Sun & Moon Act I: Ascending Star

by cursedchords

Chapter 15: The Breaking of the Resistance, Part 1

“Once our lives are merely a piece of history, historians will no doubt endlessly debate which one of my sister and me was in the right. The answer, though, is very simple. Even though sometimes we ended up in opposition, we were always doing what we thought was best.”

- High Princess Celestia, Personal Journals (Vol. 4)

The Sun was setting in the west by the time Celestia and Luna returned to their room. All day, the Resistance had debated, back and forth on the very same question. But Terraria had refused to budge. For her it seemed to be three heroes, or nothing.

Once again, Celestia was pacing about in the centre of the room, trying in vain to understand the old Master’s reluctance. Perhaps the Prophecy really was as specific as Terraria said. If so, then it seemed that they really were no closer to victory than they had been before.

“But why?” she repeated to herself.

“I think I know,” Luna said from the other side of the room. She was seated on the desk by the wall, her hooves propped up on the chair. Just like Celestia, she had been brooding for most of the evening. But now her eyes shone with a sudden light, and her voice came quick and determined. “I really should have seen it sooner. Terraria sits here in Everfree on her carved chair like a Queen. As soon as I saw her I knew that she reminded me of someone, but I’ve only now figured out who.” She leaned forward and scowled. “She’s just like those rich ponies in Upper Eridian, content to ignore the real problem and keep living in her imagined prosperity.”

“Luna, that’s hardly fair,” Celestia replied, dismissing the suggestion with a wave of her hoof. “Terraria has dedicated her life to understanding the Prophecy and interpreting it. The Resistance is only giving her what she’s due.”

“Do you really believe that?” Luna stood and walked up to her sister. “Look around you. All the time and effort that must have gone into building this place. And none of it actually helped anypony. This is not what I signed up for. This is not what I thought that the Resistance was going to be.”

Celestia sighed. Admittedly, things weren’t going quite the way that she had thought they would, but certainly her sister was overreacting. “Calm down,” she said, and laid a hoof on Luna’s shoulder. “Eventually we’ll figure this out, and then we’ll get to the real business at hoof.”

“But there’s nothing to figure out!” Luna cried, wheeling away from her. “You and I know that Discord is as good as gone! Together we could end him with a flick of our horns, and that means that we have to. The Resistance might have helped us before, but now they’re only standing in our way.” She looked out the window, through the night into the east, where Eridian waited. “I’m going, with or without Terraria’s blessing.”

Celestia wanted to chuckle, to dismiss the suggestion as wishful thinking, but Luna’s tone gave her pause. She hadn’t heard her sister talk like this since that night a year ago in Eridian, when they had first met Atlas and had started down this road. “You don’t really mean that, do you?” she asked tentatively, hoping that she had misjudged her sister’s intentions. “The Masters have worked for decades for Equestria. This is their victory as much as it is ours.”

“Worked?” Luna snorted. “For a group of ponies that call themselves the ‘Resistance’, I would expect them to do a little more resisting. All these years they’ve done nothing. Nothing but wait. And now, with the opportunity to do something staring them in the face, all they want to do is wait some more. Well I’m tired of waiting. I’m going, and you’re coming with me.”

She turned back around, and from the look in her eyes Celestia knew for sure that she was serious. And Celestia wanted to agree with her. She knew what she had felt that night, just as surely as Luna did. But that wasn’t the reason why she couldn’t go. She had to make Luna see.

“I’m not going,” she declared, and her sister looked up at her in surprise.

“But why not?” she said.

“It just won’t work. I know you’re frustrated, but the two of us simply can’t do it alone.”

“What do you mean?” Luna demanded, a note of frustration now in the edges of her tone. She reached over the room’s desk, and picked up the ring of gems. She held it up in front of her chest like a shield. “With these, nothing can stand against us. Discord will fall.”

“It’s not Discord!” Celestia took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, but she could feel her own pulse rising. Why was it always so hard for Luna to think of consequences? “Think of the bigger picture for once. Discord is only the start of what we must do. All of Upper Eridian would fight us, and even then we’d have a whole country to rebuild. Magic alone won’t get us there. The Resistance has planned for that eventuality for decades. They have structures and resources already in place. If we want to really help anypony, we are going to need the Resistance’s support.”

“I know the bigger picture!” Luna stepped forward, until she was right in front of her sister’s face. “The bigger picture is out there, where thousands of ponies suffer every day because we choose to wait! This is just like before we met Atlas. If we have the power to help but don’t, then we only make the problem worse!”

“This is nothing like that! If we don’t know what we’re going to do, then we won’t be able to help anypony! If we act rashly, that is what’s going to make this problem worse.”

“No,” Luna replied, suddenly unsettlingly calm. “I think that it’s exactly the same,” she continued, now looking at Celestia with a mischievous grin and scratching her chin mockingly. “If Luna leaves, then Terraria’s question will be solved. The Resistance will make me a Triumvir, and I’ll get to claim my rightful place along with them. My life will finally have the stability that I’ve wanted, and I won’t have to worry about stupid Luna or her conscience ever again.” She brought her hoof down to the floor hard, then shook her head. “I honestly thought that you had changed.”

“As if you have!” Celestia shouted. “Here’s little Luna, charging off on another crusade of kindness without any thought of the consequences. I’ll bet you don’t even know what you’ll do beyond the front door! So go! The Resistance will be stronger without you. Do you know why? Because they want a leader, and a leader is somepony who understands when to act, and when to wait. I know that, so I will happily become their Triumvir!”

“Aha! I knew that was all that you cared about. Never mind the fate of the country, so long as things work out good for Celestia. Well you can have it.” Luna headed for the door, and while walking ripped open the closet with her magic and began tossing their clothing at her sister. “Take your fancy clothes, your followers, your crown. Go on living in ignorance. I just hope you remember when you get up in the morning how much ponies have to suffer to make it possible.”

She threw open the door and stepped through it, then paused, just on the other side of the threshold. For a moment, Celestia wondered if maybe this had all been a ploy, and Luna didn’t really intend to go through with it. “Well?” she demanded. “Going to do it, or have you understood how much of a mistake you’re making?”

Surprisingly, Luna smiled. “No, I’m going. It just feels good to be my own pony for once. I really should have left you a long time ago, sister. At least now I’m going to accomplish something with my life.”

“Just go then!” Celestia yelled, and she slammed the door in her sister’s face. She stood in the centre of the room for a few minutes breathing heavily. Outside, she could hear Luna’s hoofsteps retreating down the hall, echoing fainter and fainter with each passing moment. Finally, they were gone, and the room was silent except for the pounding of her heart in her ears.

---

The cool evening breeze felt good in Luna’s hair as she soared over the forest. Even just this felt so much better than sitting cooped up in Everfree. She was moving, heading in the right direction for the first time in what felt like forever. It was ironic that now the right direction was back to where she had started, but Luna felt like she was returning to Eridian as a new pony, finally having the strength and will to do what was necessary.

The magical ring was now slung over her right shoulder, tucked away in an ornate saddlebag that she had snatched from the lobby of Unicorn Tower on her way out. Somehow, Luna felt that it too was happy to be free again, and the fire of its magic flowed steadily out through her being, adding to the euphoria that flying always brought her. If only she could show Celestia this feeling, if only her sister would stop thinking all of the time and understand how beautiful it was to act on her convictions. If only…

Luna stopped herself. Her sister had now made her choice, and there was no taking it back. This was her fight now, and hers alone. Nopony was going to stand by her side now, but nopony was going to stand in her way either.

Luna turned herself over in the air, so that she could see back along her path. Everfree was still plainly visible through the trees, though by now it was far enough away that its four towers had merged into one needle piercing the sky. With the night’s clouds hanging low over it, it reminded her exactly of the great manor houses of Upper Eridian. Complete with traitorous inhabitants, she thought. Forward, that was where the future lay. Luna turned back to the horizon in front of her, and all the way to Eridian she never looked back again.

Once she broke out of the forest, Equestria once more spread itself out in twinkling radiance beneath her. The multitude of stars illuminating the sky overhead gleamed in the rivers and the lakes like jewels, and the full Moon lit up the countryside, more beautiful than it could ever have been during the day. In another life, one without Discord, she could have lived for this night, eagerly waiting for evening so that she could once again take to the skies and enjoy the peace of the darkness. But this world’s night was not perfect. Off to her right, sticking out like a sore hoof, Eridian still sat, exactly as it had been when she had seen it last. The purple storm still swirled wickedly over the blank grey stone of the city, lit up only by the occasional bolt of Chaos lightning. Eridian stood out like a deep gash across the perfect face of Equestria, and the sight of it again sent shivers running down Luna’s back. But it also re-kindled the fire in her heart, and with a new effort she strove forward, heading straight for the top of the city.

As she flew up the mountainside, Luna spared a few glances down into the lower neighbourhoods. They were of course little-changed since the last time that she had seen them, and she could see a few citizens out and about, going about their routines. A part of her wanted to cry out to them, to triumphantly announce that their redemption was here, that today their suffering would end. But there would be time for that later. She pulled her eyes up, up, to the top of the city, where the clouds grew thick and ominous. The Chaos storm had frightened her when she was a filly, but now nothing was going to get between her and the King. She flew straight on into it.

For an instant, as soon as she entered the storm, she felt that voice of fear rousing itself in the back of her head, just as it had done in the hills of West Equestria months ago. Once more it insisted that this was a fool’s errand, but this time Luna paid it no heed. It was a treacherous voice, she knew, not her conscience but only Discord’s attempt to turn her away. He would have to try a lot harder than that to save himself.

All at once, though, Luna felt the air around her grow still, no longer rushing past her as she climbed. There was a moment of unnerving weightlessness, and then she felt herself falling. She struggled mightily with her wings, but it was as if all of the air around her had vanished. Too late, she remembered the other effect of the Chaos storm, but she had no time to berate herself.

As she fell out of the clouds, Upper Eridian was revealed beneath her, its sharp stone towers and unforgiving slate roofs frighteningly close, and getting closer by the second. Luna scanned the ground beneath her for ponds, hay-piles, anything that would permit a soft landing, but there was only stone and earth. Right up in front of her, a tall tower loomed, only a few hundred feet ahead.

Luna strained with all of her might to steer herself, to get some purchase on the wind rippling through her feathers, and as she descended she could barely feel some control returning. Agonizingly slowly, she could feel herself turning.

But when she looked forward again she knew that it was not going to be enough. The stone wall grew in her vision: fifty feet away, forty, twenty. She wasn’t going to turn in time. As her left wing collided with the tower, Luna felt no pain. Everything just went black, and for a split second she felt her body start to cartwheel as it bounced off of the tower. Then there was nothing. Nothing except for her sister’s chiding voice echoing between her ears.

“Pegasi can’t fly in Upper Eridian, remember?” Celestia said, laughing mockingly. “Acting rashly, just like I said. Good luck helping anypony now. Didn’t I say you ought to have thought about this just a bit more?”

---

Just as he had expected, Seraph’s shift so far had been an exercise in tedium. For hours now he had walked aimlessly up and down the streets of Upper Eridian, thinking of the past and of the future. There had been nothing noteworthy, and Seraph suspected that very soon another aristocrat would be along to relieve him.

He was standing now on a small outcropping of stone, underneath which the whole of Eridian spread itself out on the mountainside. Tier upon tier the city swept downwards, its lanes, surely once grand and straight, now choked with detritus and grime. If one looked very hard one could see the greatness that lay beneath the layers of dread that Discord had left here, but that lustre was still there, unforgotten. All it needed was a new ruler with the right plan to make it all shine again.

What he needed though was a trump card. Something decisive to tip the scales in his direction, something which the King could not possibly stand against. Seraph sighed. His trap was set, indeed it had been set for more than a decade now. But he still needed to find a trigger to get things moving.

As he turned back to once again look up the mountain, Seraph saw a flicker of light just over his right shoulder, but he paid it no heed. It was probably just another lightning strike. Immediately following it though, he heard a dull thud, followed after a few seconds by a muted crash, as of something massive impacting the ground. He wheeled toward the direction of the sound, but there was nothing to be seen. Still, he was the guard on duty, so he knew that he had to check it out.

Seraph began making his way through the cobbled streets of the city, wary now for signs of trouble. It was not unprecedented for a youthful would-be hero to work up a head of righteous fury and charge up the mountainside, eager to give the King a piece of his mind. What he had heard already lined up roughly with what usually happened when such a pegasus realized that flight was impossible up here. It was unfortunate really. Seraph quite admired anypony that had the guts to try and do something about the King, and when he had the opportunity to capture one of these rebels, he usually offered them a place in the Order of Fire. Pegasi, though, rarely survived the journey.

But as he picked his way carefully over the cobblestones, Seraph soon began to feel something else. A twinge of discomfort sliced its way through his earlobe, a sensation that he recognized as a warning from his magical earring. He stopped and stood still a moment, listening for the sound of anypony else nearby. No one could possibly have survived the fall that he had heard, but dead ponies did not register in the area’s magic. After a few seconds of silence, he continued on.

Rounding the last corner, Seraph immediately knew that his earlier suspicions had been correct. A short way ahead was a grand estate, similar to all of the others that lined the streets up here, except that this one was missing a few shingles from its roof, and had a sizeable mound of upturned sod in its front lawn, clearly the result of an impact. From here, his eyes could barely see the tip of a dark blue wing extending above the mound, not moving. Even so, the sensation in his ear grew stronger, ramping up to a shrill sting.

With every step forward now, that sting intensified, far beyond anything he had ever felt, until his eye was watering at the effort of holding back the pain and he was forced to throw it aside. As Seraph tentatively stepped closer, the scene of destruction revealed itself in pieces: first the rest of the wing, then a long and flowing tail, followed by two rear legs and a youthful body. Finally, he stood just over the side of the furrow dug by the impact, regarding a mare who couldn’t have been far into adulthood. Remarkably, her body was still all in one piece, even without any visibly broken bones. But even the horn on her head still didn’t explain why he had sensed magic in the vicinity. Unless…

Bracing a hoof on the grass, Seraph jumped down into the furrow. Up closer, he could make out the delicate curve of her chin, the folding grace of her eyelashes, peacefully drawn down over large eyes. All still remarkably sturdy and intact, especially since it had clearly been a head-on collision. Slowly, he bowed his head down to the ground, listening with his ear to her chest.

The strong thump of her heartbeat made him jump back, eyes wide. That was impossible. It was absolutely impossible. Nopony could have survived such a fall. Seraph placed a hoof to his forehead and roughly shook himself until he had recovered. He leaned down again to take a closer look, and indeed, he could see the light disturbance of the air leaving her lips as she exhaled. No doubt about it now.

Seraph leaned back against the earthen mound, trying to get his head in order. If he just left her here, the next pony on watch would almost certainly report this to the King. It would make a few headlines about the court, but overall probably nothing would come of it. His eyes stole down to her horn again, and his ear twitched in memory of the sensation of her magic. His breath was coming in quick shots as his brain processed what this all meant. He couldn’t let that happen. This pony was something special, something new and interesting. Whatever this magic was that had kept her safe, it could be just what he was after. A trigger.

He scrambled his way up the mound, then scanned the surrounding area for any signs of life. Nothing moved, and there was no sound at all, so he still had time. Seraph quickly made his way back down into the furrow. Gently, he took her up by her front shoulders, careful not to give her any jolts or jostles, and laid her onto his back. He would take her deep underground, where her magic would no longer set off any alarms, and there he would find out exactly who this mysterious mare was. Suddenly tonight was looking up.

---

Luna felt herself drifting back awake. As the last wisps of sleep fell away from her, she braced herself for what she knew was coming: pain, fear, perhaps even Discord’s face as he looked over his newest prisoner. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of her tears. But when she opened her eyes, there was none of that. Instead there was only a gentle warmth, and the feeling of soft sheets under her back.

Luna sat up, and surprisingly there were no screams of discomfort from any of her muscles. Everything seemed to still work fine, which was a relief. It meant that she would have a much easier time escaping whatever prison she now found herself in.

“Are you alright?” a voice asked from the other side of the room. When she looked to see who had spoken, she saw an orange stallion seated on another bed, only perhaps ten feet away. He was dressed in an ostentatious red shirt, but it was open at the collar, and his mane, which was streaked with brilliant red and yellow, drooped casually over the right side of his head. In front of him sat her magical gems, and he appeared to have been taking notes on them in a thick ledger. “No aches or sprains?” he asked, looking up with concern.

Luna remained silent. This stallion perhaps sounded sincere, but from the look of him he was clearly a citizen of the upper city, and that meant that he was not to be trusted.

He kept looking at her expectantly for a few seconds more, then nodded knowingly. “You must think that I’ve taken you captive for Discord,” he said. “Allow me to assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. You crashed, you see, in the city above, and I’ve merely taken you here, to safety.”

Luna wasn’t sure how to respond. Of course she wanted to believe him, to believe that she had another friend, another honest pony in the world that her sister believed had run out of them. But maybe she had learned a bit more from Celestia than she’d like to admit. “And where is here, exactly?” she said warily.

“Ah, allow me to show you!” He jumped up excitedly, a grin sprouting on his face. “You can walk, I assume?”

Luna nodded, and slowly got to her hooves. The decor of the room around her was chiseled stone, lit up by a soft orange glow that came from a few candles in its center. The air was quite warm and dry, which was very surprising for Eridian. Then again, the stallion had mentioned “the city above”, so perhaps they were somewhere further down the mountain? Either way, his seeming enthusiasm to show her around fit with the idea that he was not her enemy, so Luna allowed herself to relax a little.

When she made it to the room’s door, the orange stallion held out the ring of gems to her. “Yours, I think,” he said. “An heirloom of some sort?”

Luna accepted the ring with her magic, stowing it safely once more in her saddlebag. She chuckled awkwardly. “Uh, something like that, I suppose.”

The stallion was smiling, his hoof grasping the door’s handle. “Don’t worry about it. We all have a past to carry around with us. Now, are you ready to see something special?”

He didn’t wait for her to answer, and instead swung the door wide open, allowing the rich glow of the torches beyond to rush into the space.

The sight was unlike anything that Luna had ever seen before. They stood now at the top of what seemed to be an enormous cavern, roughly conical in shape, its walls sloping upwards to a wide chimney, where a great cloud of smoke was rising up through the ceiling. The smoke came from fires that burned all throughout the cave, from the many torches and braziers that lit up the space, but also from row upon row of furnaces that lined the far wall, their flames being fed constantly dozens of ponies bent over mounds of coal. In front of them, there arose a maze of pipes, each one emerging from hulking boilers and crisscrossing the space like the threads of a spider’s web. The steam pipes fed together into engines and machinery that lined all the walls of the cave, and around them she could see more ponies at work, some bent over forges with smithing hammers, others wheeling about great containers of molten metal. It was all quite a bit much for her, and for a second her jaw could only hang in slackened awe, as the furnaces belched smoke in time with the hammers of the smiths, a pulse of clangs and crashes that echoed endlessly in the space.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” the stallion beside her asked. Luna looked over to see that he was beaming with pride, sweeping his forelegs out over the space. “We’ve built all of it, deep beneath Eridian, where the tyrant will never find us. I’m Seraph, by the way,” he said, extending his right hoof to her, “the Master of the Order of Fire.”

Luna shook his hoof weakly. “I’m Luna, pleased to meet you,” she said. “The Order of Fire? That sounds familiar. You wouldn’t happen to know about any other Orders, would you? Say, Water? Or Air?”

The smile on Seraph’s face vanished, and his eyebrows grew stormy. “What do you know about Water and Air?”

“I was a member,” Luna replied, “until today, that is. What do you know about them?”

Seraph turned away and walked over to the ledge, looking out over the factory floor. “Long story,” he said, in a voice that was very difficult to place. “Suffice it to say that once upon a time I was a member too. But I felt that I could be more effective working on my own.”

“Well, that’s good,” Luna said, joining him on the ledge. “That’s exactly what I thought. I came here to do something good, to help ponies. Together, we could surely accomplish even more.”

“Yes.” Seraph looked up, and a look of excitement once again came over him. “Yes, that would work just fine. Luna, consider yourself a member of the Order of Fire, the last true Resistance in Equestria.”

“Thank you,” she replied, her heart glowing just as warm as the torches in the room. And Celestia had said that things could only go badly! Less than a day away from Terraria, and she had already found the real Resistance. If only she had thought to strike out on her own sooner.

Seraph stepped away from the ledge, toward a set of switchback stairs that ran steeply down the nearby cavern wall. “Come on. Let me show you more of the operation. What news can you tell me from Everfree?”

“Plenty, actually. Terraria’s Prophecy has been fulfilled.”

The words stopped Seraph dead in his tracks. He turned around slowly, his eyes showing a mixture of confusion and anxiety. “How do you mean, fulfilled?”

Luna shrugged. “She has her three heroes, and the Sun and Moon are back to their normal cycles. Even she can’t delay anymore, I think.”

Seraph looked rapidly down at the floor, then began to pace quickly as he thought. “The Prophecy’s in, you say, what does that mean?” he spoke in an undertone, quickly moving from one idea to the next. “You’re right, even she can’t delay anymore now. So what then? They’ll march. They’ll come straight here and challenge him, just like her stupid Prophecy says. It’ll be a big event, surely at least a distraction for him. Enough perhaps for us to move. Yes... Yes, yes this is perfect!” he shouted, stopping short and looking up to her with eyes of keen fire. “They’ll come to challenge him, and we’ll be ready to land the decisive blow! Come on, Luna! We’ll need to be ready for them, and that means that we have lots of work to do!”

He ran off down the stairs toward the floor, and Luna followed. Of course, her sister had been wrong. Decisive action was the way to effect change, and Seraph seemed to get that. Finally, it seemed, she had found where she belonged.

Comments

[Yami Vizzini]

Heh, things are getting ever more complicated.

[AppleTank]

Irony is Ignoring how Seraph also brooded and did nothing for 20 years but wait for his "hero". Admittedly, he was a bitt closer and built more weapons.