Chapter 1
I
A bleary haze connected the pristine white sky to the white landscape. To the east, gleaming parapets marked one of the last refuges of civilization. They were ancient and broken, and a slapdash settlement spilled out around them. The castle from which the parapets extended was a symbol of an age long gone, facing the winter brazenly.
The castle interior was equally desolate. All lay silent, except for the slow, echoed clopping sound of a single pony pacing through far-off halls. Luna swallowed a breath, then crept cautiously into Celestia’s chambers. A majestic banister bed, hundreds of years old, cupped the centerpiece of the room: the dying god. Light shown through the window onto the grey winged unicorn, reflected from the artificial lights of the city below. The air of the room was caustically stagnant, and the window on the far wall had been barricaded against the snow.
“How is it?” Luna asked. Celestia turned on the bed. There were scorched papers littered around her, urgent messages from different towns.
“I’m fine, sister.” She coughed violently for a moment. “Better than yesterday, anyway.” She was levitating a twiggy quill above a sheet of paper addressing the leaders of the towns, marked only by drops of ink, now long dry.
Luna walked to the window. Underneath, the city shimmered in the snow. Little houses, punctuated by enormous heating machines. She slid open the metal grate, and the cold air blasted her, permeating the room. Celestia coughed again. Luna slammed the window shut, apologizing profusely, then turned back to Celestia.
"Thank you for checking in on me, Luna, but I'm fine at the moment. I just need to try to focus on this.”
Luna walked to Celestia, and put her nuzzle down to her sister's forehead, solemnly. "I’m going to leave now. The ponies out there need me to carry the moon to their homes." She didn't say anything for a minute. "Promise me you'll still be here when I get back, okay?"
Celestia opened her eyes and nodded, smiling. Luna straightened herself and stepped out of the room. The door creaked shut behind her.
Equipped with the coat and goggles that were needed to travel in the wasteland that was Equestria, Luna pushed through the front door. Outside the castle, Canterlot was a different place. Long, long ago it had been a massive capital city. After Celestia got sick, parts of the city began to fall apart. The outer sections gradually shifted from villas to ghettos. Then it got colder and colder, and the ponies had to condensate at the center of the city, where the heating systems were already operational. Now Canterlot was a small congregation, surrounded by miles of abandoned, snowed-over ruins. It made for a beautiful careless view from Celestia's room, but down here, in the ice and brush, it was a morbid reminder of better days.
There were several settlements Luna would have to visit before she could return to help Celestia--Manehatten, Cloudsdale, Ponyville, and... There were two others on that list last year. Which was she forgetting? She bit her lip. Right. Those two, Fillydelphia and Baltimare, had finally collapsed into the snow. Those ponies that hadn't already frozen had left for other cities. There was probably nothing she could have done. They hadn’t been able to support themselves for a long time. A few lost shipments of supplies was all it took.
Flying low over the landscape was painful. The wholly cloudy sky blended with the ground, so that it was like constantly flying into a wall. Manehatten wasn’t even a speck on the horizon yet. Luna wished she could fly up closer to the stars, to the moon, but reaching the cloud layer would be too cold for even the goddess of the moon.
Luna fiercely ordered her wings to cut through the wind. It stung whatever parts of her weren’t concealed, and her pace was torturously slow. Far above the moon cantered with ambivalent leisure across the sky. It wasn’t visible, but the small bit of light that seeped through the clouds betrayed its journey. It felt very heavy this night. Even after hours of flying, she seemed to have travelled nowhere, except that Canterlot had shrunken into the wall behind her.
The weather forced her to set down before she could reach Manehatten. On the ground, the wind’s grip seemed to loosen, and Luna gulped in as much of the frosty air as she could. It had been hours, and she hadn’t even made it to the first town. She took a moment to determine what direction she was facing, then leapt back up into the air.
Finally, she saw the scratch of silver in the distance that was the town. Pushing forward, she approached Manehatten. The street lights hung around the town almost made it look festive; an illusion which would have been more convincing if not for the rusted metal walls and heaps of trash lying around, all of it covered in dungy snow.
As Luna walked into the town, she saw a small field of broken and rotted wood, once carefully carved, white with snow and untouched by living things. It sat there, serving no apparent purpose. It took her a moment to realize that, once, this had been a store of carriages. Since the Long Winter, as the ponies in Canterlot called it, nopony could use carriages. You couldn’t drive through ten feet of snow. And so these carts just sat and froze and rotted. Luna shook the thoughts from her mind. There were far more important matters, matters more worthy of such melancholy.
Inside the town, it was shockingly dark. As she walked through the streets, past the lower portions of collapsed skyscrapers, Luna saw neither hoof nor tail. Those that could work were at their posts, and those that couldn’t were barricaded indoors. She quickly trotted towards the center of the town, where the Grand Mayor lived in the Sanctum. The whole way, she didn’t see a single sign of life. A little surreptitious voice brought up an image of the moon. Her pace increased.
The Sanctum of Harmony was immediately recognizable. It was entirely unlike the other buildings, which were cobbled-to amalgams of metal sheets and old brick building materials. The Sanctum stood higher than anything else in town, ancient and whole. Above the entryway were two six-pronged overlapping stars, wreathed in five smaller stars. This was one of Luna’s favorite buildings in Equestria.
It was also one of the oldest buildings in the town. Luna had commissioned its construction herself, several hundred years ago. As she opened the doors, she took in the ornately carved architecture; bold curves and deep grooves, and tiny busts sculpted into the walls. The foyer was a vast hall, filled with pews, all leading up to a massive fireplace that glowed a faint green. Luna ignored these, and walked through another door, into a bare, undecorated hall. The walls here were lined with hundreds of dull, yellowed books. They were well dusted, but hadn’t been read since they’d been put to paper. The artificial lights above made a dull carol as she approached the end of the hall, where sat a tall statue of a brave-looking, lightly armored pony. She was a unicorn, and looked up to the sky with an infinitely knowledgeable expression. Held in her hoof was a thick tome of spells, and beneath it all a plaque that posited the simple word “magic.”
When the Elements had died, Equestria had trouble coping. They were the figureheads of peace, and their memories remained through the years. With some subtle help from the Princesses, the “Sanctums of Elements” were raised, and ponies began teaching of the six saints who perfectly embodied the standards of harmony. The pony in front of Luna carried little resemblance to the quiet student she had known. Over time, their appearances had blurred in the minds of ponies, and now they were effectively just images of “saintliness.” Celestia’s favorite student had never worn armor, didn’t have such a fair mane, and never looked so executive. But those were just the side-effects of deification--Luna was all too familiar with that. Ponies needed the Sanctums. It gave them some sort of hope, and helped—so Celestia said—keep Equestria from falling into anarchy. So Celestia said.
Luna stepped through the door carved into the tree. Twilight’s library usually wasn’t locked.
“Twilight Sparkle? Hello?” There was a thumping from the room upstairs, and after a second, the purple unicorn came stumbling down.
“Luna!” She gasped, “I-I didn’t realize you’d be coming!”
“I’m merely here to congratulate you on your new book. I thought that I would pick up my copy from you.”
Twilight Sparkle blushed. “You a-already heard that it’s done?”
“Of course! My sister and I were quite interested, given the topic. And, of course, the author. Celestia has always known of your passion for mythology, but I wasn’t even aware that ponies still remembered Boreas. She was an old tale during the pre-Equestria days.”
There was a prideful shine in Twilight’s eye. Obviously, the research had been an outstanding feat. She had travelled all over Equestria, neglecting her duties in Ponyville, to try to find ponies who could translate the oldest texts in the Canterlot library. “Oh, well... it was just a thought that I had. There are so many foalstales out there, and a number of them turn out to be true. And with Boreas, hardly anyone’s ever heard her stories! And there are so few stories about the old alicorns now...”
Luna looked around the library, and smiled. She couldn’t remember the last time she got a chance to sit and talk about old tales. “How did you discover her?”
“Celestia always had me reading that sort of thing when I lived in Canterlot. The library there is full of those old books! Boreas was always such a mysterious one, though. And who can resist a good mystery? Would you like some tea?” Twilight was shifting relentlessly.
“I really cannot stay long. Canterlot has been busy enough for me as of late. But tea, really, would be a wonderful reprieve, thank you.”
The two sat down together while Twilight summoned with her magic a teapot to boil. In the awkward silence, there was a kind of bucolic peace about the place. Outside it was a wonderful spring day, and the fresh country air wafted through the open windows, pollen and dust and all. Luna took a deep breath, savoring the placidity of it all. It was almost desolate, something the princess never would have thought that she would wax nostalgic for. But in all the time she had spent in Canterlot since her return, there had never been even a second as abandoned as this, and it was pure bliss. The teapot whistled.
Over tea, they discussed what had been happening in Canterlot. There was a new play--a romance, the kind where the stallion sacrifices himself in some sort of needless and verbose display--that was opening to fantastic reviews. There was a new bookstore opening, a nice one, with glass walls and pretty pictures and all. There were ponies making more and more lights, and heaters, and coolers, and it was all very wonderful. Eyes shining with every detail, Twilight nodded with studious attention.
“Tell me, Twilight Sparkle--what do you want out of life?”
The young purple unicorn blinked. She considered. “I suppose this is all, really. Ponyville is great, and my friends are great. I liked writing the book.”
“But don’t you want anything more?” Luna pushed, “what do you want to be remembered for?”
Unhappy silence, now. Twilight seemed to live a contented life. She frowned into her cup. “I don’t know.”
Luna smiled. She wasn’t sure what she had expected in answer. It wasn’t a question she herself pondered very often, but her visit and talk of Boreas brought it to her mind. It was a silly thing to ask. “Don’t worry about it, Twilight. There is no great need to answer.”
After that, Twilight wasn’t quite as attentive. They spoke about all sorts of things, mostly about Ponyville. Her friends were always doing something or another interesting. Twilight eventually got out a few more books to show Luna, who was very careful to keep her own new book very safely unentwined with the mess of books forming on the table. The tea was cold, but they both had a great time going over the various works that Twilight had been investing her time in.
When the sun started going down, Luna excused herself. Book floating beside her, she took off, following the sunset. Twilight stood outside the whole time she could watch the princess fly away. It was late afternoon, and the green trees were turning orange.
Luna bit her lip regretfully as she looked up at the statue. It had always been wonderful talking to Twilight. They used to stargaze together, when Twilight went to Canterlot to visit her family.
“It’s a fantastic work, isn’t it?”
Luna jumped, turning around to see the Head of the sanctuary standing next to her. “Oh, um, yes, very. Good evening, Dam Greenhooves.”
“I’m sorry, your majesty.” Greenhooves bowed reverently, “I didn’t mean to startle you. I should have greeted you properly.”
The lights on the walls cast Luna’s shadow over the stubby brown unicorn mare. “No, no, it’s quite alright. But tell me, how is Manehatten since I came last year?”
Greenhooves shuffled uncomfortably. Luna knew that times were rough on ponies now. The development of artificial heating helped them survive, but fresh food was still a rarity. The head of the Sanctum was positively rotund compared to the emaciated ponies working in the factories. Her robes, traditional wear for clergy, were worn threadbare, so that Luna could see the candle cutie mark through the black fabric.
“We are getting by, for the most part. Our herd has thinned by a dozen or so since we last talked. And Daisychain and Sleetwing lost their foal. But we need to get the Artificial Sun working again, or you may not find this place come the next winter solstice.”
The Artificial Suns gave the few remaining towns heat and light. They were developed before the Long Winter, and were never designed for the kind of abuse levied by the constant snow and ice and wind. Those towns that could had ponies cast protective spells on the Suns as often as possible, but many cities didn’t have anypony capable of using such magic. It was a difficult and time-consuming task, and required somepony either very smart or very magical.
“Take me to it, then.” Luna had been talking to some of the few educated ponies in Canterlot. They had made spells and design changes that were supposed to increase the power of these suns, so that ponies could have a few hours of warmth. Progress was slow, but it was actually looking hopeful that the cold could be conquered this way. Luna hoped that she could remember what they had shown her. Above the Sanctuary, the moon sat motionless in the sky.
The Dam led the way through a dimly-lit hall, and a thick metal door, and down a rickety flight of stairs. At the end of it, they came upon Manehatten’s heart. The Sun was a massive box, sheets of metal mostly covering the complex machinery underneath. There were dozens of thick metal pipes extending from it, wrapping around the room, and finally slipping through holes in the walls to the other houses in the town. Hundreds of little mechanisms glowed with the minor enchantments that kept the whole thing working. Somewhere, one of those enchantments had died, and the entire machine’s workings were thrown off-pace, chugging grotesquely to accomplish its duties. Luna stepped forward and put her horn to the center of the device. Slowly, her horn started to glow.
The Sun went out, the room lit only by the very dim light of Luna’s horn. Without the cogs and wheels and whistles of the machine turning and whistling, there was a jarring silence. The sound of wind and artificial lights didn’t reach this room. Time stopped. The only thing Luna could see was the white floor directly beneath her and the little pinpricks of light indeterminable distances in front of her—the bits of machinery reflecting the light from her horn. It became very cold in the vast darkness.
It was like that for a time. Luna, focusing on the fixing the Sun, was all alone. She closed her eyes, her mind on the spell.
Then, slowly, parts of the Sun started to glow. It started to wake up, groaning to life slowly and deliberately. The room became substantially warmer. It was no longer dark or silent. She was back.
“By the Saints, you did it! It’s never been so well-heated in Manehatten. Thank you Luna!” The princess smiled graciously, and they walked out of the room. It was warmer than it had been before out in the halls. Outside, the winds beat against the walls as mercilessly as ever.
Greenhooves turned to the Alicorn. “Would you like to stay for some food? We have a few alms, if you would like them…”
“No, I would love to, but I have to move on to the next town. I’m running late as it is.” Luna was already trotting to the door apologetically. “But could you send a message to Cloudsdale and tell them that I’ll be running late?”
“Of course.” Greenhooves bowed as Luna rushed out the door. After the door had shut, she rose, grabbing a quill and using her telekinesis to pull a book off one of the shelves. She opened the book, and reverently yanked the front page out. It was nearly blank. She scrawled her message on it, and threw it into the fireplace. There was no real fire. The green, glowing coals in the bottom didn’t seem to want to burn the paper. Greenhooves nudged the paper close to one of the hotter coals. It started to char, and eventually crumpled and disappeared. The message should have appeared in Cloudsdale’s own Sanctum. Hopefully Dam in Cloudsdale was still awake.