Forbidden Deeper

by SaltyJustice

Chapter 3

By the time I had finally made my way up to the palace, the moon had already begun making its way across the sky. I had been out, once again, chasing shadows to the edges of the earth, and now my instincts had become quiet for the first time in months. Seeing as this was possibly the only respite I'd get, I had headed back home to Canterlot to spend my precious spare moments with Shining Armor. Sadly, before I had arrived, he had already gone to sleep, slumped next to the nightstand in our room, the candle next to him having burned itself down to nothing.

I sighed, seeing him like that. I had only had the occasion to see him one or two days every month, and even then that took special arrangements. I could tell he'd tried to stay awake, but I was late, always late. He was breathing so peacefully, I contented myself just to watch the rise and fall of his chest for a while, leaving my clothes packed in the bags I had carried.

I don't know how long I sat there, watching him in the dim glow of the moonlight. I wondered if I was really worth to him what he was to me, if he really understood just what he had gotten himself into. I knew a lot of young couples these days were always so busy as to rarely see one another, perhaps he had contented himself with the small mercies that came when they did. Wouldn't it have been that much easier to just find a normal mare, fall in love with her, get married, have foals? No, he had to choose the difficult path, maybe not even really believing me when I had told him what it entailed.

I felt tired, but too awake to go to sleep, so I left my clothes there in our room and departed. Luna was always awake at this hour, so I decided to go pay her a visit.

My old room was next to Tia's and Luna's, but was filled with old junk and certainly not the kind of place I wanted to spend time with Shining Armor. The walls were too thin, for one thing; we needed privacy. For another, the odds of being walked in upon by my sisters were simply too high, or worse, what if Twilight barged in during one of her visits? Instead, we had taken a room in the east wing that had been unoccupied, treated mostly as a guest room, though guests of Celestia's had been becoming less and less frequent.

I knocked on Luna's door, but there was no answer. She was usually up and about anyway, so I wandered around aimlessly. A few of the night watch passed by with a polite nod as I did, the corridors otherwise bereft of life. I estimated it was around three in the morning, and on a weekday, so the staff weren't having one of their usual parties down in the kitchens like they did on Saturdays.

My roaming took me towards the auditorium in the central part of the palace, and as I approached, I could hear a muffled tone coming from beneath the doors. I hovered outside them for a moment, pressed my ear up to the thick wood, an elaborate and ornate carving of a cornucopia that was supposed to represent how music could sate the soul as food sates the body. It was mystical crap that Celestia loved, while I was indifferent to. I creaked the door open as quietly as I could, and to no surprise the room beyond was almost completely black.

I snuck in gently and hung near the back row of cushions, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. There was somepony else in here, other than the musician, I could hear breathing out of time as the grand piano in center stage pounded on. The song was a country ditty from very olden times, though there was no singing. If I'm recalling it correctly, the original lyrics had something to do with a farm worker who fell in love with his employer's wife, and had an affair. Further, I recall the original song ended bloodily, and later versions had happier endings with higher notes. I waited patiently for the song to reach the final verse, listening to the clacking as the pedals and keys were pressed expertly, rehearsed a thousand times. This version did not have the higher notes in the final verse.

The song ended and somepony clapped hooves on the floor in applause, softly as not to alarm anypony outside. I still couldn't see anything, but the gasp I heard coming from the stage confirmed my suspicions as to the performer.

"Amoria, how long have you been listening?", Luna's voice come from somewhere towards the front. Her horn lit up and cast a pale glow over the hall. There was a uniformed guardspony down in the front row, who stood as suddenly as the light was cast and turned to see me in the back.

"Long enough. I see you've been practicing," I said.

"I must get myself back into my old skill, so I will petition thy – er, I mean, your criticism," she said. Luna, I had noticed, was still occasionally getting her thees and thous in her normal speaking voice, but at least she was catching herself now.

While Celestia had explicitly forbidden me from attending the Summer Sun festival in Ponyville a few years ago, I had still wanted to attend for other reasons. It was only at her insistence, and her reasoning, that I did not. She had told me I would need to stay behind to act as a leader, should worst come to worst, but really I think she wanted to confront Luna by herself. She always considered it her fault, even though it was shared evenly between all three of us, so I let her go. Since our youngest sister had been cleansed, she had been slowly readjusting to normal life, re-learning the language and all the little formalities that I had taken for granted. For one thing, life was a lot less rigid now.

"I think you should play the more modern version of the song, the one where they run off together. Most ponies are going to think you made a mistake if you play the older verses," I said. She nodded.

"I see. I'll take that into consideration," she said. Her gaze swung down to the guardspony in the front row, who had returned his eyes to her. She cocked her head to one side.

"Amoria - " she started.

"I told you to call me Cadence", I said, cutting her off. She glared at me.

"Amoria, have I introduced you to the captain here?" she said, waving a hoof to indicate her audience. He stood up and turned to look at me.

"Wedge Antares, captain of the night watch," he said, bowing.

"Oh, yes, you're the one that Shining Armor is always talking about. Congratulations on your promotion," I said.

"Thank you ma'am. Give your husband my regards," he said.

"Before you ask, Captain Antares is off duty at the moment. I offered to let him hear one of my practice sessions, since he had nothing else to do," Luna explained, unprompted. I wondered why, though perhaps she felt it had been improper for her to be alone in the dark with a stallion. She was still literally quite old-fashioned.

"I really must be going. A thousand thanks for allowing me to sit in on your sessions, Princess," Wedge said, bowing again to Luna before trotting up the aisle and past me. The door shut softly behind me. It seemed he couldn't wait to leave as soon as I had arrived.

Luna hopped off the stage and made her way up to me, giving me a sideways look as she did.

"Are you always so heavily attired?" she asked. I hadn't realized it, but I was still wearing my barding and sword from the trip. I hadn't taken them off, and I probably smelled pretty rank too, though I'd no doubt be used to it by now.

"Just got in, actually," I said, looking down at the steel plating on my forelegs.

"And you are not spending this time with your husband?" she asked, again with that sideways look.

"He's asleep, but I'm restless," I said simply.

"Come walk with me then, perhaps I can tire you out," she said, and started towards the doorway. The pale light of her horn dimmed as she moved away, and I started after her to be kept from the dark.

We walked for a time without exchanging words, at first out into the courtyards, then up the walls onto the parapets which outlined the palace. In the very old days, troops would be up here, watching the landscape, every day and every night, but in modern times these areas were just for show. The military had since decided that stone fortifications wouldn't be that useful now that modern siege equipment had been developed, and the reports from the generals that Celestia kept on staff were always suggesting field engagements should any enemies rear their heads. We had no enemies, that they knew of, but generals get paid to plan for everything and so spent all their time in drawing rooms coming up with strategies and tactics to keep their minds sharpened. I suppose if I had nothing to do but otherwise collect pension, I might do the same, but at least I'd do something entertaining, like take up painting.

As we rounded the southern parapet, the grand view of Canterlot proper lay below us. All through the city, street lamps were lit and homes had candles and lights visible from within. You could even tell which parts of the city were using electrical lights, based on the intensity of the glow. It was almost all of them, though when I was a filly, candles had dominated. The world was changing, faster each day, but the innate beauty of the city before us would remain the same.

"Amoria?" Luna asked me, stopping to look out over the city.

"I told you, call me - " I started.

"What is it like to have parents?" she asked, though she kept her gaze focused on the houses below us.

The question came as a surprise, and I stuttered, searching for an answer. Luna was in no hurry, she stared idly out into the distance.

I thought for a moment, to try to explain it to her. I hadn't even thought about it much myself, really, it was just a part of life for most ponies. I suppose that some lived without parents in orphanages, so that'd be the closest similarity, but even then they knew that somepony had been their parents at some point. That simply wasn't the case for Luna.

"You know how Celestia and I are always there for you," I said.

"It's not the same, it can't be the same," she said. She was hiding her face from me, facing it off in the darkness. Her voice didn't waver at all.

"But it is. My parents were always there for me, whenever I needed them. They knew things I didn't and they taught me as they went. I never once questioned that they were looking out for me, I never even thought about their motives. Your parents are ponies you can trust so completely that you don't even think about it. Isn't that true of me? Isn't it true of Tia?" I said.

She was silent for a second. "Maybe, but I still think I'm missing something," she said, turning to me. "May I meet your parents?"

"You haven't yet?" I asked.

"You're always so busy, and who would introduce me? Invite them over for a banquet, that'd be the best way, I think," she said.

"Okay, okay. I'll do that. Is that why you wanted to get me alone out here?" I asked.

"No, but it has been gnawing at me for some time. I had other business to discuss with you," she said. She turned to face down the wall and walked off, leaving me confused for a moment before I realized she wanted me to follow her.

"Maybe you could just tell me what it is you wanted to discuss," I said.

"The movement is refreshing, I like to move while I think," she said.

We trotted in silence along the wall for a short time, two silhouettes moving under the night's crescent moon. Nothing stirred in the gardens or on the street below, the world was still, even the air was without wind.

"So what is it then?" I broached. Luna's pace slowed slightly.

"I know that it is something you cannot know, because of your immunity, but I cannot talk to anypony about it. I don't think Celestia wants to even fathom it," she said. "I don't think the young ones even tell stories about it any more, the world itself had forgotten. Have you not been telling them of the challenges we are about to face? Why are we not better prepared?" she asked me.

"What would you like us to do? Drill the populace on fighting again? Rally the nations of the earth into an alliance?" I asked back.

"Yes! Something is better than nothing. All I have seen is you pinning your hopes on a pony who cannot heft a blade, based on some hunch of Celestia's that she's supposed to make all whole," she said.

"You know yourself what the new bearers are capable of, and you're saying you doubt Twilight can do it?" I countered.

"No, but I do know how accidents happen. One slip, one dropped object, that is all it takes to end a life. Faith and prophecy are no substitutes to evidence," she said.

"That doesn't seem like it'd convince you. Come on, tell me what you're really thinking," I said. She swallowed hard, and closed her eyes.

"It's not scared of her," she said.

"But – " I started.

"When I was released, I felt it for a moment, it wrapped around my mind and held my psyche in its embrace. The confidence in me, the power, the thrill of domination. That confidence came from it, it wasn't my own. It wasn't afraid," she said.

"I don't understand," I said, sighing.

"At first, it reached into me, and whispered all the little things I wanted to hear. It told me that I had no need of others, the weak and the soft. It told me all I wanted and needed was obedience, and that I would be rewarded with power. It told me to hate you..." she said, trailing off. She didn't speak for a moment after that, nor did I. She needed to let it out, I think.

Her voice dropped, barely a whisper now.

"It told me these things I wanted to hear, while it took the parts of me that would have opposed it. It took my love, my empathy. I stopped caring about you, Celestia, the world, everything. I stopped caring that it was taking parts of me," she said.

"It wasn't your fault," I said.

"You don't understand. Whenever I would think that maybe what I was doing was wrong, it would wrench me, just a little. Make my stomach hurt, or my head ache, and as soon as I stopped thinking that, the pain stopped. When I questioned the corruption itself, it hurt twice as much. Eventually, I could not even question it anymore, for fear of the pain, so I did not," she said. She turned to me.

"I let it rewrite me," she said, looking straight at me.

I needed to change the subject before she started crying.

"And so, you think it rewrote you in its own image? And because you weren't afraid, it must not be?" I asked.

"Yes, that would be a good approximation. It must know something we do not, and since we have scarcely any backup plans, I do not see good results coming from this," she said.

"Hmm," I muttered.

"Are you tired yet? Perhaps we should travel indoors again," she said, and set off again without waiting for me to answer. I followed, again, but slower this time. Worry was infectious, and now I found myself doubting Twilight and her friends. Would one small slip really spell the end of Equestria, of the entire universe? Chance was cruel, and it would only take one mistake. Maybe I ought to talk to Tia tomorrow.