out before quickly evaporating.

‘Follow me,’ Luna ordered her warriors. Her voice was soft but assertive enough for it to be unquestionable.

Hekatomb and the others felt more assured by those two words alone like something had siphoned away all worries from their being.

Eclipse nodded, seemingly unbothered by the effect. His serious expression did not shift, his eyes were always kept on the Princess.

‘What are we gonna witness in there, sir?’ asked Hekatomb.

‘Who knows?’

‘I bet you’ve encountered worst.’

‘I am not braver than your mother.’

Hekatomb made a loud, ruffle grunt. ‘Speaking of my beloved mother: she once asked me why those threats still exists? I answered that the Princess could not be everywhere and know everything.’

‘A good answer. And one she would concur with. But, as a personal theory of mine-’

‘Please tell!’ he loudly whispered.

Eclipse smacked him with just enough force for Hekatomb to actually behave. ‘Anyways. I think the Alicorns do not utterly deal with them because it helps harmony. For us to not be complacent.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

They followed the order perfectly into the dark underground, nothing to be reported within the lines or outside.

They could not follow her. She was too fast, too enamored by the prospect ahead for them to catch up. Occasionally, she would appear in front of them, asking if all was fine. Her voice betrayed no stress. She was unnaturally serene, almost too fake to be true.

Hekatomb kept turning wherever she would appear and kept a keen ear to whatever she had to say. Eclipse, the most veteran of them all, told him to focus. To stop constantly looking back. It was not his pupil’s first mission, but it was his first foray against the true enemy, against the things squeaking and leeching onto life in the somber undergrounds. They had fought beside their ruler, they witnessed her pushing away a gigantic beast and performing feats of great potency, but her obvious angst at that very moment was unusual to Hekatomb.

‘Sir-’ Hekatomb was then interrupted by the sound of blasting and screams.

Dark chants repeating the carved writing were heard, chanted in perfect unison.

An order was uttered.

They obeyed.

They ran into the hot, humid, rancid-smelling air of a monstrosity of a workshop of flesh. Impossibly white flesh hung on blood-soaked wooden sticks, the scalped body possibly still twitching in pain underneath.

Bowls were filled with teeth and the victims’ blood was collected into goblets for some dark intent.

Ponies of all kinds – including Batponies – were present, protecting them were rodent creations of size none of their species should ever attain, with parts of their bodies glowing bright green. Immense monsters, their fur white, and eyes irradiating red stood unseemly on their back legs – their musculature able to render stone into a pebble.

Four had been already killed, a plethora of the lower-ranking ones in their wake too, as the battle commenced. The Princess's talents enabled her warriors for proper deployment.

The Equestrians were holding, advancing in a terrible and ponderous fashion.

The fell-mages had gathered, ready to cast an assuredly terrible spell, not even Luna knew its potent.

She endeavored to stop their machinations. But was always withheld, always unable to focus on her target without coming to the aid of breaking lines.

Her shield was waning, flickering more and more in greater intervals.

Her head pained her. Her legs, injured and bloodied, could abandon her at any moment.

But she had to continue. She had to finish what was begun.

She heard Eclipse, for the first two hours, the battle had started to shout her name.

Luna rushed towards him, strengthening the shield where she wasn’t present in gradual succession.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the captain was shot in the heart and head by arrows.

A wave of effervescent, impossible lightning struck her, sundering her armor in twain and throwing Luna to the middle of that cavern.

The shield vanished. No one was there to protect them anymore. Fearing for the worst, Hekatomb ordered a gradual withdrawal. For some, the retreat turned more costly as they stumbled on the bodies of the fallen, to be then picked off by the attackers.

Maybe answering a call that wasn’t uttered, the beasts attacked the cultists and their minions. Aiding the Equestrians with their fangs and fury.

Earnest allies, but equally terrifying and unsettling. They fought alongside them, and that was enough for them to be a friend.

Then the creations of the cult had gone rogue on them and attacked both sides indiscriminately.

A Pegasus and a deformed creature met gaze. The Pegasus killed it. Others followed.

Yet, the rodents were too far a match for the beleaguered Equestrians to continue their stand.

Luna had not manifested again. But no one had looked behind them for her, in fear of a truth they did not want to witness and to not give themselves the illusion that a retreat was possible anymore. They will die here, and it will be in the name of Luna and Equestria.

‘I don’t want to be here,’ her voice was low, withholding the great pain on her side.

She hated her weakness. She despised herself for not having the strength to get up, to do the only thing she could do right in this world.

The last lights of Unicorn magic faded, their magic drained, or the last of them were finally targeted by her failure to protect them.

The light ebbed. Her vision crumbled into nothingness.

She closed her eyes.

Then, like snapping, two blue, baleful orbs stared back at her. Instantly, she agonizingly backed off and opened her mouth in shock. A scream, a scream echoing of ancestral rage emitting an indecipherable call with an anonymous edge howled from somewhere.

The blackness turned gray-black with a white wound perturbing all across undisturbed.

Silence fell, hammering in deafly serenity.

All around her, scenes crumbled into nothingness.

Darkness took place. She was alone.

A great shape made itself manifest in front of her, perfectly rectangular. It opened into a blinding, white void. And laying away, nearly hidden by the striking light, a body rested in its length on a stone floor, its back turned. Glass-like shards seemed to be planted all over an altogether familiar figure.

The primordial cry returned in a sundering shriek. She cowered in her place, but dared to look up once more at the rift in the sky; she saw a sun. A sun radiating in sapphire blue, rising from a sluggish ark in the collapsing horizon.

She smiled.

In the infernal miasma, in the endlessly cavorting dreamscape, a stallion stood in the middle of it all. He did not react nor was he yelling for aid; the stallion accepted his fate. He was dying – that he knew it to be true – but from where it had come, his dimming mind could not give him the desired answer.

‘It was I.’

The voice was on the brink of tears. Her once composure was lost.

He rose his head in a snap of surprise and saw her image. It was shimmering, barely emitting light.

Is she dying? he thought. Could any of them die?

‘We can die,’ she answered. She smirked, ‘It is just difficult… t-to…’

‘Why did you kill me, Princess?’ he attempted a joke while trying to brief her pain.

His calmness struck her, he thought. She blankly stared at him behind a maelstrom mist, her green-blue eyes reflecting their light upon it and bottled-up sentiments of years of experience.

‘I did not kill you!’ she yelled, the voice somewhat different yet similar, like it was in a rush for freedom.

He heard a shift to panting underneath the ravaging, quiet hurricane.

Unleash.

Was the Princess fighting the enemy still as she came to him?

She walked toward him, her eyes of the clear blue, stained by crying and exertion.

He smiled one last time; she was winning.

‘Good night, Orion. Sleep well,’ she said.

‘My name is not Orion.’

Suddenly, she closed her eyes and collapsed on her knees, defeated. Her form coping with unseen attacks.

‘Good night, Princess. It was an honor.’ He was calm.

Her eyes struggle to open. She sobbed, snorted, and clenched her teeth as tears entered her mouth. She wanted to give up.

‘Yes… Risen Eclipse… it was an-’ something hit her on the head. ‘… honor,’ she managed to finish.

Eclipse wanted to put reassure her. He rose his hoof but, midway through, he hesitated. It wasn’t right; he should not disrespect her in the end.

The last thing he saw was an eye-changing color and the ruler he once served bellow a terrible shriek.

Unleash!

She woke up not sweating or panting; frozen in shock. Her stomach tightened. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to fill the void within. Confused, afraid. Crying, crying was her first action. Her horn pained her greatly; her head could have thrown her into despair; her whole body jolted.

No one came to her.

No one was there anymore.

Silence had followed the haze of battle.

She took a deep breath, inhaling an irony taste, and stood up.

She staggered. Falling a first time on the remains of a copy, of a copy, of a copy, of a copy, of what had once been her armor. Then a second. And a third. She did not care. It would not matter; she would heal, no one will see her, and she will move one. It had happened before and will again and again until fate decides its puppet represent nothing anymore.

The exit stretched in front of her. Luna took its direction, her gaze kept on the rocky floor, desperately trying to ignore the tremors in her legs.

One child remained, tucked behind an adult’s legs. Hekatomb was bearing his weapon high, ready to defend them.

She ignored him. He lowered his weapon.

‘What happened…’ his voice trembled as the memories of white filaments eating all in their wake were crossing the stygian dark.

‘I did,’ she said.

Luna took the terrified child on her back.

The trembles abated.

The one protecting the child-sided Luna closely.

She did not care. It did not matter.

They then exited the cavern, sealing it forever.

The survivors followed.