Lunarium

by Tramper

Part 2: Chapter 13 ~ And Then A Night Will Come, Long And Dark And Without The Stars To Guide Us Pt. 1

Spiralling around her, there was water. Moving towards a distant surface, there were bubbles. There were, she thought or hoped, but her world remained all black. A cold went through her very being and it stung her coat and flesh, cut deep into her every bone. That's how it was, she thought or dreamed.

If she was aware of it, it had to be only faintly, for there wasn't enough strength in her body to move. Well, even if she could have put some strength into her muscles, she didn't want to anymore. Breathing, too, felt like too much a hassle. She decided not to try, decided not to move or breathe, or do anything at all, since nothing would help her anyways. That's how it was and the blackness was all around her. She knew and needn't open her eyes to see.

No, all she needed to do was let herself be carried by the water, to where no more bubbles would rise and no more waves would splash. Down and down and deeper down still.

The chill grew stronger with every second. It was almost funny, because it was the only thing she felt now. She found herself unable to determine where exactly it came from, since she couldn't do anything against it anyhow. No, she didn't want to think of why she was so cold. It was too much of a bother and she could just let herself drift even farther.

Only a part of her wondered to where she was floating, another part knew that it would be somewhere else. She thought this good enough.

---

“You'll try to leave again?” Rarity asked and then the bubbles, the water and the cold were all gone.

She remembered it, because it had been the last time she had seen the most generous filly she had ever known. They sat on the bed and their eyes were fixed on one another. Trixie remembered her to be white and that the warmest of smiles adorned her haggard little face.

“I know you don't like it here, but mum and dad really are trying their hardest,” Rarity said and pretended to mean it.

In the beginning, Trixie had thought that, unlike everypony else, Rarity never felt the brunt of the force the caregivers were dishing out. That had been wrong. She wore the same bruises as everypony else, for her parents treated her like any of the orphans. Or maybe they treated the orphans like their own.

As her friend smiled at her, Trixie was still unable to figure that out.

“Certain spells work only at certain times,” Trixie told Rarity with confidence.

She remembered it, now that she drifted into the darkness, that there had been neither rain nor snowfall that day, just a few white clouds scattered on the blue sky and the sun shining from the zenith. It had been her last escape attempt, before they would sell her off to her new parents.

Rarity spoke up then.

“Spells won't work. Magic won't work. Trixie, you've got to see that. Magic doesn't exist, if it ever did.”

The words of doubt stung, but this was Rarity and Trixie knew that she would see.

“I'll make them work. I'll bring back magic and make all the spells work again!”

Trixie remembered the eyes of the filly. They reminded her of how her mother had looked after life had faded from her, because there was no light in them. They were looking at a place so distant and wonderful, but were so dulled by the abyss between her and that place. Rarity had long since given up on making it out of this place, Trixie knew, but she always listened to her nonetheless.

“You can't,” Rarity told her, shaking her head. “You won't. I know you'll try to run away again, but they'll find you and hurt you.” Tears were falling from her eyes.

Trixie always ran, always tried to reach the horizon, to go out there and learn magic. Somewhere in the distance a place had to exist where she could do that. Somewhere far, far away.

“I don't want to see you like this anymore. I don't want to see you get hurt anymore.”

She had been generous, shedding her tears for Trixie. Nopony had done that before, so Trixie laid her hoof on the filly's head and rubbed it.

“Every day I wake up in a world without magic, Rarity,” she told her, “but I'll find it. I'll find magic and then I'll make everything better. Just you wait.”

---

She had forgotten that she said those words. She had forgotten and now she was drifting through the darkness. The memory of Rarity embracing her thereafter lit a fuse, but it was like it was extinguished only a second later. For a moment it burnt, and for a moment she felt the entire strength of the cold swallowing her.

The water was a cascade, dragging her farther into the depth, where the earth farthest from any light awaited. There was no use fighting its call, no use trying to move.

---

Of course she had run away, of course she had been found and given away.

Her new parents, she remembered them. Their punches and kicks still stung, because she clung to the gifts her parents had given her, both the hat and the cloak.

Sometimes, she would need to go to the hospital and they would tell the doctors that Trixie had fallen down the stairs, that she had gotten into a fight with other kids, that she was a unicorn and they did stupid things more often than other ponies. They never said the truth and they told her to lie, too.

In the end, she'd been able to keep the gifts and all she needed to do to keep them was to endure. A fair trade, for these two garments were the last link to that tower by the cliff and two magicians who had raised her to be as great and powerful as they had been.

Maybe she could have done it, too. She had thought herself talented and could bring smiles to others. She hadn't doubted herself, but now she wasn't so sure anymore. In the short time she had lived, she had never given up and not once had she taken a step back. Not once had she even thought that she could have been wrong. So what if she was?

She remembered herself, running away from those new parents, only once. She remembered herself, huddled up in an old warehouse that was filled with stuff thrown away and forgotten by everypony. There she was, wrapping herself in the cloak, and then she put the hat on. Both had been to large for her, and the hat especially kept falling down on her face.

After what had to be the fifth or sixth time that happened, she hadn't bothered pulling it back up again and instead just looked at the darkness inside of it. No bubbles had been there and the cold didn't sting, she knew, and it was a dark she hadn't been scared of.

“You got a nice hat, are you wizard?” she had heard the pony say then, the unicorn who had lost her horn and hope, the one who had long since given up her dreams of music and magic.

Lyra was her name and she had told Trixie that magic didn't exist, while also trying to convince herself that wizards might give her hands and make her something that didn't exist. Trixie had always thought that it had been her way of mocking other unicorns, but now she wasn't so sure anymore.

She wasn't sure of a lot of things anymore.

Nurse Redheart had told her about another filly, one she could maybe talk with.

Trixie'd been in the hospital because her father had been mad. At her, his wife, his work, whatever suited him. It wasn't like she couldn't understand, because she was mad, too.

But then she had met that filly, the one called Twilight Sparkle and she had read books. Trixie saw that she'd been sick and Nurse Redheart had told her sad things about her. So all Trixie had wanted to show her had been a world filled with hope and magic.

Yet it had been Twilight who had shown her how the world could twist and change and what horrors could come from the dark.

Maybe that was what magic truly was?

Or had everything until now just been a bad dream after her head had been whacked one time too many? If so, Trixie would've loved to wake up by now.

Or maybe all the destruction and all the suffering around her had been some sort of test. Maybe, but she didn't know.

I don't even care, she thought.

No, she thought about her home and her mother's words. If there was anything left, then it was only one question. Only one thing truly meant something to her at this point and only once that would be answered, only then could she leave the cold and the darkness of this horrid world forever.

Is all magic truly gone from this world?

Drifting through the endlessness, the question rang through her head, begging her to let go of her worldly pains. The chill was so cold that it felt like a fire, burning through her entire being. It was a flame so cold, she would've never believed something remotely like it to exist. Yet it did.

Trixie had known cold. Back in the orphanage she had felt it many times, but there had always been a fire lit. It had been a warmth where sometimes all the children would huddle up in front of it, and a generous pony had shared every such moment with her.

Right now, she needed to end it. It was dark and cold and lonely here and the fire had gone out. Trixie felt the water against her coat, if only faintly, and she thought of every time she had tried to create a light, every time she had tried to give some of that generosity, some of that kindness back to the world.

She had waited by her mother's bed until the strangers came to take her to the orphanage. She had tried against all circumstances and she had failed.

Every day she had woken up in a world without magic, but Trixie had never stopped dreaming.

Yet her heart slowed and the dream was at an end. Her friends were gone and dead, just like she herself. Everything she had ever hoped to achieve was impossible now, Trixie understood. Nightmares and eldritch terrors would haunt the equestrian plains forever and the thing she had believed to be magic would never come to exist.

What she had hoped to be, the light in the dark, the spark that would set the flame ablaze, she wasn't that. She could never be as her parents wanted her to be. Yes, for Trixie, it was over.

It had all been just a childish hope, a funny dream to be forgotten. That's all there was to it in the end. Just like Lyra, who had hoped her laughter to be real. Just like Octavia, who had thought her play honest. Just like Derpy, who always aspired to be as kind as her parents. Just like Raindrops, whose hopes she'd lost in a place Trixie had never seen. They were all coming to nothing in the end.

As sad as that was, however, Trixie admitted that she felt content with that realization. It felt like she had grown up a bit. Maybe she could tell her parents and maybe they'd smile and tell her that she did a good job nonetheless. She thought of them and gave in.

Not yet, a voice within her said. It was not one belonging to a stranger, but rather her own.

As she finally thought of leaving it all behind, Trixie realized that she didn't really feel like giving up just yet. This wasn't all for nothing, Trixie was sure of that. If she could still try, she could still get back up, back to the light, back to where a new day awaited her. Trixie could still be helpful.

For one moment the cold and the darkness still lingered, and then a strength rushed through her body as she willed herself awake. It was the sort of might that she needed to leave the hopelessness behind. What strength remained in the depths of her, she woke it up and forced herself to do everything she could do.

Trixie opened her mouth and inhaled the air that wasn't there to begin with. It tasted of lemons.

---

She threw open her eyes.

“What the–“

Trixie stood atop rainbow-colored grass and the ground of chocolate cracked beneath the weight of her hooves. For a split second, she had to wonder where she was, but then she remembered. She, Twilight and Lyra had been to this place once before. A guard had been killed and thereafter they'd stepped into this world without even noticing it.

And once more she found herself here where it'd all begun. Trixie remembered it, for the memories were still young.

For a moment she wondered how she'd gotten here again? The sweetly sour taste of the air felt good against her tongue, proving wherever this was to be a real place. Yet it was only for a moment that she stared in wonder. Soft drops of water started to rain down on her already drenched coat and Trixie looked to the sky.

And she blinked at the very sight that was all around her. Trixie gaped at it, because the sky wasn't there. What she saw wasn't dark or black or anything like it. It was just, well, Nothing.

There was a void, an emptiness that barred any description and as Trixie stared at it, she felt like it gnawed at her, tried to swallow her whole.

It was like she was blinded by it and the sheer strangeness of how it felt kept her from looking away. Moments passed like that and the dark began to surround her once more.

The taste faded from her mouth, the smell from her nose, the feel from her hooves, the sound from her ears and the sight from her eyes. Everything vanished and then it was there, in the farthest of distances. Something moved, ugly as sin, dreadful as death itself. She only caught wind of it for that smallest piece of time, because a voice from behind her shook her awake once more.

“Do not stare for too long, Trixie Lulamoon, these heavens were long since destroyed by Magia and all that is left is an egg from which The Silence And The Dark may spawn once more,” it told her, ever so softly, both elegant and tired.

Trixie jumped forward in shock and immediately turned around. What she saw wasn't anything she'd expected and so the filly left her jaw open, trying to produce a sound that wasn't even ready to enter her throat.

The one who approached her had a mane like the starry night and a coat of the deepest blue. She sat before Trixie and was tall like a giant in the eyes of the young filly, with cyan eyes that told the story of a thousand years. The alicorn didn't smile, but merely looked at the one before her with little to no expression on her face.

“So,” the alicorn spoke. “What brings you here?”

“Who are you?” Trixie asked back, having a guess, but not believing it.

“Oh,” the alicorn said and shook her head without using any strength, “right. Etiquette is not something I practice still, so forgive me for not introducing myself. I am Luna, and I am the princess of night and dreams, whatever that may mean in these times.”

No thoughts came to Trixie's mind as she stared at the one before her and only a voiceless and mindless comment escaped her. “You're dead.”

Luna sighed half-heartedly and looked right at the little filly, or some place far, far behind her.

“Let us settle on “should be” rather than “am”. It is quite the complicated matter, just like that thing,” she pointed to the distant horizon.

Where once a black, swirling void of pain and horror rose, a bright tear now ran through the blinding dark. Like a hole in a wall, glittering in the strangest colors amidst the blackest darkness, sickingly bright and horrifying to behold. Trixie felt an unease surge through herself, because the dark appeared to drag itself into the light, creating an surreal flicker on the edges.

It was like she looked into the sun and at the same time stared into the blackest of pits. A swirl of light and shadow, an endless ocean of nothingness. Trixie felt her mind starting to tear at itself in hopes of understanding what she gazed at.

“As I said; do not stare for too long at what lies above the ground, Trixie Lulamoon. Nothing in this place is meant for mortal eyes and the sky is the egg of a force mightier than even Magia,” Luna said gravely.

The filly averted her eyes, looked to the ground. For a moment the colors seemed more bright, more lively and more fluid. She felt how dizzy she was, how weak she stood on her legs. Trixie felt how keenly aware she was, how honed all of her senses felt, it was almost too much to bear.

The longer she waited, however, the stranger the feeling In her body got. It was like something in the back of her head was telling her that something was wrong. Not with the sky, not with this world, but with herself. It was the most minor of pains, but persistent in its whisper.

She frowned. All of this was far too much for her, and so she looked to Luna. Maybe she hoped to find answers with the alicorn, maybe she just hoped for protection.

Princess Luna looked at the breach in the sky as if there was nothing wrong with it, or as if she'd grown tired of the sight.

“Everything Magia does is for a higher purpose. It is not a beast of death and silence, but of madness and fear. It is the original horror, the King of Nightmares. It may well be the origin of every fear we have, maybe calling it a god would be prudent. Yet what it wants is not just to swallow the world whole, but to recreate something within the dark it brings, something that is far beyond my understanding of the world. Trixie,” Luna said and turned her head back to Trixie. “It is all coming to an end and I have but one simple question for you: Do you still think that you do dream of magic?”

Trixie blinked, repeated the words in her mind. She had heard them, but didn't grasp why they could be important.

“Why do you want to know that?”

“I have no plan, only a faint hope and this hope is meant to be tested. You are meant to be tested. You, your friends, all of you are destined to make a certain decision. It is not bound to a trinket or a mere characteristic, but rather only to what you wish to be.”

“My … decision?”

Luna looked so strong and proud, she was quite the sight for the young filly. Yet the voice she carried and the eyes that gazed at her both told a very different story. The mare before her was old. So old, in fact, that it sent cold shivers down Trixie's spine.

Strangely enough, her thoughts turned to the princess of love, who'd lived and died, and to Celestia, who had gone to her grave just as magic had left the world. She remembered all the stories, even the one of the princess who had vanished, maybe even died away from her sister. Was this truly her?

Luna's eyes went up and she gazed at the blackness itself. “Maybe I should help you. You know naught of magic, do you? So how about I tell you all I learned of it, so you may choose where you will go next?”

Trixie didn't know what to say, so she only nodded.

And Luna cast down her gaze and mumbled wordless whispers, before the strength in her voice rose and she told Trixie the story the filly needed to hear.

“Magic died a long time ago and we died with it. I am the last of the alicorns, the last piece of an era long gone. The dragons died, the gates of Tartarus vanished and the world lost everything that made it itself. But now a piece of its original form has returned, the very first piece of magic.”

Trixie knew what Luna meant. “Magia?”

Luna nodded and closed her eyes. Her horn began to glow and an ethereal wind went over their coats, lifting the grass up into the air and then, all of a sudden, a black cascade was above and all around them. The wind that touched her coat and skin went down to her nerves like knives' edges and she felt a cold burning like a fire deep within her as she gazed at the swirling nothingness.

For a moment she wondered what was going on, but then she saw them, two tiny spots of red in the middle of a dark eternity. All Trixie could do was look at it with a fearful fascination. She knew what it was, for she had seen it once before and it had nearly killed Twilight.

Comments

[MustacheMerlin]

Trixie opened her mouth and inhaled the air that wasn't there to begin with. It tasted of lemons.

Trixie has been listening to Cave Johnson recently, and it's perfect.
djmadeira.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/caverantalt.png

Theme for this chapter (I just happened to be listening to it and it was awesome):

[Zilverfoss]

An update, but this story, dang.

[Cedric Bale]

Oh wow, this updated! Yay, Trixie's probably not quite completely dead yet (maybe)!

[ferret]

Well Trixie, Twilight dropped the ball so I guess it's time for you to be magic. I have no idea how this story can possibly continue.