The isolation of the bat ponies has ended. To survive in the new world they find themselves in they must reunite their clans and find new allies.
After the defeat of Nightmare Moon the thestrals were scattered to the most remote corners of the world In deep caves and forgotten mountains they lived, isolated from the outside world. As a thousand years past the rest of the world forgot them, and the thestrals grew stagnant in their isolation.
As the outside world grows and expands, their once isolated homes become less remote. As outside forces begin to invade, one thestral is forced from her home to seek aid and reunite the fragmented thestral clans on the eve of Nightmare Moon's return.
Silverstar hadn’t the slightest idea of what time it was, but she did know that she was late and that she was becoming increasingly late with each passing second. It wasn’t easy telling time underground, the only method available to Silverstar at the moment was the moonflower she carried. Moonflowers gave off a faint blue light, one that would continue for about three hours after being plucked. Judging from the dimness of the moonflower she had left with, Silverstar could tell she had been gone for far longer than the single hour she had intended.
She galloped faster through the cavern, the number of moonflowers lighting the tunnel increasing as she neared her destination. What didn’t increase was the number of ponies she saw, not one member of her clan was to be seen.
They were all undoubtedly at the assembly, the same one Silverstar was supposed to be at now. Technically she was supposed to have been there hours ago to help greet their visitor. She had a great reason for missing that, one that she was certain the elder would understand, one that may even be good enough to excuse herself for missing the beginning of the meeting. Missing the entire meeting, however, might not be so easy to get out of.
As she neared the entrance to the large, central chamber of her home, Silverstar unfolded her wings and took flight into the massive cavern before her.
About a hundred feet below her was the rest of her clan, a sea of gray fur and dark blue manes massed on the far side of the underground river. Even further off was a lone thestral, their visitor, already in the middle of some kind of speech. Silverstar decided that joining the crowd at this point would be too embarrassing, so she landed on one of the many alcoves that lined the rocky walls of the cave to listen in from above.
“-But that Isolation very has become the greatest danger to our race,” said an unfamiliar voice.
The glow that the moonflowers gave off was enough to illuminate the entire chamber, at least enough for a thestral. Most of the lesser races, even those with fairly good dark vision like diamond dogs, would be too blind to make out much detail. To a thestral, however, the chamber was perfectly bright and even from a distance Silverstar could make out most of the visitor‘s features.
The most noticeable feature was his unusual coloration. His fur, rather then the charcoal grey that most ponies had, was a light grey, the lightest fur she had ever seen on a pony. His mane was also a bizarre color, a deep purple instead of a deep blue like normal thestrals had.
Silverstar had never seen a pony with this coloration before, but then again she had never seen a thestral from the northern clans before either. Perhaps this was normal where he came from, and the coloration of Silverstar and the other thestrals of the eastern clans were strange to him.
While continuing his speech, the visitor turned in Silverstar’s general direction to reveal his glowing, yellow eyes. At least that much was normal.
“Every day the surface comes closer,” he continued. “This place is no longer remote enough that mere isolation can grantee you safety. Equestria and the changelings hives both have settlements within a hundred miles of this spot. The day when you can no longer hide from them is fast approaching, and the longer you delay it, the worse off you’ll be when the surface gets here.”
“In terms of advancement, population and technology, you are being left behind. The machines, magic, and cities they are creating are beyond your wildest imaginations, centuries more advanced than anything here. All while you remain isolated and stagnant.”
“None of that matters,” Nightshade‘s voice suddenly chimed in. He and the elder were standing off to the visitor‘s left, apart from the crowd. Silverstar was technically supposed to be standing there with them, but, well, maybe later. Nightshade continued, “Princess Luna will soon return. It doesn’t matter what the creatures of the light build or do or how strong they become, because it will never be enough. Our princess will destroy them all regardless when she returns. Luna will bring everlasting night to the surface and bring us, her children, to our rightful place as the rulers of the world.”
Silverstar glanced back at the visitor. It would be interesting to see him deal with this situation. If he said anything that could be taken as a slight insult against Luna, then he would lose his audience.
“It may be another thousand years before Luna returns,” said the visitor. “We cannot afford to wait until then. The other clans are in even worse condition than you are. The western clans seem to have disappeared, and the northern clans have been pushed to the brink of starvation. The eastern clans may be the last hope for our race. If we are to survive until Luna returns, then you must take action now.”
It was at this point that the clan’s leader stepped in. She was easily recognizable from a distance because her once blue hair had turned almost the same gray as her fur, giving her the most unique mane color in the entire clan. “We are aware of our situation, Mr. Midnight. Please tell us what, exactly, it is that you are proposing.”
At least Silverstar knew that his name was “Midnight” now.
“If we are to survive then we must reunite our clans and begin open relations with the rest of the world,” said Midnight. “The land of the northern clans is quickly becoming uninhabitable, leading to starvation like I’ve said. It is my intention to eventually bring the northern, and perhaps one day the southern, clans to these lands so that we might create a unified, thestral state.”
“That is a lofty goal,” said the Elder. “These caves provide just barely enough food to support ourselves, let alone double or even triple our number. As much as I would like to help the northern clans, I don’t believe we will be able to take them in. If we did, they would only find themselves starving here instead.”
“That’s why we are not going to remain in the caves,” said Midnight. “If we move to the surface we will be able to set up farms which could support ten times our total number.”
“There is a reason we do not live on the surface,” said the Elder. “Equestria would surely destroy us if we tried living out in the open.”
“No, they would not,” said Midnight. “In fact they would aid us. Their weather control and magic could be used to make the arid lands above you fertile within a few months. I have spoken with the leader of Equestria and-”
Nightshade laughed. “Do you think that we don’t know who the ‘leader of Equestria’ is? Were you hoping that we wouldn’t notice that you were conspiring with Celestia herself?”
“Celestia is-”
“-Our most hated enemy. I don’t know what kind of evil plot you’ve devised with that tyrant, but nopony here will have any part of your sinister schemes!” Nightshade turned his attention from the visitor to the crowd, “Celestia is our oldest and most hated enemy! The cruelty she has shown to us and our beloved princess can never be forgiven. She and all those who align with her will be destroyed by Nightmare Moon when she returns to us.”
Nightshade was about to burst into a long sermon about the glory of Princess Luna when the elder, who was the only pony capable of ending his passionate speeches, wearily raised her hoof to silence him.
“We are all aware of the sort of pony Celestia is and what she has done to us in the past,” the elder said wearily. “However, this pony is our guest, and he is still one of our kind regardless of who he associates with. We will listen to everything he has to say before giving him our response.”
Nightshade gave an unenthusiastic nod and turned back to the visitor with silent contempt.
Midnight didn’t seem particularly phased by Nightshade’s outburst. He just continued on. “Celestia is not the tyrant you think she is, and the citizens of Equestria are not the ponies burned our kind centuries ago. They have agreed to recognize our right to this land, even make us a common wealth of Equestria, which would grant us protection form all other nations.”
“Chrysalis and her changeling swarm are also encroaching these lands. Unlike Celestia, Chrysalis is a genocidal maniac, and you would be lucky to survive her conquest. It won’t be long before one of these two nations gains control of your home. This is your chance to choose the more favorable of the two, to retain your independence, to ensure the survival of our race.”
Or it could be their death. Silverstar couldn’t keep her mind from wandering to the darkest possible motive. Celestia would certainly like to have all the thestrals gathered together in the wide open plains of the southern frontier.
“Even ignoring the difficulty of reuniting the clans,” the elder replied, “I don’t think it would be wise to accept this proposal. We have made many deals with the day ponies and not once have they ever failed to betray us. I’m afraid that I can not place the safety of my clan in Celestia’s hooves”
“I’m aware of our history with Equestria,” Midnight replied. “I’m not asking you to accept this deal now. I am merely asking for volunteers to come to Canterlot to see how much the world has changed in the past 600 years. I know that you’ll accept this offer when you see what we stand to gain.”
The elder thought for a minute then replied, “I will not send anypony. However, if there is anypony here who wishes to go with you of their own accord then they may go with my blessing.”
Nopony stepped forward.
“Please,” the visitor implored. “Isn’t there anypony here brave enough to come with me?”
Silverstar wouldn’t choose the word ‘brave’ to describe a thestral willing to go to Canterlot. She glanced around to see if anyone was ‘brave’ enough to throw their lives away. Nopony was.
“I’m sorry we cannot do this for you or the northern clans,” said the Elder. “If there is anything else we can do to aid you, please let us know.”
“Considering what I’ve said is the best you can do for us,” said Midnight. “I thank you all for your time.”
The visitor gave a short bow and trotted out of sight. The crowd began to clear out. From the looks of them, her clan was rather unimpressed with the whole spectacle.
Silverstar turned her attention back to the elder and Nightshade, trying to think of the best way to approach them. She eventually decided it would be best to be as nonchalant as possible, leapt into the air and, with two flaps of her bat-like wings, landed just behind her two seniors.
“Hi, Grandma,” She said. Silverstar always called the elder ’grandma’ when she was had done something wrong. Doing so had never gotten her out of trouble before, but she still did it out of habit, “How about that guy, huh?”
“You were late,” her grandmother said, turning to meet her granddaughter with a disinterested look.
“Well,” Silverstar lifted her head and readied her excuse, “there was this huge spider. I had to catch it!”
The elder said nothing.
“N-no, really! When you see the size of this thing you’ll say I made the right choice.”
The elder just continued to watch her apathetically. That was all she needed to do.
“Fine! I’m sorry. I should do what’s best for the clan, not what I want to do.”
The elder sighed. “If I wanted somepony to mindlessly repeat the things I say I would get a pet bird. I expect you to be able to actually understand and follow my advice.”
Silverstar’s ears flattened against her head in shame. “Yes Elder.”
Nightshade lifted his head proudly. “Foals these days have no discipline.”
“It wasn’t long ago that I was saying the same thing about you, Nightshade.” The elder turned back to Silverstar. “I hope that you at least heard some of that.”
“I saw almost all of it. I think.”
“And what did you think of our visitor’s proposal?”
“Well Celestia’s plot to gather us all together is clearly a trap.”
The elder nodded. “Yes, but I meant the other part. Do you think it would be a good idea to send one of us to Canterlot to try and build understanding between us and the ponies of light?”
Silverstar thought for a moment, “It’d be great if we could just talk things out with them, but it hasn’t worked for the past thousand years and I don’t see why it would work now. Talking to them one more time isn’t going to change anything. We’d just be putting whoever we sent in danger for no reason.”
The elder nodded, “I suppose that is fair. Perhaps when Luna returns to us there can be peace, but until then…”
The elder stared off into space, likely remembering something from her somewhat mysterious past. Silverstar gave her a moment before bringing her attention back to what was really important.
“Elder,” She said, “if he’s leaving, then that means he owes us his parting gift now.”
The elder’s mind returned to the present. “Very well. Offer to let him stay for a few days and insist that he does so twice before letting him leave. Bring whatever it is to my chamber later.” The elder turned to leave but only took two steps before abruptly turning back to Silverstar. “Oh. And don’t actually ask for his gift outright this time.”
In a moment Silverstar was off. Usually when a single pony visited a clan their parting gift was a few fish from the ocean. With a little luck Silverstar would be getting a salty treat tonight. In another moment she landed next to the visitor. Midnight didn’t seem terrible bothered by the failure of his speech, wearing the same look he had had when giving it.
Determined to make up for earlier, as well as the last time she had seen off a visitor, Silverstar decided to be as polite and traditional as possible.
She made a deep bow to him before speaking. “Dear brother. By the grace of Luna and the serenity of the moon the Starlight clan invites you to share our hearth and-”
Midnight chuckled and gave her a weary smile. “Thank you, filly, but I have to leave now. You don’t need any formalities or to insist on my staying in the name of Luna or the moon or anything else.”
His laid back attitude was a bit of a relief. Silverstar relaxed and said, “Well I do have to insist that you stay. Twice, if anypony asks.”
The stallion gave a simple nod, showing no real emotion. He pulled a chest about half the size of Silverstar from his cart and presented it as his gift. Silverstar humbly accepted in the name of the moon.
Silverstar was impressed. A chest was much more valuable than what a single guest visiting for a few hours would be expected to give. Still, Silverstar couldn’t help but feel disappointed that it wasn’t edible or salty.
“If there’s nothing else I’ll be leaving now,” said Midnight as he began hitching himself to his cart.
Silverstar couldn’t keep her curiosity towards Midnight at bay. Apparently this stallion had seen much of the outside world, including the northern clans and Celestia herself. This could be Silverstar’s last chance to hear about these things, about the world she would likely never see.
Just as he was turning to leave, Silverstar called out to him. “Have you really met Celestia?”
Her interest was enough to regain Midnight’s attention.
“Yes,” he said. “I stayed in Canterlot for two years and spoke with the princess several times. Was there anything you wanted to know about her?”
“Well,” Silver began, “I always wondered something. If she’s made of fire then wouldn’t she burn up anything she touched? Does she just have to avoid everything that isn’t stone or metal? Dos she have to sleep on the floor? And wouldn’t rain or water or whatever kill her? Has she just somehow managed to avoid getting wet for a thousand years?”
The stallion laughed. “You know in the north they say she has six legs and seven wings and that her mane is made of thorns. I guess a pony made of fire isn’t as scary when you‘re half frozen. But to answer your question, Celestia is not made of fire.”
Silverstar blinked. “Then what is she made of?”
“The same things we’re made of, as far as I know. You know, if you wanted to you could meet Celestia yourself. You stand to gain a lot by coming with me.”
Silverstar shook her head. “There’s no way I’m going to Canterlot. I’m not stupid. Those ponies hate us. They’d kill me on the spot.”
“Most of them don’t even know we exist,” said Midnight. “I was there for two years and nopony hurt me.”
“Celestia is just trying to trick you. She only let you go so you’d lure in more of us for her to kill. This entire plan is all just a trap.”
It was so obvious but the visitor just refused to see it. He just let out a depressed sigh and shook his head.
“Maybe I am being Naïve,” He said. “Farewell.”
Without another word he turned and began pulling his cart down the shaft that would eventually lead him back to the surface. Silverstar couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor idiot.
The young mare trotted over to the chest the visitor had left behind and tried to lift it. To her surprise it was much heavier than it look, meaning something could be inside. Her heart skipped and her hope for delicious ocean fish spiked for a second only to be dashed again upon opening the box. Inside were several objects, none of which were fish. There were a few objects she couldn’t identify but most of them were books, maybe a dozen in total.
Great. Now she would have to read.
Silverstar threw the ’gift’ onto her back and trudged off to the elder’s chamber, where the Elder and Nightshade were waiting.
The elder looked through the chest, separating out the books and the other object. “This was a very generous gift.”
In total there were seven books, all of them appearing to be Equestrian in origin. They were written in Equine, the language of Silverstar‘s ancestors as well as the language currently used in Equestria. Though her clan usually spoke Thestrali, thestrals read and wrote in Equine so they had no trouble understanding it. The books also bore the perfect handwriting that all day ponies seemed to have; every instance of a letter was somehow a perfect copy of every other instance.
“We should look through these to see if any are worth reading,” the elder said. “Once we’ve gathered what information we can, we’ll sell them to the Crescent clan.”
Equestrian books were rare and the Crescent clan put a high value on them, often paying a hundred times the books weight in salt and fruit.
The three of them began to go over the books. The first four appeared to be books about the history of Equestria. This, of course, was a subject of no importance and thus it would be a waste of time to read them.
The fifth was about Celestia herself. Silverstar couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous holding such a thing. Nightshade took a surprising amount of interest in the book.
“I’d like to go over this one myself,” he said. “It would be interesting to see what sort of lies the ponies of light have to say about Celestia.”
Another book they wouldn’t have to go over was one on the subject of math. The Starlight clan already knew everything there was to know about math. Silverstar herself knew everything from division to geometry and even how to do a square root (the hardest thing in all of math). There were a few calculations in it that none of them recognized, but they didn’t seem to have any real use. Still the Crescent clan had a fixation with going over obscure, useless and needlessly complex calculations, so they might value the book.
The last book seemed almost like it was meant specifically for Silver. It was a book on medicine and, because she was the alchemist, it was handed to her to be read. The one book that they needed to read and it just had to be in Silver’s profession.
One might think reading a book on potions would be fun. Alchemy were useful. Alchemy was interesting. Equestrian books on alchemy, however, were not interesting or useful. They were stupid.
Still, the elder said that if there was any chance of learning something from it then it was worth reading.
With the books to the side they turned their attention to the other objects inside the chest. The first object Silverstar took out was a short cylinder with a crank on the top and numbers written on the sides and around the edge of the top. Turning the cranked seemed to do nothing and Silverstar was about to declare it broken when her grandmother found a few smaller books at the very bottom of the chest.
These books were made entirely of paper and, after some threats and nonsensical ramblings about the owners of something called a ‘pending patent’, described the proper ways to use each of the devices present. The machine that Silverstar had was some sort of math-machine. You simply turned the dials on the side until you got the number you wanted to multiply and then turned the crank on the top however many times you wanted to multiply it by and the result would be displayed on the top.
Silverstar was able to use it to multiply 473,825 by 15 in a matter of seconds. While it was amazing that anypony could build a machine like that it also didn’t seem to have any practical value. It would be faster to just do calculations in your head unless you were multiplying very large numbers, and Silverstar couldn’t think of any situation where multiplying two six digit numbers was necessary. The day ponies must have had huge numbers of something.
The elder and her granddaughter agreed that it would be best to sell this to the Crescent clan as well.
The next object was immediately recognizable as a clock. Silverstar had seen one when she was studying alchemy with the Crescent clan. Their clock was much larger, however, and had a long pendulum swinging beneath it which was what actually kept the time. This one, however, was smaller than a hoof and was meant to be worn around one of your front legs. Still, there was no pendulum visible on it so Silverstar had no idea how the thing kept time. Maybe there was a tiny pendulum inside of it.
This one they could actually use. It would be far more accurate than the water-clock they primarily used, and it would be portable. This, they decided, they would keep for themselves.
The next object they took out was a long monocular with great magnifying powers. Apparently it was supposed to be used for looking at the stars, a fact that Silverstar found a bit odd. The day ponies were supposed to hate the stars. Why would they build such a complex device to observe something that they hated? Just to make themselves angry? Silver briefly imagined a disgruntled unicorn putting the thing together, grumbling about how he’d finally be able to despise every last detail of the night sky.
She brought this idea up to her Grandmother.
“It may be that they built this to sell to some other species,” she explained, “or perhaps they study the stars to some practical end. We don’t study insects because we like them but because the knowledge we can gain from doing so has advantages.”
That made sense.
The few remaining devices were less interesting. The Elder decided that they would keep the chest and monocular and sell everything else to the Crescent clan.
With no further business here, Silverstar took the book of potions as well as all the other books, because apparently it made more sense to keep them with her, and departed for her own home.
She flew through the large, central cavern and up to the second highest tunnel. From there it was just a short trot to the chamber where her alchemy lab.
Her lab was nothing compared to the one she had studied in with the Crescent clan, but it contained enough materials, potions and supplies to meet the needs of her smaller clan.
Silverstar moved the nook where she had stored the dream walker spider she had caught earlier that night. Dream walker spiders were easily recognizable from their bright purple color. This one was more than twice the size as usual, nearly the size of Silverstar’s head, and was a very valuable catch.
Her first order of business was draining out the spider’s poison into small vials and adding them to her stock. It was the dream walker’s deadly poison that made them so dangerous and so useful. Her alchemy mentor had told her that everything was a poison if you took enough of it and that no chemical, no matter how deadly, was completely without use. Everything was a chemical, everything was a poison and everything had its use.
Her favorite example that of the dream walker spider. It was the deadliest poison known to thestrals; just three drops of it was enough to kill a stallion. However, one drop, heavily diluted, could be used as a sleeping draught, a powerful pain killer or a mild hallucinogen to help with training ponies to access the dreamscape.
There was a certain beauty in alchemy that Silver loved. Not everything needed to be taken so seriously, but this was something that was worth it.
The rest of the night, was spent grinding down the remains of the spider into a fine powder. Insect chitin was a common ingredient in many medicinal potions, such as mithridatium and theriac. She began making mental notes about preparing more theriac tomorrow, but then remembered that she would, unfortunately, have to spend the day reading instead. Her grandmother would undoubtedly want her over early as well.
Silverstar decided it was time for sleep, so she finished cleaning up and trotted off to bed.
________________________________
The next day Silverstar sat down with the book of potions.
Despite her lack of enthusiasm for the task, Silverstar was determined to be responsible and read the whole thing. That determination didn’t last long. Like the other Equestrian books on potions she had read it was filled with descriptions of potions that would be amazing if you could actually make them.
Invisibility potions, regeneration potions, potions that made you immune to fire, potions that let you breath under water, potions that killed weird surface animals call “microorganisms” and many other things were all in the book. It didn’t take the young alchemist long to read through the whole list.
While reading about hypothetically miraculous potions was interesting, it was the part about how to make them that was useless. These books were always filled with words Silver was certain were just made up on the spot. They called for ingredients she never heard of like ‘acetic acid’ or ‘ethyl acetate’. Some of them, like beneviolets, were clearly some kind of plant, but the books seemed to just assume you knew what all of these plants were and which far off corner of the planet you could find them in.
As if that wasn’t bad enough some of the procedures called for techniques she never heard of and were never explained. Silverstar could maybe just try every possible combination of materials but trying to do everything to everything would take far too long. It was more like the book was trying to taunt her than anything else.
The mare sighed and sat back for a moment to rest. To her side was the stack of books and on to top of the stack was one of the history books. On its cover was a very well done drawing of a brown pegasus with a grey mane. The pegasus was wearing some kind of weird, light armor, complete with a not-to-practical looking helmet, and was in an action pose, which lead Silver to believe she must have been some kind of legendary warrior or general.
A typical story with a pegasus in it involved a rebellious thestral foal wandering to the surface during the day only to have a pegasus immediately swoop down and carry them off never to be seen again. Was a pegasus hero just somepony who was really good at foalnapping?
That book would most likely be more interesting to read but continuing with the medicine book was the more responsible thing to do. Or was it? Silver wouldn’t get anything more out her current book, but there was a chance that she could learn something from the other one. Also, she’d be able to honestly say that she had spent the whole day reading, like the elder told her to.
Of course reading this book instead made perfect sense! Silverstar pushed aside the book on medicine and opened up the book titled “Daring Do”.
Reading the history book had turned out to be one of Silverstar's better ideas.
It was amazing. Silverstar had never seen any book like this before. Somehow the writer knew the exact words that Daring Do spoke, and told the story in a way that made it hard to stop reading. The trek through the jungles, Cavaleron’s betrayal, the riddles of the temple, the fight on top of the ruins, they were all described in such detail. Silverstar just couldn’t get them out of their head.
It was amazing. Silverstar had already finished the story two days ago but was reading it again for a second time. Silverstar had gone over the other history books briefly in hopes that they would be similar, but they weren’t as interesting.
Daring Do, according to the book, was some kind of treasure hunting hero. She reminded Silverstar of the thestral heroes described in the Book of Traditions, especially Dark Depths, the pony who had first discovered these caves. Daring Do, despite being a pegasus, was just as brave and strong and kind as any of them.
Silverstar couldn’t help but wonder how long ago this had happened. Was Daring Do still alive?
Sadly, she didn’t have time to think about it much more. She had spent more time than she had meant to reading the book, but now she had to put it down and go.
It was Monday evening, the time set aside for worshiping Luna. It mostly consisted of listening to Nightshade ramble. Silverstar made her way to the central chamber where most of their clan was already assembled.
Nightshade was really playing up the return of Luna and the fate of the day ponies today, something he rarely did unless something set him off. Silverstar had little doubt it was the recent visitor, or perhaps the book about Celestia he had been reading.
“One day the stars will align,” he said, “and Princess Luna will return as Nightmare Moon!”
The day ponies, he assured, were doomed. Once Nightmare Moon returned, her first order of business would be to rain asteroids down on the cities of the light. Canterlot and all the other cities built by the ponies of light would be destroyed in an instant and the surface of the world would be bathed in fire.
Nightmare Moon would then lead the thestrals against Celestia and whatever army survived, a confrontation which would end with Nightmare Moon devouring the remaining ponies of light. Finally, as if they weren‘t dead enough already, Nightmare Moon would banish Celestia and her evil minions to the sun which she would summarily explode, ending the day forever.
Kingdoms would fall. Continents would sink. The oceans would boil. Fire! Chaos! Death! Destruction!
Silverstar fell asleep halfway through.
_______________________________________
Silverstar woke up an hour later, when the sermon was over. She hadn’t missed anything form sleeping through the second half of the speech, she could recite the part about the paradise that would arise from Luna’s rule by heart. The story of Princess Luna’s return was one that had grown boring from familiarity. Even still, there was something new nagging Silverstar after hearing the story for the ten thousandth time.
Daring Do was a pegasus, one clearly loyal to Celestia. If she were still alive when Princess Luna returned would Nightmare Moon kill her as well? Silverstar didn’t like that idea. Daring Do was good, that anti-evil barrier she encountered even said so itself. She may be on the wrong side, but she didn’t deserve to die.
Silverstar decided to bring the subject up to Nightshade. He was a priest of Luna, after all, and he had always been able to answer her questions in the past.
Silver walked over to where Nightshade was standing, bowed to him, and asked her question. “I was wondering something, Nightshade. Is Nightmare Moon really going to kill every pegasus? What if there was one who wasn’t bad and only followed Celestia because they didn’t know any better?”
Nightshade raised an eyebrow, “What exactly makes you ask that? You haven‘t met any weird people lately, have you?”
“No. I was just thinking is all,” Silver replied. “I mean, there are bad thestrals so why can’t there be good pegasi? Celestia could trick or force somepony into worshiping her. Do they really deserve to die for that?”
Nightshade sighed. “Princess Luna will kill everypony who deserves to die and spare all those who do not. I seriously doubt that there are any pegasi in the later category, but that is for Luna to decide.”
Silverstar’s heart lightened at that comment. She knew that Luna would never do anything cruel. If she encountered somepony like Daring Do she’d let them go.
“So she would spare a pegasi that didn’t deserve to be punished? If Celestia had tricked somepony then Luna would show her the truth, right? I mean, surely she just explain to them that they were on the wrong side.”
Nightshade thought for a moment before answering, “There are some priests who believe that Princess Luna will show everypony the truth and give them a chance to serve her before returning as Nightmare Moon. Our oldest ancestors were originally ponies of light whom she had blessed with darkness, and she may offer that blessing to all those who live when she returns. Only those who refuse to accept the truth and become thestrals will be destroyed. I cannot say this will certainly happen, though.”
Nightshade placed his hoof on Silverstar’s shoulder and continued, “Remember that our Princess is kind and would never hurt a pony unless it was truly necessary. As Nightmare Moon she is a bringer of justice and peace, not unwanton destruction.”
Silverstar understood. She would just have to trust that Luna would do the right thing when she returned. If it seemed like Nightmare Moon would do something evil then it was undoubtedly because Silverstar didn’t correctly understand her plans.
Once, when she was younger, she had asked him if eternal night would destroy the world. Wouldn’t everything freeze to death, she had asked. Nightshade had explained the Princess Luna would certainly know the solution to any problems that rose form eternal darkness. She wasn’t crazy and would never do something to hurt an innocent creature.
“Now if you don’t have any more questions I suggest we go to the Elder’s chamber, she’s expecting us.”
Without any further discussion the two ponies made their way to the Elder’s chamber where the Elder and comet had been waiting their arrival.
“Were you able to learn anything from the book I gave you?” the Elder asked.
Silverstar described the problems she had had with the book. “I’ve read the whole thing, but, like I said, I won’t be able to make any of those potions.”
“Then I suppose there’s no point in keeping it. And what about you, Nightshade, do you think your book is worth keeping?”
“No,” he said, “It was exactly what I expected. Lies and slander.”
“Then I suppose we’re ready to sell them to the Crescent clan. Silver, I want you to tell everypony that if there is anything they want to sell to them then they should bring it to Ignus tomorrow. When you’re done with that, come back here. I’m sending you to make the trip.”
Silverstar smiled. This was one of her favorite jobs to do. The trek itself consisted of little more than sitting on Ignus’s head, which would give her more time to read, and letting him take her through the sprawling tunnels.
The Crescent clan was very hospitable and would practically force her to stay there as their guest for a day or two, providing her with food and entertainment the whole time. She would also be able to see her alchemy master, as well as her other friends in the Crescent clan, once again.
There were only two hundred members of the Starlight clan in total and it didn’t take Silver long to find at least one pony from each family and tell them about the convoy.
Silverstar and the Elder spent the rest of the day deciding what to sell and getting them ready to ship out. Gold, gemstones and exotic poisons, things of great value but little use, were the bulk of their usual trade, this one was no different. They also decided to trade away some of their surplus of copper, and a few other things.
It was late in the morning when they finally finished and Silverstar was allowed to go home. By then she was exhausted enough to go straight to bed after dinner.
_________________________________
The next day several members of the Starlight clan met at the northern edge of their territory to load up their cargo. A dozen ponies were busy loading cargo into bags far too large for a pony to carry, but
The progress of the operation was impeded by the fact that Ignus himself had not yet arrived. Apparently he was having a bit of a tantrum and refused to come out of his room. Silverstar had always been one of his favorites, so she was sent to retrieve him.
Silverstar hurried to Ignus’s chamber, which was only a few yards from the entrance to the Starlight clan’s lair, to find him curled up in the corner of a chamber.
Ignus, like all trolls, was an intimidating figure, a massive, gray biped with hulking muscles, skin thick as armor and tusks the size of a pony. It was a good thing that trolls had a soft spot for ponies, thinking them the most adorable things in the world. A troll would only ever hurt a pony under extreme circumstance, making them one of the few creatures to be welcome in thestral territory. In fact, most clans kept a troll or two as a sort of pet to help with heavy labor (to be fair the trolls thought of the ponies as their own pets).
“What’s wrong, Ignus?” Silverstar asked. “Did you get hurt?”
Ignus turned and, upon seeing one of his ponies, his face lit up. Silverstar soon found herself locked in a hug that only a troll was big enough to give.
“Yay, Star!” Ignus said. “Good po-nay!”
Silverstar let out a sigh of relief. “Well I’m glad you’re okay, but why were you crying?”
Ignus’s pouty face returned. “Bad noise. Ground shake. Rocks fall down on Ignus!”
An earthquake? Silverstar couldn’t blame Ignus for getting scared; earthquakes were arguable the most dangerous thing you could run into in these caves.
“Oh, Ignus,” Silver said softly, “you know that if something scary happens you should come stay with us ponies. We‘ll keep you safe.”
“Star stop ground shake?” Ignus asked, eyes full of hope.
No, she couldn’t stop an earthquake, nothing could, but she also didn’t have the heart to tell him that outright. “Well, the earthquake is over now. And anyway I have something that will cheer you up. We’re going to see the big pony place!”
That comment brought Ignus’s smile back, and also caused him to crush Silver even harder with his hug. “Hahaha! Star is best po-nay!”
“No, Luna is best pony,” Silver said. That was something he was always forgetting. “Now let’s get going, you can hug me later.”
Silverstar wiggled out of his grip, climbed on top of his head and rode the troll back to where her clan was waiting. She explained what had happened to the Elder as Ignus was loaded up.
Silverstar wiggled out of his grip, climbed on top of his head and rode the troll back to where her clan was waiting. She explained what had happened to the Elder as Ignus was loaded up.
“You’d best be careful then,” the elder said. “Earthquakes can come in groups, you know.”
Silverstar said that she’d be careful, and then Nightshade came along and blessed her in the name of Luna and the moon and what have you. By the time he was done, Ignus was fully loaded.
Soon they were far out of sight of the rest of Silverstar’s clan. The tunnels had always represented freedom to Silverstar. They were so numerous and sprawling that no map of their entirety existed and so sparse that you could explore them for hours without bumping into anypony else. Here you were free to do anything you liked, and right now that decision was easy for Silverstar to make. She pulled out the copy of Daring Do and a moonflower for extra light and began to read.
_____________________________
After a few hours, they passed that one rock that looked vaguely like a diamond dog, or maybe a small troll, the two had the same general outline.
Silverstar used this rock a marker for the halfway point on the path. Every time she passed it she wondered if it was just an unusually formed rock or if it was an ancient, and heavily worn, statue.
It was actually diamond dogs who had dug out most of these caverns, so it wasn’t uncommon to find artifacts they had left behind. Diamond dogs were amazingly fast diggers and, like trolls, they ate gemstones. They would set up massive gemstone mines and support tunnels only to immediately abandon them when a slightly richer vein was discovered. The result of thousands of years of this activity was an endless, sprawling network of caves and tunnels that spread across the entire continent.
But diamond dogs never came here anymore, ever since Silverstar’s ancestors claimed these caves for themselves. The Crescent clan kept constant watch of the cave’s borders to ensure that no outsiders, like diamond dogs, entered.
This statue, or maybe rock, was also the place where Silverstar always stopped for lunch. She was just about to tell Ignus to stop when a low rumbling came from further down the tunnel.
“Ah!” Ignus yelled. He put is hands on his head, nearly crushing Silverstar, and knelt down.
Another earthquake? For an earthquake, there was very little shaking and a whole lot of noise. It was also one of the shortest earthquake’s Silverstar had seen, appearing to be over after just a few seconds.
Silverstar gently patted Ignus on the head. “It’s okay, Ignus. I think it ended.”
It took a few minutes to calm Ignus down, but Silverstar managed to do it. Afterward the two had lunch. Silverstar had a catfish she had packed and Ignus helped himself to some of the nearby rocks.
Silver was a little concerned about the frequency of the earthquakes. It wasn‘t too uncommon for there to be multiple earthquakes in a row, but it meant that more might be coming. There was nothing she could really do to prepare for another one. Just move to the most open area, which they were already in, and be ready to move, which they already were. Worrying about it wouldn’t do any good.
Silverstar warily chewed on her catfish and tried to change the subject of her mind. Her attempt to distract herself was soon interrupted.
Suddenly there was a flash of light and a loud bang further down the tunnel. Silverstar and Ignus both leapt back in shock as they watched one of the side tunnels collapsed from the force of it.
Silverstar was more surprised than anything; she had never seen anything like this happen. It certainly wasn’t an earthquake. Whatever it was, it had come from within the tunnel that had just collapsed. After recovering form her initial shock, Silverstar trotted over to the now rubble filled tunnel to investigate. Other than the fact that it was collapsed, there was nothing suspicious about it.
It was at that point that Silverstar remembered that this was the very tunnel she was supposed to turn down next. Silverstar groaned. This was a stroke of bad luck. Of the thousands of tunnels that could have spontaneously exploded, it had to be this one.
There were still dozens of paths left that lead to the Crescent clan, but that wasn’t Silverstar’s primary concern at the moment. There was something very dangerous going on in the tunnels. It was likely that all the other ‘earthquakes’ were actually this strange phenomenon and Silverstar wanted to know exactly what she was dealing with before moving on.
The thing that had caused this was likely on the other side of the debris. There was a nearby tunnel that intersected the collapsed one a little ways down, but it was too small for Ignus to fit into so Silverstar would have to go alone.
“I’ll be back in a minute, Ignus,” she said to the troll.
She felt bad about leaving him alone, but in all honesty he didn’t appear frightened at all. Surprisingly, he was more curious than anything else, looking carefully over the debris, occasionally poking them. Ignus simply nodded at his pony and went back to his study.
Silverstar flew over to her targeted tunnel and entered. It was dark. With no moonflowers the cave had no light whatsoever, making impossible for anything, even a thestral, to see within it. It made little difference, however, as Silverstar knew the way through this part of the caves by heart and could move through it swiftly even without sight. She did have a moonflower tucked away in her saddlebag, but she wanted stealth on her side just incase the thing that collapsed the tunnel was alive. She would only take out her light if she needed it.
After moving silently through the dark for some time Silverstar felt a heavy draft from her side. She knew this meant that she had just entered the large room at the end of the tunnel. Fifty-three paces forward and a turn to the right would put her on a path that bisected the recently collapsed tunnel.
When she made the turn she saw something she didn’t expect; a light from further down that was slowly growing brighter as if the source were moving towards Silverstar. The light was much brighter than a thestral would need meaning it was most likely something else. Soon the light was close enough to dimly light the room Silverstar was in.
Worried that she might be seen, Silverstar turned back to the tunnel she had entered from. But this time, perhaps because the room was brighter than normal, she saw something that she had never noticed before. There was a hole a good distance up the wall that looked like it lead into a tunnel. The higher ground would be safer, protecting her from anything that couldn’t fly or climb well, and would allow her to watch whatever entered the room from a more hidden spot.
Silverstar flew up to the nook and immediately regretted her decision. It wasn’t actually a tunnel, only going back thirty feet or so before stopping at a dead end. At least it would make a good hiding spot. It was too late to go back into the large room now. The carriers of the lantern were too close.
She could hear one of their voices. “I told you I’m not touching those things, they’re too dangerous. No! Don’t hold it like that, you idiot. You almost killed us all with that last explosion! You need to be more careful.
Silverstar dared to peak down at them from her hiding spot. As she had suspected there were two diamond dogs below her, each carried a lantern as well as a large sack of something, probably gemstones. What she wasn’t expecting was the third member of the group, a changeling.
One of the diamond dogs spoke to the changeling in a harsh whisper, “Be quite, roach.”
“Don’t call me that,” the changeling snapped back. “The boss said I’m in charge so you have to do everything I say.”
One of the diamond dogs grumbled and put threw down his bag to confront his changeling companion. “Boss said to be quite. Not to complain about this and that and everything. We is making too much noise already. We don‘t need roach screaming on top of it.”
“If you don’t stop giving me attitude then I’m going to tell the boss and he’s going to be very angry at you. Then you can kiss all those gems goodbye.”
The diamond dog grumbled and returned his bag to his back.
The changeling raised his head triumphantly. “And I’m not standing in the next tunnel we dynamite. It’s too dangerous.”
‘Dynamite‘? Silverstar considered herself fluent in Equine but that was one word she didn’t know. Still, it was clear they were doing something to the tunnels. They were probably the ones behind the explosions.
“Fine!” the diamond dog shouted. “You stay here and we go and finish this.”
Roach, as the diamond dogs called him, didn’t like that idea. Silverstar could see his eyes widen and as he gave a slight shudder. “No! Maybe you didn’t notice but this place is crawling with freaking vamponies. I’m not staying here alone! One of you has to stay with me.”
“Arg!” the diamond dog said as pulled his claw across his face. “Two is needed to blow it up. Either roach comes with us or roach stays here alone!”
Roach’s face froze momentarily, then he nervously looked around, trying to decide which choice was less dangerous. After a moment his eyes lit up and he slapped his forehead. With a burst of green flame, he transformed into a thestral stallion.
He raised his head proudly and said, “I’ll stay here while you collapse the next tunnel. If any vamponies come I’ll just pretend to be one of them. It’s brilliant.”
“Boss told roach not to do that.”
“Well he won’t find out. If you try to tell him then it will be your word against mine and I’ll be the one who convinces him because I’m smarter.”
“Yes, yes. Roach is genius,” the diamond dog said as he departed. Shortly after leaving view Silverstar heard him mutter, “Not enough gems for this.”
Now Silverstar and the changeling were alone. Below her the changeling was sitting perfectly still, humming a little tune, his eyes darting across the room. He still had a lantern, but it was turned down very low. The transformation must have given him superior dark vision. He didn’t seem to be going anywhere soon, so Silverstar wouldn’t be able to leave without being seen.
It might have been better to just wait for the entire party to leave. In this light Roach would be able to see the glow from her eyes were he to look in her direction, so she‘d need to conceal herself better to wait them out. Silverstar tried to creep backward into the crevice, but as she moved back she accidentally kicked a small rock. The noise wasn’t very loud but it was enough to get Roach’s attention.
Roach snapped his head in the direction of the cave, eyes wide with terror. “I-is someone there?”
Silverstar stood perfectly still. The changeling could clearly see her eyes but didn‘t make any kind of move. Perhaps he was hoping that they were simply two topazes. If he was it wouldn’t be enough to save Silverstar, because he began to walk towards her to investigate.
He seemed like a coward. Silverstar could likely scare him off. Unfortunately, if she tried that then he might scream and then the diamond dogs, who couldn’t be very far away yet, might return.
But then a second idea came to her; she could just play dumb.
“Um, if you are a vampony then I just want you to know that I’m one of you guys!” Roach called to her from below. “I’m not a changeling or anything like that.”
She would have to play very dumb.
Silverstar stepped into view, which was enough to make the changeling flinch, and greeted him in equine with as much warmth as she could. “Oh, I thought you were a changeling. My mistake.”
Silverstar landed right in front of him and looked him over. “Yep. My grandma said that changelings always wear hats, but you’re not, so you can’t be a changeling.”
Roach blinked with amazement. He sat there silently for a moment, undoubtedly surprised that he had actually fooled Silverstar, before remember to respond. “O-oh. Oh, yes. That thing about the hats is absolutely true. That‘s how you know I‘m not a changeling. I hate changelings. I mean, I like devouring changelings, of course, but I also hate them.”
Silverstar just nodded and smiled. “Yep. Well, I have to go now. If you see any changelings make sure to eat them all up, okay?”
“Okay,” the changeling whimpered.
Without another word Silverstar began trotting back towards Ignus. That plan had worked out well enough. Once she got back to Ignus she would-
“Wait.”
Roach’s voice came from behind. Silverstar tried to pretend she hadn’t heard it and just kept walking. The changeling didn’t take the hint and trotted up to her side.
“Hold on,” he said. “I have a question I want to ask you.”
“Yes?” Silverstar asked but kept walking. She figured that if she could get to Ignus then she would be safe. He could be a bit of a crybaby sometimes, but he would leap to Silverstar’s defense if she was in trouble.
“Since you brought them up,” he said, “do you get a lot of changelings around here? I’m from the other side of the cave, you see. We don’t get any over there, but I was wondering if you do over here.”
Silverstar hadn’t the slightest idea of what he was getting at. She decided to keep playing along.
“No,” Silverstar said. “Why? Are you looking for changelings?”
“No. I just wanted to make sure that they didn’t come out to these parts, you know?”
Another rumble came from down the tunnel. This was bad, as it meant that the diamond dogs hadn’t gone far at all. At this point Silverstar was more annoyed than afraid of the changeling, but she didn’t want to deal with the two diamond dogs without Ignus by her side. It was a good thing that the end of the tunnel was coming into sight now.
Roach looked in the direction of the rumble and then back at Silverstar. “So you’re sure, then? No one like, I dunno, Chrysalis, comes around here?”
“No,” Silverstar said. She knew that Chrysalis was the leader of the changelings, which made her curious about how relieved he seemed to be to hear that.
“Good. And not Blackheart either?”
“No.”
“What about one name-”
“No! You’re the only changeling I’ve ever met, alright!?”
Whoops.
Silverstar immediately realized her mistake. Her heart skipped a beat. With bated breath she slowly turned around to see Roach, who was breathlessly staring back at her. The changeling stared at the thestral and the thestral stared back at the changeling, both motionless, for what seemed like a long time.
Then Silverstar decided to go back to her original plan.
She slammed her hooves into the ground and hissed in the changeling’s face.
“Aaah! Help!” He screamed and ran. Sadly, it was in the wrong direction. In his panic he had lost his Barings and was now running further down the tunnel towards Ignus.
He got very close to the end of the tunnel before Ignus made his appearance. The troll bent down and peeked into the tunnel, making his head visible. “Po-nay?”
Roach slammed his hooves into the ground and slid to a halt just inches away from Ignus before leaping back out of the troll’s reach. He sat between his two adversaries, his eyes darting back and forth between the two, deciding whose meal he’d rather be.
“Look, Roach, or whatever your name is, just get out of here, alright?” Silverstar said, and then pointed in the direction he came from. “Preferably that way.”
“Oh no you don‘t!” the changeling said. “I’m not falling for that again!”
“What do you mean ‘again’?”
He didn’t answer. He just let out another scream and charged towards Silverstar. He was actually going to attack! After shaking off her surprise Silverstar turned and bucked him hard in the somewhere.
Roach was knocked back a good distance and landed on his back. He quickly rolled over and lunged forward again to bite Silverstar her front right leg. With her left she pounded his head until he was forced to stumble backwards.
The pain from the bite was only now registering. She had had enough of this guy. Silverstar unhinged the blades on her boots, causing two razor sharp claws to appear at the end of each.
She slashed at the changeling, missing him by just an inch on purpose, and let out another hiss. Roach clenched his jaw and, in too hasty an attempt to retreat, stumbled onto his back. Silverstar leapt at the opportunity and pinned her opponent to the ground.
“Please don’t hurt me!”
“Look, I gave you like five chances to go away, but apparently you’re too stupid for that. So now-”
Silverstar felt a hard blow in the back of her head and was knocked to the ground. She was completely disoriented by the blow and could only stumble around as she recovered. By the time she regained her senses she was being tightly held by one of the diamond dogs.
“Help!” Silverstar kicked and screamed, but the diamond dog’s grip was just too strong to escape from.
“I did not need help,” Roach complained. “What I was doing was called a ‘Xantos Gambit’. It‘s when you lose on purpose! The boss taught me all about it.”
The diamond dog simply shook his head in frustration, and then turned to the one that was holding Silverstar. “Take the pony’s weapons.”
Silverstar continued to struggle but it wasn’t enough to prevent the diamond dogs from ripping off her boots and bags, leaving her defenseless.
Roach trotted forward and said, “Not so tough now, are you?”
Silverstar could only growl at the changeling. She felt anger welling up in her stomach.
“Star!” Ignus’ voice came from behind, as well as several crashing noises. Roach let out a yelp and leapt back in fear.
“Stop shouting, Roach!” She heard the diamond dog yell just behind her. “Troll is too big to fit in tunnel.”
“I know that,” the changeling said. He looked down the tunnel and made a few mocking faces at Ignus as the troll continued to yell desperately for Silverstar.
“We should take pony back with us. Pony may have seen something.”
“Yeah,” Roach agreed. “When we get back I’m going to-”
Roach’s face froze. Silverstar noticed that Ignus’s yelling had also stopped.
“Oh come on!” Roach yelled. “You two hold them off while I escape. I’ll make sure your sacrifice isn’t forgotten.”
The changeling bolted down the tunnel. The diamond dog that had been standing next to him also began to retreat.
“What is it?” asked the diamond dog that was holding Silver.
“Just drop everything and run!” the other answered.
The one holding Silver had just enough time to turn around before he was knocked to the ground. Silverstar had just enough time to wiggle out from the diamond dog’s grip before she was pinned once again by something from behind.
She looked up to see half a dozen ponies charging down the tunnel after the remainder of the group. They were thestrals wearing armor that Silverstar recognized. It was purple and dark blue, with the chest plate designed to look like an eye wrapped in fire. It was the Crescent clan.
Silverstar let out a sigh of relief. She was safe.
Roach, who had a significant head start, was far ahead of his pursuers. It almost looked like he might escape until he got to the entrance to the large room he had come from. As soon as he entered the room three thestrals pounced on him and tackled him to the ground while he screamed like a maniac.
The remaining diamond dog now stuck between two groups of ponies, stopped in his tracks and took stock of his situation. The mare, who had been in the front of the herd, reached him before he could make a plan. The diamond dog slashed his claws at her but she leapt back and fluttered her wings to rise slightly into the air. With one strong blow from the side of her spear to the head, she knocked the diamond dog out.
The Crescent clan dragged Roach and his companion back to where Silverstar was.
Silverstar looked up at the mare who led the group. She was Moonlight, the leader of the Crescent clan herself.
“I’m so glad you came!” Roach said, and then pointed to Silverstar. “She is a changeling.”
Moonlight glanced briefly at Silverstar before turning back to the changeling.
“And what’s your name?”
“Moon-” he began with confidence, but then suddenly froze before trying to salvage his pathetic attempt at a lie, “S-star Night Shadow. Yes, Moonstar Nightshadow.”
Moonlight was unimpressed. She raised an eyebrow and asked him in Thestrali, “And does Moonstar Nightshadow speak our language?”
Clearly he didn’t. The changelings eyes widened in fear as he realized there was no way out of this. With a burst of strength he managed to free himself from the stallion’s grip and leapt onto one of the sacks the diamond dogs had dropped. From it he produced a glass container filled with blue liquid.
“Stay back, he said, “This is extremely explosive! If you try to hurt me I’ll smash it and kill us all!”
“No, you won’t,” Moonlight answered.
The changeling was more surprised at that reaction than anything else. “Y-yes I will. Take one step and you’re dead.”
“Fine,” Moonlight said. She slowly walked towards the changeling until she was an inch from his face. “Do it.”
The changeling just looked back and forth between Moonlight and the bottle, until Moonlight grabbed it from him.
Now he started screaming. “Please don’t eat me! I’ll do anything you want! I have information! I’m too valuable to kill!”
“Were you the one who have been collapsing tunnels?” Moonlight asked.
“No! Er. I mean yes. But only because Onyx forced me to. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t. You understand, right?”
“Who’s Onyx? And why is he collapsing our tunnels? Did Chrysalis send you?”
“He doesn’t work for Chrysalis. He got a bunch of changeling to go rogue with him. He said he was ‘going into business for himself’. He’s planning on taking over this area and he’s been collapsing tunnels to limit your mobility. To keep you cornered.”
“And he was planning to invade us with a few changelings?”
“No. He’s been amassing an army of underground dwellers, mostly diamond dogs. We’ve mostly been raiding small settlements on the surface, but now he plans to start setting up a base around here. His army is to the north and they plan on attacking next week on Tuesday morning. I know lots of other stuff about the attack too, so it would be a bad idea to kill me. Right?”
Moonlight thought for a minute before turning to one of her subordinates, “Blindfold and gag him and take him with us.”
The changeling looked relieved just before his face was covered with a bag.
Silverstar felt this was a good time to draw attention to herself.
“Can I get up now, ma’am?” she asked in Thestrali, hoping to draw attention to the fact that she understood it.
Moonlight looked down on her. “And what is your name?”
“Silverstar, of the Starlight clan.”
“I need to make sure you aren’t a changeling. What was the name of the pony who taught you alchemy?”
“Mist,” she answered. “I take it that means that you remember me?”
“I make it a habit to remember everypony I meet. Release her.”
The stallion obeyed and Silverstar finally got back onto her hooves.
“I apologize for restraining you. Are you hurt?” Moonlight asked, looking her over.
Silverstar shook her head. “No. It’s just a scratch. Really I should be thanking you, I don’t know what they would have done if you hadn’t showed up.”
“I take it that’s your troll out there?” Moonlight asked. “Where are you going? I’ll get you an escort.”
“Actually I was on my way to you. My clan has some things we were hoping to sell to yours.”
“Very well. We’re heading back now. I suggest you stay close to us, the caverns aren’t very safe right now.”
Silverstar thanked them and the group continued their trek north. Despite the additional company, Silverstar felt far more uneasy now. What Roach had said, that there was an army of diamond dogs just north of here, weighed heavily on her mind.
She tried to go back to reading as a distraction, but found herself unable to read more than a sentence at a time before her mind returned to what the changeling had said; an army was coming.
Moonlight picked up on Silver’s shaken nerves and decided to address her. “Are you worried about what that changeling said? Don’t forget that he said they were to the north, and your clan is to the south. They won’t be able to reach you without going through us first, and we’ve routed plenty of diamond dog armies in the past.”
“Yeah, diamond dogs aren’t so tough in bigger fights,” one of the stallions, Silverstar didn’t know his name, added. “They’re too unruly. Watching them attack wildly is scary at first, but splitting up their forces is too easy and half of them run away when things start going badly for them.”
“About 20 years ago, probably before you were born, some diamond dog ‘king’ tried to pull the same thing,” Moonlight explained, “and we got rid of him without a single casualty on our side. We simply scattered there forces throughout the caves and crushed them. Our alliance with you obligates us to protect you and your clan, and I swear to you that I will do so.”
Silverstar couldn’t help but smile. Everything they said had made perfect sense. The Crescent clan had kept all invaders at bay for five centuries, they weren’t going to fall now, especially not if this “Onyx” guy was as stupid as his subordinate.
Still…
Silverstar didn’t want to think about it anymore, she decided to try and change the subject. “You’ll like what I’ve brought for you, by the way. We recently got a whole bunch of books from Equestria.”
“Let me guess,” Moonlight said, “Midnight gave them to you?”
“What? How did you know?”
“Did you think he only went to your clan? Actually you’re probably the last clan he went to. Just about every other clan has come to us to sell the books and toys that he gave to them. Needless to say the value of Equestrian books has gone down significantly.”
Silverstar facehoofed. How could she have been so stupid? It was so obvious now that he would have gone to the bigger and more powerful clans first. She wasn’t looking forward to telling the elder how little the clan had gotten from this trade.
“Did anypony from your clan take his offer?” Silverstar asked.
“No,” Moonlight said. “His ideas about making peace with Equestria are beyond foolish. The technologies that he brought to us are greatly appreciated, though. He offered to give us much more if we let his pet unicorn stay with us for a few months.”
“A unicorn? Are you really going to let a unicorn come down here?”
“Maybe. We need to deal with this little invasion before I decide. Anyway I think we‘re just about here.”
They were. They turned a corner to arrive at the iron gate at the front of the tunnel that lead to the Crescent clan's lair.
There were only two entrances to the Crescent clan’s lair, one north and one south. Both were identical, with a long, steep tunnel that led up to a fortified chamber. This was connected to the central cavern. Each tunnel had five iron gates spread throughout them and a much larger one made of pure steel at the end. Behind the steel gate were several large ballistas which could hurl a spear as far as the tunnel went. These were constantly armed, and they were accompanied by dozens of trained marksmen ready to fire barrages of smaller arrows and bolts at any threat that may attempt to assault their keep.
Even deadlier than the rain of arrows were the small nozzles that periodically protruded from the walls. Below them was a river of magma, and in the chamber above was a pump. When the pump was used, these nozzles would spray molten lava at anypony unlucky enough to be in the tunnel at the time.
If you somehow made it past the arrows, gates, spears and lava, only then would you get to fight the Crescent clan themselves. They had over twenty thousand members and every one of them was trained to fight from birth. The Crescent clan intended to reclaim its role as Nightmare Moon’s army upon her return, a role they took very seriously. Every one of them was strong, disciplined and skilled, capable of taking out just about any opponent in a fair fight.
Unlike most clans, who simply left their caves as they had found them, the Crescent clan had carefully sculpted out their lair. Every surface of every chamber and tunnel was either a smooth curve or a perfectly flat plane, leaving not a single stalactite or stray rock behind. The walls and ceilings were decorated with ornate carvings and were reinforced with support structures. It would take a massive explosion to collapse these caverns.
The lava below them made tunneling in from beneath impossible. To the west and east was a half mile of solid rock, broken only by lava flows, making digging through the sides a lengthy and dangerous affair. The only way to dig inside without wading through lava was from above, into the ceiling of the main chamber. There a three hundred foot drop would be between you and the ground.
There was no way in except the tunnels, and the tunnels impossible to get through. Anything that tried to force its way through would have death rained on them from every direction. A dragon wouldn’t make it five steps before falling.
Entering the chamber at the top, seeing the steel gates, rows of armed thestrals, the perfect architecture, the brilliant machines, and the sheer power of the Crescent clan, gave Silverstar confidence and comfort. They had only been defeated once, and that was a thousand years ago and at the hooves of Celestia herself. Nothing short of a god could defeat them. There was nothing to fear.
“Party returning,” Moonlight called, and the steel gate opened to her.
Silverstar stepped through the final gate and entered the main chamber. It was a massive dome, the ceiling three hindered feet up, with entrances to the smaller chambers all along the walls. The entrances were adorned with stone balconies, lanterns and other trappings. There were no stairs or ramps; they were only accessible by flight. Today it was buzzing with activity.
Thestrals flew in and out of sight with a great deal of purpose and urgency. Groups of fully armed ponies stood in perfectly straight columns. There was a surprising lack of sound, however. Most of the ponies were completely silent and still, the only talking coming from officers or scouts.
When Moonlight entered three of her officers jumped to her side and began asking her questions and giving her status reports. Moonlight replied to these with curt, but certain, replies.
“We captured three of the invaders,” she eventually said. “I want them taken to a dreamwalker to see if the story they gave us is true. After that I want scouting units one through five sent north, and six and seven sent south. Our infantry should reinforce…”
Moonlight continued giving orders for some time, most of which was lost on Silverstar. She watched as the changeling and his friends were lead away to where the clan’s dreamwalker would be. Soon enough, the rows of armored ponies began to dissipate and Moonlight wandered out of sight. Fortunately, another pony eventually came along to lead Silverstar and Ignus to the trading room.
Unlike the main chamber, the rest of the caverns were eerily empty. The few ponies she saw were either very young or very old. As they neared the armory, Silverstar saw one of her old friends trotting forward, struggling to get her last piece of armor on. Silverstar greeted her, but her friend was only able to turn briefly in Silver’s direction.
“Ah! Sorry, Silverstar,” she said. “I’m too busy to talk right now. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Silverstar frowned. It seemed she wouldn’t be seeing much of her old friends.
They had now arrived in the room where trades took place. This room was connected to the armory, larder and treasury. The tables were all covered in a variety of measurement tools, from scales to compasses. Some of them were even Equestrian.
The contents of the treasury were visible from where Silverstar stood. Crescent, the founder of the Crescent clan, began building up this hoard of treasure a thousand years ago in hope of eventually presenting it as a gift to Luna upon her return. Luna didn’t return in Crescent’s lifetime, but the rest of his clan liked his idea and followed suite, pouring every ounce of gold they ever obtained into the treasure trove.
Before Silverstar were the results of centuries of gathering precious metals and gems. Piles of gold coins, stacks of bullions, dozens of gems twice the size of a pony, armor, boots and utensils made of gold and platinum and much more all laid in the chamber, waiting for Luna to claim them.
The actual trading didn’t take long. The Crescent clan always made fair offers, so there was little need to haggle on anything except the books. The amount of salt Silverstar got from the books was dismal. The other clans had beat Silverstar to the punch. The Crescent clan already had at least one copy of every book Silverstar wanted to sell. The book about Daring Do was particularly overstocked; the Crescent clan already owned ten books about her. They didn’t even make her an offer on it. At least Silver would get to keep it, which was about the extent of her luck tonight.
“Ah, there you are!”
Silverstar turned around to see her alchemy teacher.
“Mist!” she shouted and grabbed him in a huge. It was good to see him again. Today had been a storm of bad luck, but Silverstar was certain that she was at the tail end of it.
“I thought I’d offer to let you stay with me,” he said with a smile. “I’m just about the only pony here too old to go off and fight, so I’ll have time to catch up with you.”
Silverstar nodded. “Of course! I think I’d better stay here till this whole thing blows over. How long do you think it will take to get rid of the invaders?”
Mist shook his head. “I honestly have no idea. Moonlight is going to hold a council between a few of the nearby clans tomorrow. She wants you to attend as a representative of the Starlight clan. I suppose you’ll get more information then.”
“Well, I’ll go, but,” Silverstar said, “is it really necessary to have a council between the clans? We haven’t done that in years. Is this invasion that bad?”
“We won’t know until tomorrow, and worrying about it won’t do us any good. Let’s talk about something else.”
Silverstar liked that idea. Ignus was lead off to be with the other trolls and Silverstar followed Mist back to his living chambers. There they talked and got caught up. Silverstar began to relax, putting the thought of the conflict out of her mind. It seemed far away now.
At one point the conversation turned to the visitor from the surface.
“That stallion came to us three times, actually,” Mist explained. “To be completely honest I am tempted to take his offer.”
Silverstar was surprised. She had thought Mist was smarter than that. “Really? Why?”
“I may be a master alchemist to you, but to the Equestrians I would be little more than a neophyte. When I think of the knowledge I could gain, it almost makes me feel young again.”
“I already feel young,” Silverstar said, “It’d take a lot more than that to get me to go to Canterlot.”
Mist laughed. After that the conversation drifted to the potions they had seen in the books, then about Silverstar’s grandmother, and then a few other things.
The night past swiftly and soon it was morning. Silverstar crawled into the guest bed and closed her eyes. This morning, Silverstar didn’t allow herself to dream, she had business in the dreamscape.
The dreamscape was dark, it always was at first. Silverstar was in her own mind, but because she wasn’t dreaming there wasn’t anything to see. While in this state, anything she imagined would become visible. Some thestral’s used it as a source of entertainment, but tonight Silverstar had duty.
She focused, looking for the minds of others. Slowly, silver streams of light began to appear in her imagination. They were close at first, but more appeared as she searched farther and farther away. Each light was the dream of some sleeper. Some of the streams were dim and almost impossible to concentrate on while others were vibrant and difficult to ignore.
The closer the dreamer was to Silverstar, in both a physical and metaphorical sense, the easier their dream was to access. It was easy to find the sleeping mind of her Grandmother and even easier to enter into it; she had done so a thousand times before and was always welcomed in.
One could enter a dream with or without waking the conscious mind. If you didn’t then you would view their dream and have the power to manipulate it. By twisting dreams you could soothe or create nightmares, or bring out memories locked away in a mind.
Ending a dream and waking the conscious mind was the only way to directly send a message without any misconception, however, so Silverstar would have to end the elder‘s. Of course, Silverstar had seen enough of those to not even be curious about it.
The elder’s dream vanished before Silverstar could even glimpse it and everything went dark, only the silver streams remained. The elder created a visage of herself for Silverstar to talk to.
“Is something wrong, Silver?” the elder asked.
“Yes, actually,” Silverstar replied. “Invaders are coming from the north and everypony over here is going crazy about it.”
The elder‘s surprise made it clear she hadn‘t heard of this yet. “An invasion? By who?”
“A bunch of diamond dogs lead by some rogue changeling,” Silverstar said. “The Crescent clan will take care of them though. I’m just letting you know to be careful. Some of them are wandering around the tunnels near us. They’ve been collapsing tunnels.”
Silverstar explained her encounter in the tunnel, and what the changeling she captured had said.
“This sounds very serious,” the elder concluded.
“I guess,” Silver replied, “but like I said, the Crescent clan is too powerful to lose to a bunch of diamond dogs. We’ll be fine.”
“Let’s hope you’re right. I’ll be sure to keep everypony on alert. Thank you for the warning. I‘ll see you in a few days.”
Silverstar bid her grandmother farewell and returned to her own dream. She didn’t want to break the bad news about the book sales just yet.
There was one last thing to do before going to sleep for real. It had been a few weeks since Silverstar had cleansed herself of the nightmare forces. She focused on her own mind and soon the purple mist that was the nightmare force became visible. All she had to do was focus on them and they popped like a bubble.
Nightmare forces were something that built up in the dreams of thestrals over time. The ability to enter the dreamscape made them easy to destroy, but they were dangerous if left unchecked. If you let them build up they would begin whispering to you and twisting your dreams. They could, eventually, drive a pony insane, but it rarely got that bad. Cleaning them up was more an annoying chore than anything else.
With no more business in the dreamscape, Silverstar allowed herself to sleep for real.
________________________________________________
“The leader of the invasion is a changeling named Onyx,” Moonlight explained. “He commands a very large army, but he’s only sending a few hundred diamond dogs to attack from the north. Apparently he underestimated us and overestimated the effect that collapsing a few tunnels would have. Our mobility will hardly be reduced at all and I’ve sent a large force to ambush the attackers. They should be out of the caves within a week.”
Silverstar sat at the conference table. Seven other mares were there, most of them representatives from nearby clans. It seemed most of the clans hadn’t sent anypony, and from the sound of it they didn’t really need to either.
“You had better!” Nightwish shouted across the table. “We pay you tribute to keep the outsiders where they belong- outside! I won’t deny that you’ve kept your end of the deal for the most part, but the diamond dogs that you allowed in have destroyed vital tunnels. I demand compensation for your negligence!”
Nightwish was the leader of the Dusk clan. She was always complaining and demanding compensation for something. The only time she stopped being outraged was when she was looking for more things to be outraged about.
“I intend to reopen the tunnels as soon as it’s safe to do so,” Moonlight replied calmly. “We have more pressing issues in the meantime. We can get rid of the force attacking from the north, but that doesn’t mean Onyx will give up. He may send a larger force next time. That’s why I want to arm the other clans and get ready for-”
Moonlight never got the chance to finish stating her plans, because at that moment a lightly armed thestral charged into the room at a gallop. He barely managed to stop himself before ramming into the table. The stallion was panting heavily and had a look of panic far from the collected demeanor Silverstar was used to from the Crescent clan.
“Commander!” he said, panting as he spoke. “A force is approaching quickly from the south. They seem to be closing in on this spot!”
The south?!
“How many?” Moonlight asked.
“I don’t know. Thousands at least!”
Nightwish pounded her hooves on the table. “I thought you said they were attacking from the north, and that there were only a few hundred!”
“Our information did say that,” Moonlight replied, “Our captive’s mind was searched by our dreamwalkers. He must have been misinformed about the attack. Maybe their leader gave him false information and let him get captured to feed it to us.”
“Oh, now you think of that?! Now we have thousands of diamond dogs barreling in on us and half your forces are on the wrong side of the caves!”
“I can still deal with this. If they try to attack they’ll only break their forces against our gate. The entrance to our lair is a bottleneck, it doesn’t matter if we’re outnumbered or not.”
Silverstar couldn’t keep quite any longer. “Moonlight! My clan is probably right in their path. You have to do something!”
Moonlight turned toward the scout. “Have the scouts still in the south try to warn the clans that are there. If at all possible have them evacuate here immediately. Send another team north to recall the force we sent there. That’s all we can do for now.”
“Now wait,” said Nightwish, “there are still enemies to the north as well. You can’t just-”
Moonlight waved Nightwish away, and began walking out of the room. “I don‘t have time to discuss this, but I assure you I’ll take care of the situation. Anypony willing to fight come to the armory. We may need to defend the gate soon. Anypony who isn’t should go the guest quarters or retreat north while you still have a chance.”
As if things hadn’t been bad enough already. If the army was coming from the south, through the main tunnel, then they would pass right through Silverstar’s home. Her clan was small, and they didn’t have any warriors. If thousands of diamond dogs attack then-
No. That wouldn’t happen. There was a chance Onyx would take a less conspicuous route. Even if he did pass them, there was no reason to waste his time on the Starlight clan. The Crescent clan had mountains of gold and control of the whole area, but Silverstar’s clan had nothing. If this was to be a surprise attack then they would be in a hurry. It wouldn’t make any sense at all to attack the Starlight clan.
There was still hope. That was enough to calm Silverstar down. She moved quickly to the armory and told them that she was willing to fight. Regardless of whatever else happened today, her only chance of safety was for the Crescent clan to win this battle.
Silverstar was given a set of armor and an iron lance and was moved to the reserve force just inside from the southern entrance. She watched as they closed the gate. It was too well fortified for anything to get through, Silverstar reminded herself, and nothing was going to come through it.
The chamber before her was filled with warriors. All of the ballistas were armed. Thestrals with crossbows covered the ground and air. The pump was ready to pour magma into the tunnel below. Nothing could get through that tunnel. Numbers didn’t matter here, ten armies couldn’t get through.
Moonlight shouted out that the attack was inbound, it would be here momentarily. There were still over a thousand ponies ready to fight. There was a good chance Silver wouldn’t even have to fight herself, because nothing could get through the gate.
Everything was silent. Somehow the flapping wings and moving armor and artillery seemed to make no noise whatsoever. Silverstar knew that the silence wouldn’t last long. Soon the air would be filled with the sound of arrows, battle cries, and the screams of diamond dogs from within the tunnel. Silverstar waited for the sounds to begin.
But they never came.
The only thing that came through the tunnel was a single metallic object. The thing whistled through the air and landed in the middle of the thestrals’ forces with a clang. Silverstar was expecting it to explode, but it didn’t. Instead it let out an odd hissing noise.
The thestrals who it landed next to began coughing heavily and after just a second or two a few of them fell over. Soon the entire chamber in front of Silverstar was filled with the coughing and wheezing of ponies.
It must have been poison gas. It was something you occasionally encountered when digging. Silverstar had seen poison gas before, but never dreamed of being able to weaponize it like this.
Moonlight had come to the same conclusion and was already taking action. She flew into the chamber herself and threw the container down the tunnel. She then shouted for everypony to beat their wings to try and dispel the gas. Soon the chamber was filled with a small whirlwind from all the flapping.
Silverstar held her breath and moved into the chamber to help, flapping her wings as hard as she could. It wasn’t long until she couldn’t keep her breath held any longer. Silverstar’s body forced her to inhale. The air was thick and had a strange odor to it, but did little damage. The gas had been successfully dispersed.
The damage was already done, however, and nearly all of the ponies who had been in the front chamber were now unconscious. Had Moonlight not acted so quickly they may have died. Many of the remaining ponies were still wheezing heavily and looked disoriented. It was already over, they had lost. All it took was that stupid little thing to defeat them. Silverstar’s body locked up.
Moonlight looked about anxiously, taking stock of the situation and trying to think of a way to salvage the situation. She didn’t have time to think of anything before the same whistling sound from before came from the tunnel.
This time it wasn’t just one container, there were over thirty.
The remaining ponies panicked upon seeing this and tried to retreat back into the inner chamber. Silverstar attempted to follow, but between the heavy armor and crowded room she wasn’t able to get very far before being knocked to the ground by a fleeing pony.
It was at this point that Silverstar realized that the containers weren’t letting out the hissing noise. They weren’t releasing gas.
From down the tunnel came hysterical laughter. A changeling, the source of the laughter, strutted up to the steel gate. He was accompanied by four more changelings wearing armor and carrying some strange devices.
The changeling in front smiled with half his mouth and spoke to nopony in particular. “Did I scare you? Don’t worry, those ones were empty. Hahaha! You thought you were going to die, didn’t you?”
He gave another chuckle, and then nodded to one of his lackeys. The changeling shot a blast of green light from its horn that smashed into the gate and exploded, but the Gate was mostly undamaged.
“Hm? This one’s actually made of steel?” the lead changeling said. “I wasn’t expecting that, but it makes no difference. Which one of you is in charge?
“I am!” Moonlight stepped forward. “Who are you?”
“Hm? Didn’t my little friends tell you?” he asked. “I am Onyx: King of the Underground!”
“What do you want from us? Why are you here?”
“Why am I here? Well, we’re underground, aren’t we? And, as I just said, I am the king of this place. I do whatever I want and take whatever I want. That’s something you little ponies needed to learn.”
“Well it was brave of you to come right out in front like this,” Moonlight said. She took a crossbow from a nearby, unconscious pony and fired at Onyx. He managed to erect a shield of green magic to block it just in time.
“I wouldn’t try that again if I were you,” said Onyx. “My friends here are armed with weapons that spray a much higher concentration of that stuff than the little demonstration I sent you, enough to actually kill a pony. If I really needed to I could pump the entire cave system full of the stuff and kill everything.”
“If you did that then you’d kill yourself too.”
Onyx laughed again. “The thing about shape shifters is that we’re kind of hard to poison. We can just change our anatomies to something that can survive it. We’re immune to almost every poison and this gas is no exception."
Moonlight stood silent for some time.
“I assume the reason you haven‘t already done so is because you need something from us,” she finally asked. “What is it? Tell me why you‘re here.”
“Ah, you‘re clever! I think you’ll be more useful to me alive, but only if you understand that I call the shots. I came here to demonstrate that I‘m the one in charge now. You got the message, yes?”
Moonlight stood perfectly still, glaring at the changeling.
“No?” he said. “Do I have to start killing ponies for you to understand? You can throw down your weapons and open this gate, or I’ll fire a few dozen canisters of gas in here for real.”
Moonlight bit down hard, wincing in anger. She barely managed to restrain herself, but in the end she threw down her spear and gestured for everypony else to do the same.
“I have no choice. I surrender,” she said, somehow managing to make it sound like a threat.
“Good,” he said with his half smile. “Don’t worry, my conditions are fair. In fact I think in a few years you’ll be happy that I came along. I don’t really like having to resort to force like this, but it is very important for you to understand who wields the power here.”
The gate was opened and Onyx and his changeling entered the chamber. One of the changelings moved over to the pump that controlled the lava flow immediately and took control of it.
“Firstly,” Onyx said, “I’m going to be confiscating all of your weapons, and destroying your forges so that you can‘t make any more.”
“Without our forges we won’t be able to make the tools we need to live,” Moonlight Protested.
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll let you use mine for a small fee. My second term is that I’ll be taking all the foals between the ages of 2 and 12 as hostages, as well as thirty or so adults. I’ve also taken a few of the smaller clans to work for me in my mines. If you kill any of my officers or try to perform any sort of sabotage then I’ll kill somewhere between one tenth and one half of my hostages, depending on how much it upsets me.”
He said that he had enslaved a few of the smaller clans, but that didn’t necessarily mean the Starlight clan. There was still a chance they were safe.
Moonlight stood for a few minutes before consenting to his demand. Silverstar couldn’t believe it. She was about to object, but six other ponies beat her to it. The room was soon filled with shouting and objections.
“Silence!” Moonlight shouted. “I don’t like this either, but if we’re going to survive we have to keep our heads down for now.”
“That’s the spirit!” Onyx agreed. “I know you don’t like this, but…”
He continued to talk, but Silverstar wasn’t listening. The Crescent clan had failed.
Silverstar looked down the long tunnel. It was empty now, but that wouldn’t last long. She didn’t know what was on the other side, but this may be her last chance to leave this place for a long time. If Silverstar was going to have any chance of getting back to her clan she would have to leave now.
Silverstar charged down the tunnel. She heard several shouts from behind, one of which was from Onyx himself.
“It’s just one idiot,” she hear Onyx shout from behind, “it’s just one idiot!”
He wasn’t even going to bother chasing her! Silverstar might actually have a chance. The added weight slowed her at first, but as she moved through the downhill tunnel she began to gain momentum and more speed than she would have expected. She was nearing the end of the tunnel when a diamond dog came into sight.
Silverstar had built up too much momentum to stop. She smashed into him with full force; enough to slam him hard against the wall and knock him clean out. She hoped that this would be the only one, but he wasn’t. There were a few dozen more, as well as a changeling in the direction she would have preferred to go. The other direction was empty so she charged off in that direction instead.
She made another three turns without incident, but that luck didn‘t last long. The next tunnel she had to go down was filled with diamond dogs, armed to the teeth with armor and weapons.
Silverstar was already committed to escape at this point, and she didn’t dare try to retread ground. Her charging technique had taken down one diamond dog, so she would just have to go with that.
She mounted the iron lance onto her shoulder and charged at them with a wild scream. The first diamond dog didn’t seem worried at all; he just shrugged and stepped to the side. The others did the same, allowing Silverstar to simply charge through the entire column.
It wasn’t until the last diamond dog stepped to the side that Silverstar remembered that there was a deep cliff at the end of this tunnel. She had too much momentum to stop herself from charging straight off the cliff.
Silverstar flapped her wings furiously, but it simply wasn’t enough to fly. She had no idea how the members of the Crescent clan were able to fly in this heavy armor. All she could do was hope that her flapping would slow the fall enough for her to survive it.
She hit the wall on the other side first, and then hit the ground with an enormous force. She wasn’t dead, though. Silverstar lied on her back for some time, watching as a diamond dog peered over the ledge. It gave a short chuckle, then turned and left.
Silverstar’s body ached. She was too weak to run with the armor on anymore. She threw off the iron chest plate, helmet, lance and the plot armor. The change was felt immediately, Silverstar was suddenly felt completely weightless. She decided to keep the boots on, as they had padded leather on the bottom that would make less sound than bare hooves, and her bags, in case the contents were needed.
She knew this area well. The route back to her clan from here was dark and obscure, exactly what Silver needed.
Silverstar galloped through the dark caves. She was thankful for memorizing them now. It was unlikely that any diamond dogs or changelings would wander into these areas and even if they did they would give away their present with their light.
It was still possible that her family was safe, she reminded herself. There were other clans to the south; Onyx may have been referring to them. What she had to do now was get back to them. Silverstar couldn’t stop running through every possible scenario in her mind.
She imagined returning to find her home overrun by diamond dogs and her family already in chains. If that was the case there wasn’t much she could do. Maybe she could try to fight them if there weren’t many and they didn’t have any gas, or else surrender herself so that she might still be with her clan.
If her clan was still there she would be overjoyed. She could lead them somewhere else, there had to be some place left that was still safe for them. Silverstar pleaded with Luna to let that be the case.
The fastest return from the Crescent clan Silverstar had ever made was three hours. Her perception of time was too skewed to know if she broke it or not. On one hoof it seemed like the longest trip she had ever made, but on the other she had run faster then she ever had before.
When she finally got back to the light of the moonflowers, the ones near the western edge of her home, she was exhausted. Her chest burned. Worried that her heavy breathing would be heard, Silverstar forced herself to breathe through her nose as she moved forward.
Silverstar crept up to the edge of the entrance and peered inside. The main chamber was empty. There were no ponies, diamond dogs or even the tools that belonged to her clan. The only few remaining objects were either broken or scattered about.
Silverstar went to her living chamber, but it was also empty. Her lab and the clan larder were both empty, not a single potion or piece of food left behind. She searched through every chamber of her clan’s area; calling out in hope that somepony had managed to remain hidden. She’d take anypony, but there was no one.
She collapsed in the elder’s chamber when it finally sunk in. She couldn’t deny it anymore, her clan was captured. Her legs were too weak for her to stand, so she just sat and looked over her grandmother’s chamber.
Silverstar noticed that the book of traditions had been left behind, thrown off to the corner of the room. The diamond dogs had taken everything but her clan’s most valuable possession. Silverstar pulled it over to her and looked at the cover. It was a thousand years old, written when Luna was still with them.
But Luna wasn’t here anymore. A single tear hit the cover.
Ten years. Onyx had wasted ten years of his life in Canterlot. He had been one of Chrysalis’s top spies. He had given her an unlimited source of information, a source of influence, and the ability to sabotage her enemies. He had fooled the ponies he was tasked to destroy into freely electing him. So good was Onyx that he had even managed to fool Celestia herself into accepting him in his true form with some sob story.
What was his reward for all his skill? For all he did for Chrysalis? Betrayal. Chrysalis had planned to kill him off like some pawn. That was a mistake. Onyx vowed to make Chrysalis realize that.
He had briefly considered joining Celestia’s side for real, but decided he‘d rather take matters into his own hands. He would find an army and destroy Chrysalis with his own hooves. Onyx convinced a few changelings to defect with him, faked his death, and went off in search of a larger army.
The largest source of untapped power, he decided, was the underground. There were so many powerful creatures down here that, if united, would be a deadly force. When Onyx arrived they were ignorant and disjointed, they were weak. Onyx was like a shark in a fish tank. Subjugating them had been so easy he was surprised no one had done it before him.
He slowly built up his power and wealth through conquest underground and raiding the surface. Soon he was ready to set up his base of power, from which he would stage his attack. The perfect spot was an area on the southern border of Equestria and within spitting range of changeling territory. Neither side would dare peruse him over the border for fear of provoking the other.
He should have seen the vamponies coming, especially considering that the diamond dogs had flat out told him that the area was crawling with them. He hadn’t believed them at first, thinking they were just being superstitious, but sure enough there were seriously vamponies inhabiting the spot that he wanted. It didn’t matter, though, they were just another group he needed to conquer and add to his forces. Onyx had crushed them just like he defeated everyone else, just like he would crush Chrysalis one day.
Onyx, along with a few of his officers, was returning to their forward base along with a few hundred hostages that they had taken after their victory over the largest thestral clan. Granite, a diamond dog he had made into the puppet ruler of his species, had been rambling on for some time about how dangerous the vamponies were.
“None of that is true,” said Obsidian, “And as long as you keep your word you have nothing to worry about from me.”
Obsidian was the leader of the Blackstone clan and now was one of Onyx’s officers. Onyx had to admit that he only chose her because her name fit the rock theme that he was going for, but she was still a suitable puppet, and Onyx would need thestral puppets ruling under him if he was to secure the area. Favoring one clan and enslaving a few others also sent a positive message to the rest.
“The Blackstone clan submitted to me, and I have raised them to glory and wealth,” Onyx had explained to the thestrals, “and the Starlight clan resisted and was destroyed.”
Granite was not convinced, not even after Onyx‘s wondrous victory. “I still do not approve of this. We may defeat these ponies, but we risk bringing the wrath of their dark god upon us!”
It was just superstitious nonsense. He couldn’t say that outright with his thestral friend present, however. “I’m sure the moon god will thank me for all the good I’m going to bring to these ponies. Besides, don’t you have your own gods to protect you?”
Roach was the only one not pacified, he shot a glare at Obsidian and spoke. “Look, I got used to having these filthy dogs around, but I don’t think we should keep this vampony so close.”
“Shut up, Roach,” Onyx dismissed him, “There’s a reason I never ask for your opinion.”
“’Roach‘ isn‘t my name!“ said Roach. “And what about all that stuff you told me about how they drink blood and devour changelings?”
“We don’t eat changelings!” said Obsidian. “And even if we did I don’t see how that’s any worse than sucking the love out of ponies.”
“She’s got you there, Roach,” said Onyx. “And you heard it straight from the pony’s mouth; they don’t eat changelings.”
“But you told met they did and-,” Roach twitched, “and you lied to me about the entire plan! What else did you lie about? You told me to trust you that going in here untransformed and without weapons was a good idea, that I’d be safe! But that was just a trick! Why should I trust you?!”
Onyx sighed. “And you are safe, aren’t you? Did you get eaten? No. I always know exactly how everything is going to turn out. I knew you weren’t going to come back unscathed. I can’t believe you still doubt me after all of this.”
“How, huh? How exactly did you know they wouldn‘t kill me?” Roach asked. “How do I know you didn’t just send me off to die?”
Actually, Onyx had thought that they were going to kill Roach. He had sent Roach off to die. Still, if he was alive then Onyx might as well use him again.
“If I had sent you over there to get eaten alive then I would have done you a favor,” Onyx said with a smile. “Do you honestly believe that Chrysalis is just going kill you if you’re captured by her?”
That was the right thing to say. Roach’s indignation slunk back into fear, just as Onyx wanted it. It was better not to go into gory details. Roach would do a better job of terrifying himself if he filled in the blanks himself.
“Don’t forget that all of us are traitor,” Onyx reminded him. “Chrysalis has eyes everywhere. There’s nowhere in the world you can go that she doesn’t have a changeling looking for you. And it’s not just changelings you have to look out for, either. Any one of these rocks, any object in the world, could be a mimic, watching us, reporting back to Chrysalis. Of course, if you think you’re smart enough to evade her without the help of me and my armies, then you’re more than welcome to leave.”
By this point Roach had thoroughly reverted back to his cowering, submissive ways. “No! I trust you, boss! I’ll stay with you.”
For as long as Onyx wanted him to he would. Onyx had power, something that had a magnetic hold over others.
The rest of the changelings thought that Onyx would over throw Chrysalis and instill a less evil dictatorship. Obsidian thought Onyx would industrialize her tribe. Granit thought Onyx was going to make him rich. Roach thought Onyx wasn’t going to kill him.
It was cute. Once he killed Chrysalis he would just take the wealth he had made and leave them all to clean up the horrible mess he would leave behind.
As long as they wanted Onyx’s power, as long as their strength and hope came from him, they would be under his control and would do anything he wanted. Everyone was the same. No one could resist power.
There was a slightly wrong movement in the air. It wasn’t his imagination, he had felt it twice before in the past hour. Someone was following him, and they were in the dark cave just off to his left. He hadn’t expected an assassin this early.
Onyx smiled. This assassin had managed to get past his outlying forces and had enough audacity to attack him, even after the display he had just made. He couldn’t help but be endeared toward whoever was shadowing him.
“I know you’re there!” Onyx called to the darkness. “Come out or die.”
Everyone else turned to the dark tunnel with surprise. The idiots hadn’t noticed.
A vampony came charging out of the dark tunnel. When it got close it leapt into the air, unhinged two blades from one of its boots, and moved to slash at Onyx. Onyx didn’t even bother moving. Granit came in from the side and slammed the pony into the ground.
It only took the one blow to knock the fight out of the pony. Granit lifted her up with one hand.
Onyx couldn’t make much out of the pony other than that it was female and that it had a silver streak in its mane. All vamponies looked the same. Even still there was something familiar about this one.
“Wait,” Onyx said, “I remember you. You’re the one who went charging straight through my armies, right? Heh. They told me you ran right off a cliff! Tell me, what were you hoping to accomplish? Did you think you were going to take me down by yourself?”
The vampony didn’t answer; she just glared at Onyx with utter contempt.
“That’s the one I was looking for, too!” Roach chimed in. “She’s the one who tried to eat me!”
That was another point for the mystery mare. This pony had a few qualities that Onyx thought he could work with, and it was true that he would need more thestral officers if he was to secure his command over them. If nothing else it would be fun to see if he could recruit a pony boiling with hatred towards him.
“Shut up,” Onyx said to Roach before turning back to the mare. “You know, I actually kind of like. What clan are you from?”
She continued with the silence.
“Don’t test me. I suggest you answer before I lose my patience.”
“The Crescent clan,” the mare reluctantly answered.
That was a lie. Onyx wasn’t even sure how he knew, at this point he could just tell if someone was lying or not. “If you lie to me again I’m going to kill you. Now tell me your name and clan.”
Even at the threat of death she hesitated. “Silverstar. Of the Starlight clan.”
Sadly her name wasn’t a type of rock. That was strike one.
“Ah! I’ve met the rest of your clan. So were you hoping to kill me? Or were hoping to follow me until I showed you where they were? Well I‘m sorry but all the clans I took hostage are located far from each other. The starlight clan was split into two groups and unless you managed to free both of them simultaneously the other half would die.”
“Hahaha.” Granit laughed. “Pony will be back with her clan in the work pits soon!”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Onyx. “I may be able to help you out, actually. You see I’m looking to get a few more of you ‘thestrals’ on my side. How would you like to be one of my officers?”
Silverstar’s face flashed into surprise and then back to disgust. “What? No! Why would I work for you? You enslaved my family!”
“You just answered you own question. Because I enslaved your family,” Onyx said. “As we just established, you’re not a one mare army who’s going to tear apart my entire organization by herself. You’re not strong enough to get rid of me. My rule is here to stay. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do. You can still minimize the damage your clan takes from this regime change. Think about it. Who do you think would be a nicer overseer to your clan? You? Or that guy?” Onyx motioned towards Granit.
The mare was clearly considering it. She didn’t like the idea, but she was thinking about it. Onyx took out the necklace of starstones and threw it in front of Silverstar, as though it was worthless.
“And let’s not forget about your own personal gain. Between my raiding and mines I can afford to pay you more than most Equestrian nobles make. That necklace alone is worth more than what most ponies make in their lifetimes. Join me and that will just be the start.”
“I don’t care about jewels. Maybe they‘re worth something to you, but not to me,” Silverstar said.
“But surely there is something that you like. These gems are money. Maybe you’ve been in this cave too long to learn this, but money can get you anything you want. Food? Cloths? Toys? Servants? Stallions? You can have anything you want.”
“What I want is my family back!”
Onyx frowned. She was one of those types, wasn’t she? He might still be able to deal with her disagreeable personality. All ponies were the same. Once they got a taste of power they loved it and would do anything to keep it. As long as her power came from Onyx he would be able to twist her into anything he wanted. He could give her a small concession for now.
“Alright,” he said, “I’ll release them.”
Silverstar blinked with amazement. “R-really?”
Silverstar wasn’t the only one surprised. Granite asked him if he was seriously that desperate for this mare’s help. Onyx just dismissed him with a wave of his hoof. He had a thousand ponies working for him, he could let go of four or five.
“Yes, really,” he said. “Just name them and they’ll be free to go to whatever cave they want.”
Silverstar looked at the ground with a look of confliction on her face. She was going to do it. In a moment he would have a second thestral willingly serving him. He was excited about working on such a willful pony.
After a long time she lifted her head and said, “My entire clan is my family! Release them all and I’ll- I’ll do anything you want.”
Onyx frowned. That was the wrong answer. “Look. I said I liked you but you’re not worth nearly as much as you think. You’re not greedy enough to jump at my offer and you’re not smart enough to pretend to take it until you get the chance to kill me. You missed your chance. Shut her up.”
Granit put his free hand over her mouth before she could say anything more. Silverstar tried to struggle, but it was completely ineffective.
“Did you think you were going to be a hero? Well I’m going to teach you something about heroes; they’re always the first to die.”
Onyx pointed to one of the nearby pits, one that was too deep to see the bottom of. “Throw her in there.”
Granit obeyed and the thestral disappeared down the hole. Onyx took an explosive charge form one of his diamond dogs and walked to the edge of the pit.
About then Silverstar regained control and took flight toward the top of the pit. She didn’t get far before Onyx lobbed the bottle into the tunnel. The last he saw of Silverstar was her flying back into sight just before the bottle shattered. The whole pit disappeared in a flash of light. When he looked down again only debris was visible, the entire pit had collapsed into rubble with Silverstar at the bottom.
“You’re aware that that might not have been enough to kill her, yes?” Granit asked.
”No, it is,” Onyx said. He turned back to his officers with a wide smile on his face. “It just might take a little while. You, guard this spot for a couple days to make sure she doesn’t miraculously dig her way out.”
The diamond dog obeyed. Obsidian just looked back and forth between Onyx and the pit, her jaw slack and eyes wide with terror. At least this encounter wouldn’t be a total lost is would make Granit and Obsidian understand that he was not to be crossed.
“Is this really necessary?” Obsidian asked. “You said that you wouldn’t cause any more harm than necessary!”
“I also said that if anypony tried to assassinate me I’d start killing my hostages,” Onyx reminded her. “I’m nice enough to overlook this, but I can’t allow myself to appear soft. If I do then I may lose control, and then your clan may lose its new found prominence.”
She didn’t have an answer to that. Obsidian knew where her power came from.
Roach stepped up to Onyx‘s side and said, “Well, I guess she went out with a bang, huh? Huh?”
Silverstar lied there in the darkness for some time. The cave in had been a serious blow and took some time to recover from. Her entire body ached, but she was lucky to be alive.
Or was she?
It began to sink in that Silverstar had just been buried alive. She couldn’t see a thing. She couldn’t move! Silverstar kicked and struggled with every body part but was unable to budge an inch. There was nowhere to budge to.
Next she tried screaming for help, but that didn’t do anything either. Even if somepony was standing directly over the spot where she was buried they wouldn’t hear her.
Silverstar felt her heart beat harder and harder until she could feel it hitting against the stones. She began to panic, and continued to kick and scream with all her strength. She was going to starve. No, she would suffocate first. She had only a few inches of space where air could be. It wouldn’t be long until she ran out. Silverstar would never see her family again.
No. Silverstar wasn’t going to give up until the very end. The situation wasn’t entirely hopeless. The elder had told her that if she was ever trapped by a cave in the thing to do was calm down to conserve air, go to sleep and use the dreamscape to seek help.
Silverstar tried to calm slow her breathing, even going as far as trying to hold her breath, but found herself unable to slow her heart rate. This plan wasn’t going to work. There was just too little air down here, she’d suffocate before she could get to sleep and even if she did get to sleep it would be hours before somepony could dig her out. And that was being optimistic.
There had to be some other way. She still had her bags. She had several tools, but not enough room to do anything with them, a moonflower, but nothing to see, and a few potions.
That was it! The dream walker poison! Drinking it slowed the heart rate to a beat every other minute. Ponies under its influence breathed so slowly that they were hard to distinguish from the dead.
If she drank the poison she could last days with almost no air at all, and she would be unconscious the whole time too. The poison induced sleep would actually make it easier to access the dreamscape than normal, at least for a few hours. She’d be able to ask for help and survive long enough for it to come.
If nothing else it would make her end painless.
Silverstar tried to reach for her bag but her legs were completely immobilized by the fallen rocks. She tried using her wing instead and found more success with that. Using the digit on her left wing, she was able to open her bag. It took some time but she was able to shift through the bag and take out the smallest vial, the on she knew contained the dream walker’s poison.
Silverstar nudged the vial along the wall and towards her head very slowly and gently. If the vial cracked before reaching her then she was s good as dead. She somehow managed to grab the tiny vial, open the cap and tilt it until it poured into her mouth.
It didn’t take long for the poison to have its effects. Numbness quickly spread throughout Silverstar’s body. Her heartbeat slowed dramatically, breathing became hard, thinking became hard.
Silverstar had never drunk this stuff in such a high dose before and hadn’t been expecting it to lower her awareness so much so fast. She was close enough to sleep to enter the dreamscape now, but had little time to do it before losing consciousness entirely.
Silverstar focused her mind and searched for the dreamscape and the silver lights of sleeping minds. The streams of silver light soon broke the darkness, and Silverstar regained a certain level of consciousness. She had managed to get to the dreamscape, but Silverstar could already feel her mind slipping, she would have to be quick.
Silverstar looked over the silver lights. She wasn’t sure if somepony from her clan could help, but theirs would be the easiest dreams to enter. The brightest lights would be the ones of the thestrals from her clan. She didn’t have time to choose anypony specifically, so she simply charged into the first dream she could.
It was Nightshade’s. When she woke his conscious mind, he turned to her with a look of elated relief.
“Silverstar?” Nightshade said. “I’m glad you’re safe. We heard what happened to the Crescent clan and we feared the worst. Where are you now?”
“I’m not safe,” said Silverstar. “I got buried alive in one of the pits on the western edge of the Blackstone clan’s territory.”
“What?”
“Please, you have to help!” Silverstar begged. “I drugged myself so I should be to survive for a while, but I can’t get out by myself.”
“Were I able I would rush over there immediately,” said Nightshade. “Unfortunately, I am stuck here in chains. Everypony in our clan is.”
Silverstar lowered her head. It made sense that her clan wouldn’t be able to help.
“I’ll tell as many ponies as I can about you, though,” said Nightshade. “And ask those who cannot help to send the message to more. Soon every thestral in the caverns will know of your plight. Surely one of them will be able to help.”
That was encouraging. Maybe Silverstar could reach all the lights after all. If she told a few of them, and they passed the message onto ponies who passed it on to even more ponies, then soon all of the sleeping thestrals would be alerted. There were tens of thousands of them in total, one would have to be able to help.
“Thank you, Nightshade,” said Silverstar. “I feel a little better now. I have to go find more ponies, though.”
Nightshade nodded. “Have no fear. Even if you die, you will be with Luna soon.”
That last comment didn’t make Silverstar feel any better.
She went to three more dreams and found three more thestrals who were unable to come to her aid, but would pass along the message. The fourth thestral she encountered was a member of the Blackstone clan. He had been horrified at the fact that she had been buried alive and vowed to try and break away from his clan and dig her out. Unfortunately he wasn’t sure how soon he’d be able to come.
There was some hope now, but Silverstar didn’t want to rely entirely on him. She went to another dream after that and got the same, familiar result. By this time her mind was clearly slipping. Her vision of other ponies and their dreams began to blur and dull. The silver lights were fading.
Silverstar forced herself to push on into one last dream. She couldn’t make out the pony or its dream at all, but she did manage to blurt out a few words, though she wasn’t sure how coherent the message was. She had just barely managed to get the attention of the pony’s conscious mind before her own slipped off into oblivion.
Silverstar was slowly moving up and down. She was too weak to move and her entire body was numb, save her eyes which stung.
She tried opening her eyes only to be bombarded with the brightest light she had ever seen. Everything was bathed in light, glowing in it. She could barely make out any of the objects around her; everything appeared as nothing more than black outlines.
This was it. Silverstar was dead. She must have displeased Luna and now her soul had been banished to the sun. And she deserved it too.
She had just enough time to notice something shape like a pony moving towards her before the pain forced her to shut her eyes again.
“Ah!” said a female voice. “She’s awake! You have to tell me everything. What’s your name? Is your talent drinking green stuff? Do you want to be friends?”
Apparently being burned in the light for all eternity wasn’t punishment enough, and Luna had sent somepony to annoy her on top of it. Silverstar was too tired to reply.
“Lyra, calm down,” said a male voice. “She’s too weak to talk to you right now.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” the female, presumably “Lyra”, said. “Why is she taking this light so much worse than you are?”
“This is probably the first time she’s ever been on the surface during the day for one,” a second male voice came in, “and second she’s still under the influence of that poison I told you about. It’s probably making her eyes more sensitive.”
Did he say she was on the surface? That was slightly better than the sun. Silverstar tried to open her eyes for another look, but all she could see was pain.
“Whoa,” said Lyra. “Her pupils are huge. They’re like her entire eyes!”
“Maybe this will help,” said one of the male voices.
Silverstar felt somepony wrap a piece of cloth around her head, and the world became comfortably dark. It was at this point that Silverstar realized that she was being carried on somepony’s back. She had been rescued, but she had no idea where she was or who she was on top of.
Silverstar tried to think but couldn’t manage. She didn’t know if it was the poison, or her bruises, or the blinding light, or the stress, or the annoying pony, but something was giving her a terrible headache. Trying to think was just too painful. She cleared her mind and let herself drift back into sleep.
Silverstar woke again, this time into darkness instead of light. There was just enough light to see, but it was still a little painful.
Silverstar was lying down in a bed, a very comfortable one at that, possibly the softest thing she had ever been on. She was also covered in blankets that must have been made of silk or velvet or some other fine material. On the far side of the bed was a small pile of stuffed animals, or perhaps stuffed monsters would be more accurate. Most of them were strangely shaped creatures covered with fangs and claws and other dangerous looking appendages.
Silverstar surveyed the rest of the room. It was cramped and filled with small chests, but other than that there wasn’t much to see.
Clearly she had been taken out of the hole and brought here, but outside of that she knew nothing. She tried to remember what she had seen in the blinding light. She must have been rescued by ponies, one named Lyra.
She heard talking outside the door, but couldn’t make out the words, not that she had much time to. A thestral stallion entered the room.
Silverstar let out a sigh of relief. She was back with her own kind, she was safe.
The stallion smiled at her. “I see you’re awake. Try to relax, you’re pretty beat up and shouldn’t be moving around.”
Silverstar took his advice, placing her head down on the soft pillow. Sadly, the poison was beginning to wear off, and pain and stiffness were beginning to take hold.
“Do you feel alright?” asked the stallion.
“No.”
“Well we looked you over and you don’t have anything worse then a few sprains. Physically, that is,” said the stallion. “You’re more then welcome to rest her as long as you need to. I’ll get you something to eat.”
“Wait,” said Silverstar. “Who are you? Are you from the Blackstone clan?”
“No,” said the stallion. “And my name is Midnight.”
Silverstar glanced at him. He didn’t look like a member of the Blackstone clan. They were usually a slightly darker shade of gray than normal. The opposite was true of this thestral’s coat. It was almost white and his hair was a strange, dark purple color.
“Wait!” Silverstar said, pushing herself up. “Wait! I remember you. You’re that guy who worships Celestia. Where the hay are we?”
“First of all, I don’t worship Celestia,” said Midnight, “and we are currently on the surface.”
“The surface?!”
Silverstar felt her heartbeat climb, sending a wave of pain through her body with each beat. She wanted to get up but quickly became woozy and was forced to lie back down.
“Don’t worry. I promise you that you’re perfectly safe,” said Midnight. “In fact, we’re probably safer up here right now. We’re just above the caves, too, so you can go back in any time you want.”
Silverstar looked him over, remembering the conversation she had overheard. Things were beginning to make sense now.
“Your companions,” Silverstar said, “they’re ponies of light, aren’t they?”
His hesitation was enough of a yes for Silverstar. He realized this and stumbled to salvage the situation. “Yes, one of them is a unicorn, but she’s the one who rescued you! She practically dragged the rest of us down there, despite how dangerous it was, and pulled you out of there herself. Were it not for her magic there would have been no way to dig you out in time. You at least owe her a chance.”
Silverstar groaned. She had concluded that there were probably a few unicorns that weren’t evil, and there was no reason this Lyra couldn’t be one. She still wasn’t thrilled about it, though.
“Fine,” said Silverstar. “But if she tries to light me on fire-”
“-I promise you I’d stop her,” Midnight finished her sentence.
The door creaked open slightly and Silverstar heard a female voice whisper to Midnight in Equine. “Is it okay for me to come in yet?
Midnight nodded, and the door flung wide open. A unicorn leapt into the room.
Silverstar had thought that Midnight looked strange with his odd shade of grey, but the unicorn was simply bizarre. Silverstar had always though that the ponies of light were brown or white or some reasonable color, but the unicorn was green.
A second pony of light, a white pegasus, entered the room as well. This one didn’t seem nearly as interested in Silverstar.
The two of them both had the same creepy eyes. The glow, the spark of life, that most creatures had was absent from them. They were the eyes of a dead pony, and they made Silverstar a little uneasy.
To Silverstar’s surprise, the unicorn introduced herself in Thestrali. “The moon is hello, and I am Lyra.”
Or at least she tried to. “What?”
“Name is Lyra,” said Lyra. She stopped to think before continuing. “What is your name? Also, is friendship everlasting?”
Lyra shot Silverstar a hopeful smile. Silverstar decided to answer her in Equine. “My name is Silverstar, and I can speak Equine just fine.”
“Ah, but I wanted to talk to you in your own language!” Lyra said. “Was my Thestrali any good?”
“No.”
“Well I’ll get better,” Lyra promised. “Anyway, my name is Lyra and we’re friends now. Can I ask you hundreds, if not thousands of questions?”
Lyra didn’t wait for Silverstar to answer. She leapt onto the bed, putting herself an inch away from Silverstar. Silverstar pushed herself up against the wall, as far from the unicorn as possible. Lyra’s horn glowed and Silverstar felt a pull on her wing, one that forced it to unfurl.
Lyra looked over her wing in amazement. “Wow! The structure of your wing is a little different from Midnight’s, but is it because you’re a mare or because you’re from the east?”
Silverstar pulled her wing back hard. “Don’t touch me!”
“I’m technically not touching you,” said Lyra. “Hmm.”
The unicorn turned her attention to Silverstar’s flank. The second Silverstar felt a tug on her rear leg she pulled back hard and hissed as loud as she could in the unicorn’s face.
It didn’t have the intended affect. Lyra squealed in delight and pranced in place, a massive smile on her face. “You’re hiss is even cuter than Midnight’s! You’re officially the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen! Do it again?”
Silverstar had no idea if that was an insult. She couldn’t even think of a way to react to this situation. She just sat there staring at the bizarre pony.
“Great, now you’ve broken her,” said Midnight. “Let’s try to calm down, okay Lyra? This pony’s been through a lot.”
“Oh, right,” said Lyra. “Sorry.”
Lyra took one step back and continued to stare at Silverstar.
“Are all unicorns are like?” Silverstar asked.
“No,” Midnight said flatly.
“Most unicorns are boring and stupid,” said Lyra. “Not like you. You’re cool.”
Lyra nuzzled Silverstar warmly. She had given up on trying to resist, but not on being annoyed.
The pegasus cleared his throat and spoke. “Excuse me, but I had a question about this group of diamond dogs that’s running around down there. Do you know where they came from exactly?”
“No. All I can tell you is that they‘re lead by a changeling named Onyx,” Silverstar said. “Why?”
“There‘s been a huge surge in diamond dog raids,” said the pegasus. “It could be that this is the group behind them. I’ll probably have to tell the army about this.”
“Ah!” Lyra said. “I have a great idea. This guy is our enemy too, so why not go to Equestria for help? Celestia said that she wanted to talk to any thestrals that I brought back, so you’d get an audience with her right away. Just come back to Canterlot with me.”
Onyx did have a few powerful enemies to be sure. Judging by that first changeling’s actions, not only Celestia but Chrysalis as well would have a bone to pick with him. Silverstar didn’t think it would be a good idea to rely on either of them. Either one could easily defeat Onyx, but they would only replace his tyrannical rule with their own.
“Then we’d just be occupied by her,” said Silverstar. “I’m not going to ask Celestia for help.”
“You do realize that I still have to tell Celestia about this situation, yes?” the pegasus asked.
“Do whatever you want. I’m leaving.”
Silverstar pushed herself out of bed and landed on the floor with a burst of pain in each leg. Every step was painful, but she managed to push on to the door.
“What?! No!” Lyra said. “You can’t leave! Why not stay a while longer?”
“No,” said Silverstar. “My clan is in trouble. I have to do something to help them.”
“But where are you going to go?” Lyra asked.
Silverstar frowned. That was a good question. At this point all of the eastern clans would have been defeated. If Silverstar went back underground she would be in constant danger of being caught and killed by Onyx. Silverstar imagined the changeling giving that half smile of his, and she felt a burst of anger.
“I’ll find somewhere!” said Silverstar. “There are other clans out there.”
Silverstar threw open the door to leave, but Lyra called out to her. “You’re going to look for the other great clans? Like the Eclipse clan or the Shadow clan?”
That was enough stop Silverstar in her tracks. “What? How do you know about them?”
Silverstar glanced at Midnight. Right.
“A thousand years ago, the four original clans split in four directions to make it harder for Celestia to get them all,” Lyra recited. “The Crescent clan went east and hid in the deep caves under these wastelands. The Shadow clan went west to the Hadrian Mountains. The Eclipse clan went south, past the changeling hives. The Aurora clan went north and hid in the artic mountains. I know all about each of them! Are you impressed?”
Silverstar was a little impressed. Lyra trotted to her side and grabbed her yet again.
“You know, I can take you to them,” said Lyra. “I’ve been leading expeditions to try and make contact with them. If you go alone you’ll have a long, hard trip. But, if you come with me, you’ll get there easily.”
That might actually be a good idea.
“You’re from one of the northern clans, right?” Silverstar asked Midnight. “How many thestrals are in the northern clans?”
“If you’re looking for help, then I’d advise looking elsewhere,” said Midnight. “Getting the northern clans to help you would be nearly impossible.”
“But why? Wouldn’t they be eager to help the other children of Luna?”
“Please understand that we’ve been separated for some time,” Midnight explained. “Our culture is different from yours. The northern clans fight amongst themselves constantly. The Aurora clan has been fighting the Snow clan for over a century and wouldn’t come to your age until their endless war was over. Not only that, but they see themselves as individuals first and clans second. My people are willful and unruly, with no respect for authority. Luna herself would have trouble uniting them.”
Silverstar frowned. “Well, even if that’s the case there’s still the other two. We could go to the Hadrian Mountains and look for the Shadow clan.”
“About that,” Lyra said. “We already went to the Hadrian Mountains, actually. There was nopony there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had over a hundred ponies scour the mountains and Midnight over here searched all over the dreamscape for thestrals, but we didn’t find anything. Well, we found a few artifacts that suggest there were ponies living there long ago, but we didn’t find any thestrals.”
“What?! What happened to them? Did Celestia get them?”
“No idea. This doesn’t mean that they died out, though. They may have just gone somewhere else, or they could be really good at hiding. I’m definitely going to find out eventually!”
Silverstar slunk down into a sitting position. Things were looking bad for her race. The eastern clans were enslaved, the western clans were potential dead and the northern clans were fighting amongst themselves.
“I was really disappointed too,” said Lyra. “I mean when I heard of the ‘Shadow clan’ I got so excited. To think I was this close to hanging out with ninja vamponies!”
“Well there’s still the south,” said Silverstar. “Do you know anything about the Eclipse clan?”
“Haven’t been there yet,” Lyra said matter-of-factly. “They’re supposed to be south of the changeling hives, so it’d be dangerous to get there. I do intend to go there soon, however.”
Lyra thrust her face in front of Silverstar and met her with a massive, toothy grin. Here eyes were opened wide and sparkled with hope and insanity.
“Do you want to come with me?” she asked.
Silverstar stared Lyra in the eyes. This was seriously her best hope. “Maybe.”
“Yes!” Lyra shouted as she leapt up in glee. Lyra twirled around the caravan shouting with glee, until she accidentally slammed into the wall.
“Um, yeah,” Silverstar said. “So when exactly do we leave? I don‘t suppose we could go now?”
Crashing into a wall didn’t stop Lyra from celebrating, but this did. The unicorn froze in her tracks and looked at Silverstar nervously. “Oh, well. We’re leaving in, um, you know.”
“No. No I don’t know.”
Midnight watched the two mares star each other down for a few seconds before answering Silverstar’s question. “Going to the south clans isn’t going to be a simple expedition; we need a long time to prepare. It’s going to be at least a year, maybe even two or three, before we’re ready to go.”
“Years?!”
“But you can stay with me in the mean time!” Lyra answered almost immediately.
The unicorn grabbed Silverstar and gestured to the horizon.
“You don’t have anywhere to stay right now, but you’re more than welcome to come live with me in my mansion,” Lyra continued. “The guest room you’ll get is bigger than some pony’s houses! Not only that, but you’ll get food prepared by my gourmet chefs, you’ll be waited on by my servants, and I’ll take you all over the city and buy you all sorts of things. All you have to do in exchange is agree o be my best friend forever.”
Silverstar didn’t like the way she said “forever”. She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to agree to something so ominous.
“I appreciate the offer, but I can’t accept,” said Silverstar. “I can’t live in luxury for years while my clan suffers. I have to go now, even if it‘s by myself.”
“It would be a dangerous trip, Silverstar,” said Midnight.
“Yes!” Lyra eagerly agreed. “It’d be insanely dangerous! Going through the changeling hives is impossible. You’d need to sail around them with a ship. A ship like mine, for example.”
Silverstar was beginning to realize how stupid her plan was. She’d have to risk her life and travel hundreds of miles just to talk to the southern clans. Then she’d have to unite them, and then she would have to find a way to get them all the way back north. Even if Silverstar did all that she’d still have all the work of fighting Onyx ahead of her, and she’d still have no way of dealing with the poison gas.
Onyx was going to win. His face flashed in Silverstar mind, filling her with anger.
“I’m sure we’ll figure this out,” Lyra said cheerfully. “Just go back to bed and rest for a while.”
Lyra’s cheerfulness only made Silverstar angrier.
“No,” Silverstar spat back at her. “I’ll figure this out myself. I don’t need help from your kind!”
Silverstar stepped out of the door and into the cold night air.
“You can’t leave!” Lyra called after her. “We’re supposed to be friends and go on adventures and stuff!”
Lyra was moving to grab onto Silverstar again. Silverstar wasn’t going to take it this time. She was mad and just wanted to hit something, and Lyra was there.
“Shut up!” she shouted and then kicked Lyra in the face. She didn’t look back to see how much damage she did, but apparently it was enough to shut Lyra up, which was enough for her.
Silverstar began her march forward, her anger enough to dull the pain in her legs.
“That was uncalled for,” she heard Midnight shouting behind her. “Lyra saved your life! You should apologize to her.”
“What is it going to take for you to get the message?!” Silverstar asked. “I don’t want anything to do with you! Leave me alone!”
“Fine,” Midnight said. “Then leave.”
Midnight went back inside. Silverstar let out a slight hiss and moved on.
“Wait, please,” came Lyra’s feeble voice from behind.
Silverstar stopped in her tracks again. Lyra was going to come up with another excuse for her to stay. Silverstar hoped that the unicorn would say something stupid or insensitive; she wanted a reason to hit her again.
“I’m sorry.”
Silverstar turned around. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” said Lyra. “I wasn’t really thinking about you at all. I just saw you as another vampony that I could hang out with, not somepony who had feelings and was hurt. I needed to get kicked in the face before I realized that. I’m so stupid.”
Silverstar looked Lyra over. Her left eye was swollen and bleeding, and she was slumped over in a depression. Silverstar had done that to her, but Lyra was the one apologizing.
“I know you want to leave,” said Lyra. “But you can come back whenever you want. I know how much it hurts to be alone. You don’t have to be alone, okay?”
Silverstar had just smacked Lyra in the face, but Lyra was the one apologizing. Hundreds, if not thousands of thestrals must have known that Silverstar had been buried, but Lyra was the only pony who had com to help.
Silverstar felt her anger slipping away. She felt tears coming to her eyes.
“No,” said Silverstar. “Don’t apologize. You’re one of the nicest ponies I’ve ever met. I was just so angry and scare and… why did this have to happen.
Lyra slowly trotted up to Silverstar. “Listen-”
This time it was Silverstar who grabbed Lyra. She pressed her face into Lyra’s chest and wept. Lyra silently hugged her back.
Lyra and Silverstar were lying next to each other on the bed. It was only 4 A.M., but Lyra was fast asleep. Apparently, this was way past bedtime for a unicorn.
Even though it was early sleep was probably a good idea, it would heal her wounds and allow her to tell her family that she wasn’t dead, but it was impossible right now. Silverstar’s mind was still too ablaze with everything that had happened and with the anxiety of what to do next. At least she’d have Lyra now.
The last few days had been making her think. If the rest of Equestria was even half as nice as Lyra or Daring Do, then there wouldn’t be much to worry about from them. It was entirely possible that the majority of them weren’t evil, that it was just Celestia who was driving them to do all the immoral things that they did.
If that was so, maybe going to Equestria to help wouldn’t be such a terrible idea. At the very least, Silverstar wanted to know if that was the case, and there was only one way to do that.
Silverstar snuggled up against her new friend. She had made up her mind. She was going to Canterlot.
It was the middle of the day, almost noon, the latest Silverstar had ever stayed up. She had to stay up in order to get on a thing called a “train”.
She had imagined it as a sort of wagon, but it looked more like a series of long, metal building than a wagon. The huge metal buildings did have wheels under them and must be able to move somehow, though Silverstar felt sorry for whatever was going to be pulling it. The train would be heavy for ten trolls.
The inside of the train was very comfortable. On the one side was a long, padded bench, on the other were two walled-off areas, each of which contained a bed, and between the beds was a table and cabinet full of food.
The large windows on either side of the car were covered with heavy curtains that blocked out all of the sunlight. The light in the room came from lanterns that were bright enough for Lyra, but dim enough for a thestral.
Lyra had said that this car was just for them and they would have all the privacy they wanted here. Silverstar parted the curtains and glanced outside.
Outside the window was Dodge Junction. This wasn’t the first time Silverstar had seen the city, but it was the first time she had gotten anywhere near it. It could often be seen on the horizon when one went to the surface to look for fruit or admire the stars and moon. Silverstar had always thought it was one of Equestrian’s great cities, but never thought she would actually travel there.
The city was exactly as Silverstar had imagined it a metropolis of wooden buildings, some of them two or three stories tall, sprawling in every direction, spreading so wide that neither end of it could be seen. What shocked Silverstar was that Lyra seemed to think of this as a small town. Canterlot, she assured Silverstar, was massive in comparison.
Dodge Junction dwarfed anything the thestrals had built, but even it was tiny compared to where she was going. Silverstar couldn’t imagine how big Canterlot must be, so she decided not to even try. It would be better to just wait.
The ponies outside were so varied in color. Were they all from different clans? The trip between the carriage and the train had been two steps long, so she hadn’t had to talk to any of them just yet.
“So what you want me to do,” said Silverstar, turning her attention back to Midnight, “is march up to Celestia's throne and roll around on the floor crying until she agrees to help me?”
Midnight nodded. “Yes. I think something like that would be the best use for you. Celestia and many of the nobles we're going to appeal to have bleeding hearts. Showing them how hurt you are will do much to sway them.”
Midnight seemed keen on playing up the sympathy card. He had initially wanted to have Silverstar look a bit roughed up when they got to Canterlot, but it would be a three day trip until they got there. Instead he settled for the opposite extreme and covered her in excessive bandages. The largest of them was the gauss the covered her entire front left leg, where an inch long cut had been.
“Really?” asked Silverstar. She still wasn't convinced that this was the best plan. “Shouldn't I try convincing them that it's in their own interest to help us? You said that Onyx is their enemy too.”
“I intend to take care of that part myself,” said Midnight. “You need to appeal to different ponies in different ways. Some of them will be more convinced by logic, others by emotions. We need to play both sides to maximize out chance of getting their aid.”
“Be sure to mention the poison gas frequently. The use of such weapons is considered an abhorrent crime in Equestria, so we'll want to bring as much attention to that as possible. Also, some of the nobles are more sympathetic to our kind than others. When we get to Canterlot, I'll show you the ones you should try to get the attention of and the ones you should avoid.”
Silverstar hadn't remembered Midnight seeming this manipulative when she first met him. Perhaps he was the type to change his personality to fit the situation. It wasn't something she minded as long as he was on her side, and right now he seemed like her best asset.
“I'm surprised any of them have an opinion of us at all,” said Silverstar.
“Did I not mention that I've spent some years living in Equestria? Most of that time was spent in the company of the upper class, thanks to Lyra. Most Equestrians have never seen our kind before, but the ones we're going to be talking to are very aware of us.”
“Ultimate correction,” said Lyra. As it turned out, Lyra understood Thestrali just fine. It was only in speaking it she had trouble, needing long pauses to conduct her sentences.
“He's right, though,” she eventually said in Equine. “I've been running a vicious pro-thestral campaign, one that's already gotten a ton of nobles on our side. Some ponies think we're all a bunch of uptight bigots, and that's true for some ponies, but those guys are always willing to take up a cause. Many of them are all ready to go help the poor thestrals in their time of need.”
“Hold on,” said Silverstar. “The invasion happened three days ago. How did you convince them to help us in our time of need before our time of need even happened?”
“Maybe I'm just that good,” Lyra said with a sly smile.
“Actually,” said Midnight, “she sold them on the idea of helping the northern clans. As I likely told you clan, the north is wracked by starvation. It was the idea of helping starving ponies that Lyra sold them on. Still, they don't see a distinction of clans like we do; to them all thestrals are the same. Changing their attention from the north to the east won't be difficult.”
“If the northern clans are so bad then why did you come to us instead of going to help them?” asked Silverstar. Just as she finished her sentence she remembered the answer. “Oh! That’s right; you said you wanted to bring them to the land above our clan.”
“Correct. Your land is the key to my plans,” said Midnight. “We can‘t survive where we are much longer. We need to find a new home.”
“Why are they suddenly starving after living there for centuries, though?” asked Silverstar. “You said they were fighting, right? Is that what’s causing the food shortage?”
“Actually, I think it’s the other way around,” Midnight Explained. The mountains we live in are too cold to sustain life. However, they contain rich deposits of fire crystals, stones that become very hot upon touching water. The heat from the fire stones melts the snow, then boils the lakes and rivers of water that form. The resulting steam fills the caves and covers the mountains with a warm mist. It is that steam which allows the molds and insects we eat to survive.”
“Normally, fire crystals burn out very quickly, but there is a massive fire crystal, the magic from which stabilizes that of all the others in the mountain, allowing them to burn for centuries. We never found the reason why, but a few generations back a massive crack appeared in the crystal, one that has continued to grow. After that many of the smaller fire crystals began to cool or burned out completely. Many of the boiling lakes froze over, and the amount of food and habitable land shrunk dramatically. It was around that time that the fighting began.”
“We're working on it, though!” said Lyra. “I've hired a mage to create a spell that can restore fire crystals, and we've gathered a huge amount of donations to buy food for them.”
“Unfortunately none of it will be enough,” said Midnight. “It will only delay the inevitable. If we are to survive we need to settle in a new land.”
“On our land,” Silverstar said.
“Yes. The northern clans are proud and won’t be easily convinced to move. I hoped create a land inhabited by thestrals, under the protection of a powerful nation and fertile enough to support both groups. If I could make the eastern clans into such a place, then perhaps the northern clans, and maybe all the others, would be tempted enough to travel there. I was finally starting to make some progress too, but then this had to happen and ruin my plans.”
Midnight grimaced, and Silverstar did the same.
“But this is the part where everything turns around,” Said Lyra. The dire situation only made her bolder. “I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen. When we get to Celestia she’ll spring into action and free the eastern clans. After that, your people will see that there’s no reason for us to be enemies and accept our alliance. Then we just convince the northern clans to move in with you and everypony lives happily ever after.”
Lyra’s confidence did much to bolster Silverstar’s own. Silverstar hoped to Luna that things would turn out like that. This plan was still a long shot, but if Lyra had really done as much as she claimed, the prospects were looking better.
“You’re really doing a lot for us, Lyra,” said Silverstar. “Don‘t get me wrong, but why?”
“What do you mean why? You need help and that‘s reason enough for me,” said Lyra. “And I just love your culture so much too, and you’re all so adorable with your fangs and glowing eyes, too. If for no other reason I’d do all this just for the chance to learn more about you. Then there’s the fact that-”
Lyra suddenly stopped talking and had a flash of pensiveness. It only lasted a second before she returned to her usual cheerful confidence.
“Well, never mind that,” said Lyra. “What’s important is that I’m on your side 110%! I’ll spend the rest of my life fighting for you if I have too.”
“I’m with you as well,” said Midnight. “My goal is to create a powerful thestral nation, and saving your clan is the only way to do that.”
Silverstar felt a swell of affection for the both of them. Maybe she wasn’t entirely alone.
“Thank you.”
Before anything else sentimental could happen, the train lurched forward.
At first it moved at a reasonable speed, but soon began to accelerate faster and faster, until it was going at the speed of a gallop, and then even faster than that.
“Is it supposed to go this fast?!” Silverstar asked.
Lyra just nodded and assured her it was perfectly safe.
“I have to ask- what the hay is pulling this thing so fast?” Silverstar had to ask. “Is it some kind of magic?”
“Nah,” said Lyra. “It’s powered by steam. Whoosh!”
Lyra pumped her hoof in the air to show exactly how the steam went “whoosh”.
“Is that a joke?” Silverstar asked. “I can’t tell if you’re joking.”
“It’s true, trains run on steam,” said Midnight.
Silverstar thought about how much steam you would need to lift a leaf. To move something like this you’d need to boil an ocean.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “That sounds kind of stupid.”
“I was skeptical of that when I first heard about it, too. Why don’t you go to the engine room and see for yourself?” asked Midnight. “You’re going to have to start talking to these ponies eventually, why not start now?”
It was true that Silverstar had been avoiding everypony but Midnight and Lyra since coming to the surface. She watched the bizarre multi-colored ponies whiz by the window.
“Just give me a little longer,” said Silverstar. “Let me get some sleep first.”
The others had to concede that it was, indeed, very late. Silverstar hadn’t realized just how tired she was until she crawled into the bed. She was asleep in minutes.
______________________________________
She awoke later that night. Midnight was still asleep at the time, but Lyra had been awake the whole time. There was another question Silverstar had been meaning to ask about the train, one she had been hesitant to ask. After an hour or two, however, she got to the point where she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“How do you go to the bathroom on this thing?” She asked. “Are you just supposed to go to the back door and…?”
“Ha! No. There’s a bathroom a couple cars ahead of us,” said Lyra. “Or at least there should be.”
Lyra vowed to take her there and soon the two were making their way towards the front of the train.
Silverstar had been briefly worried about encountering more ponies of light, but soon found that fear unwarranted. Lyra often stayed up until four or five in the morning and slept until late in the afternoon. As Silverstar soon learned, this was unusual for a unicorn, and by midnight all the ponies on the train were asleep.
There were a few still awake, but they were all too preoccupied with some sort of book to notice the thestral walking past them. A few of them did notice Silverstar, but all they did was stare. When Silverstar glanced back at them they quickly turned their attention away.
“Wait,” said Silverstar. “Are they afraid of me?”
“They’ve just never seen one of you before,” said Lyra. “Don’t worry about them.”
Soon enough they found the bathroom. Silverstar went and came back Lyra said that she had to go too and disappeared behind the bathroom door.
As Silverstar sat waiting, her attention began to drift about the car. She soon noticed a young colt sitting in the nearest seat to her.
The colt stared at Silverstar with wide eyes, but she couldn‘t tell the exact emotion that was behind those wide eyes.
She tried to just glance away and ignore him, like she did with all the other ponies, but his stare seemed to drill into her with more intensity than any other Silverstar had ever encountered. Silver couldn’t stop herself from looking back at the colt and meeting his gaze.
The two stared at each other for some time before the colt finally spoke.
“Are you a vampony?” he asked.
There was that word again. Lyra had referred to Silverstar as a “vampony” once or twice. From the way Lyra used it, Silverstar assumed it was the Equine word for thestral.
Silverstar nodded. “Yes. I am a vampony.”
The colt’s mouth opened up into a smile and his eyes managed to become even wider. “That’s so cool! Do you know Batmare?”
“Batmare?” Silverstar asked. “I don’t think I do. Who is she?”
“She’s a superhero,” the colt explained. “And she’s a vampony like you are!”
This was an interesting turn of events. It seemed there was another thestral already living in Equestria, one that was considered not just a hero, but a super hero. Silverstar wondered why Lyra hadn’t mentioned bat mare. Was she trying to hide something?
“Can you tell me more about this Batmare?” she asked the colt. “Does she live in Canterlot?”
“No, she lives in Manehatten. And she fights bad guys like Jokermort and Darthface!” said the colt. He sure seemed excited about the topic. “She came to my birthday party last year.”
This was just raising more questions than it answered. Before she could ask him anything else he turned to the sleeping mare next to her and began shaking her.
“Mom, look! It’s a vampony!”
His mother slowly opened her eyes and wearily looked at her son.
“Honey, there’s no such thing as-”
The mare glanced at Silverstar with a frozen look. After a moment it turned to a smile.
“That’s a very nice costume,” she said.
“I’m not wearing a costume,” said Silverstar.
The mare picked up her son and moved him to the other side of the seat. Silverstar realized that she should have pretended she was wearing a costume just a second before the other mare started screaming for help.
Silverstar backed up and knocked on the bathroom door. “Um, Lyra!”
“Ack! Just give me a second!” Lyra called from behind the door.
Other ponies were starting to wake up. A panic was quickly building in the car. Hopefully Lyra would be out in a second.
The door behind her opened and a stallion in a uniform entered.
“What’s going on here?” he asked.
“That vampony is trying to eat my foal!”
The stallion shot Silverstar a brief look of panic before gathering his courage and tackling her to the ground. That was when Lyra finally came out of the bathroom.
“How dare you!” Lyra yelled. “Don’t you know who I am?!”
Her yells were drowned out by all the other yells that were circling through the train car. Lyra growled, then blasted the stallion off of Silverstar with her magic. She then leapt between Silverstar and the crowd.
“Shut up!” she screamed over all the other yells.
That was enough to bring silence.
“You should all be ashamed of yourselves!” Lyra said. “Just because somepony looks different doesn’t make them a monster! You have no right to treat my friend like this.”
The door behind them opened again and another uniformed stallion entered.
“What is going- Ah! Lady Heartstrings!” he said.
“Are you the one in charge here?” Lyra asked.
“Yes.”
“One of your employees just attacked my friend,” Lyra said. “This is unacceptable! I specifically told you about my friends and told you to inform the train’s staff.”
“I am very, very sorry, Lady Heartstrings!” said the stallion. He shot the other one a look.
“She was trying to eat that colt, sir!” he tried to explain.
“Is this true?”
“No,” said the colt. “She’s a good vampony like Batmare. I tried telling you, Mom, but you wouldn’t listen!”
The stallion who tackled her and the mare who had started the screaming were beat red now.
“Lady Heartstrings is a very important guest,” said the stallion in charge. “I am terrible sorry for this, Lady Heartstrings. We had to switch out one of our staff on short notice. I personally assure you that nothing like this will happen again.”
“Don’t apologize to me, apologize to Silverstar,” said Lyra.
“I am very sorry, Miss Silverstar,” he said with a bow.
The other stallion apologized as well after getting a stern look.
“If anypony else has a problem,” said Lyra, “then they can take it up with me!”
Lyra began defiant march back to their private car, Silverstar following close behind.
“Thanks for standing up for me,” said Silverstar. Lyra had just earned herself a few more points.
“Like I said, stay close to me and you’ll be fine,” said Lyra. “Believe it or not, I am a very important pony. Nopony will mess with you if you if you’re with!”
Silverstar smiled back at Lyra. It was then that she remembered a pressing subject.
“But tell me one thing,” said Silverstar, “Why didn’t you tell me about Batmare?”
As the train rolled onward to Canterlot it passed town after town, each more enormous than the last. Eventually they got to a point that seemed to be just an endless sea of buildings that went on and on forever, broken only by an occasional forest or plain.
By that time, Silverstar shad built up an immunity to large things. On the second day she saw a building that was ten stories tall, but by then only felt it par for the course. She doubted that even the skyscrapers, buildings hundreds of feet tall, that Lyra had told her about, would surprise her at this point.
Canterlot itself came into view a full day before they reached it. From this distance the city was a huge, white, gleaming thing that hung off the side of a mountain. For hours Canterlot had loomed in the distance, but now they were at the edge of the mountain and the train began an upward spiral to the top. It almost seemed as if the track were designed to give the city a chance to loom over you from every direct. After a short time, however, Silverstar realized that it only ever loomed from the right, a fact that made it only very slightly less intimidating.
That she was entering Celestia‘s domain began to sink in, and with it came a sense of dread. For the past two days Silverstar’s been bouncing up and down. Lyra and Midnight had been a source of constant reassurance, and despite the one incident the ponies on the train hadn’t seemed as bloodthirsty as she had once thought. A few of the ponies that had screamed at the sight of her earlier even came to their private car to apologize.
It wasn’t so much them that Silverstar was worried about, she had already decided that they weren’t all evil; it was Celestia that scared her.
“You’re sure that me walking up to Celestia s a good idea?” Silverstar asked. “Wouldn’t talking to the other nobles be enough?”
“How many more times do I have to tell you that Celestia is nice?” asked Lyra.
“A lot?”
“You’re worried about nothing,” Lyra assured her. “As soon as you meet the Princess you’ll know that. Princess Celestia is definitely going to want to help you. Besides, it’s not like you’re going to get off the train and go straight to her You still have a few more days to get ready.”
Silverstar didn’t feel like discussing this again, instead she bit into her juice box again. The juice box was one of her favorite Equestrian technologies. It was just a box with fruit juices inside, but the fact that fruit was so much more common in Equestria than in Silverstar’s caves meant that she could have as many as she wanted.
You were supposed to use a straw, but Silverstar found it easier to just bite into the side and suck out the juice that way.
Lyra looked into the compartment where their food was stored. Besides the three remaining juice boxes, there was nothing. “Oh, no! We’re out of snacks. I’d better go to the dinning car and get some more.”
“We only have an hour before we get to Canterlot,” said Midnight. “I think you can wait.”
“We have an hour and fifteen minutes,” said Lyra. “And I want nachos now. Now come on.”
“Why do I have to go?” asked Midnight
“To carry my stuff for me.”
“What? How much are you getting?!”
“I don’t know, but I want a stallion with me just in case,” said Lyra. “Now come on!”
Lyra dragged Midnight out of his seat.
“I suppose we’ll be back soon,” he said.
Silverstar nodded as the two disappeared from sight. After hearing the door in front of the car close, Silverstar took out another juice box and bit into it.
She didn’t get to drink much of it before she heard the sound of a door open and close again. Silverstar would have simply thought that it was Lyra returning, were it not for the fact that the sound came from the wrong direction, from the back of the car.
The problem was that there were no cars behind this one.
Silverstar slowly turned her head to the back of the train where she found a pony standing in front of the back door. The pony trotted towards Silverstar, her eyes glowing.
It was another thestral.
It was an unusual looking one, too. Her fur was pitch black and her mane was the same dark blue as Silverstar‘s, but Silverstar caught a glance at her roots which revealed that her true hair color was pink, meaning the rest was only dyed blue. It was her eyes that were truly unusual. They had the familiar, yellow glow of a thestral’s eyes, but the pupils weren’t slits, but were the odd, circular shape that Lyra and her kind had.
Her appearance was enough for Silverstar to conclude that she must have been some sort of hybrid. She didn’t have enough time to wonder how that could have happened before the mysterious newcomer spoke to her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She asked. Her tone wasn’t very friendly.
Silverstar glanced down at the juice box, then up at this new thestral. “Did you want some?”
The other thestral knocked the juice box out of Silverstar’s hooves.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I’m here with Lyra Heartstrings,” Silverstar replied. “Do you know her?”
Silverstar had hoped that this was another one of Lyra‘s thestrals, one she somehow forgot to mention. The way the new mare’s eyes narrowed in disgust showed that if she did know Lyra, her opinion wasn’t very good.
“Were you forced to come here?” She asked. “Or are you just stupid?”
“I’m here to save my clan.”
“So you’re an idiot.”
Silverstar had had enough of this attitude. She stood up and gave the mare a look just as intense as the one she was getting.
“ Hey! Just who are you, anyway?” she asked. “Why are you here? You can’t just barge in here and start-”
“My name is Whisper,” she replied, “and I know these creatures, and the light, far better than you do. That is all that you need to know about me. Now listen.”
Whisper drew in close to Silverstar and began speaking very slowly. “Nightmare Moon is going to return very soon. Go back to where you came from and wait for her. The day that darkness rules the world will be here soon. Celestia will not free you‘re clan, but Nightmare Moon will.”
If this was the first time Silverstar had heard somepony tell her the return of Luna was neigh it may have had some effect. This was closer to the thousands time than the first, however.
“They’ve been saying that constantly for over a thousand years,” said Silverstar. “Unless you have actual proof I’m not going to believe you.”
“This time is different,” Whisper assured her. “I do have proof! I- I just can‘t show you.”
“Right,” said Silverstar. “Very convenient. Come back when you can show me, but until then I‘m staying on this course.”
Whisper gave a short hiss. “The other one has already been brainwashed. It’s too late for him, but you still have a chance. It’s not too late for you to turn back, but I cannot tolerate the presence of any more thestrals in this city. This is your last warning leave now or else.”
Silverstar had had enough of Whisper. “Or else what?”
Whisper really didn’t give her another warning; she simply turned and walked away, exiting the train through the back door.
Silverstar decided it would be best to go to Midnight and Lyra immediately. As she trotted to the front of the train she heard a loud, metallic clunk coming from the car ahead. She galloped the rest of the way and threw open the door.
The car ahead of her was now several yards away and was moving further away with each second. It was a good thing Silverstar had wings, with luck she might be able to out-fly the train. She took a few steps back and prepared to lunge forward.
Before she could take flight, something slammed into the side of the train car with enough force to tip it over. The left side hit the ground hard. Silverstar managed to fly out of the way of the shattering glass. The car rolled again and went plummeting down the cliff.
The car spun as it fell, throwing all of the objects within, including Silverstar into the air. Silverstar hit the wall, and then the ceiling before regaining flight, then lost it again fell on top of her. She struggled to throw the blanket off of her and the moment she was free she made a beeline for the open door of the train.
Silverstar flew out of the train car as fast as she could and flew back up to the ledge that it had fallen from. She looked down the cliff, just in time to see the train car hit the ground with a terrible crash.
Whisper was undoubtedly behind this. Silverstar looked around for the other thestral, but found no sign of her presence. That didn’t necessarily mean that she was gone, or that Silverstar was safe. Either way, the best course of action now was to get back to the train.
The train had already disappeared behind the bend and Silverstar doubted she could catch it by chasing it down the tracks, but if the train was spiraling up the mountain, she could still catch it by flying up.
Silverstar flew up along the side of the mountain until she saw the train tracks again. From her new, higher vantage she could see the train making another right hand turn as it moved up the mountain. Silverstar could simply wait here and the train would come to her. Standing on the tracks themselves was likely a bad idea, so Silverstar flew up to a small alcove above them to wait for the train.
Landing on the train when it returned shouldn’t be too hard, the difficult part would be the wait. Silverstar kept a constant scan of the area around her, watching for the yellow glow of eyes, perking her ears in every direction to listen for any out of place noise.
Once or twice she heard the flutter of wings or the sound of a disturbed rock. Each time she had snapped her attention in the direction, but, to her relief, found only a bird or small animal there. Soon enough the sound of the approaching train began to drown out the little noises that had kept her so on edge.
Far below her, at the spot that the train car had derailed, pegasi were beginning to assemble. Silverstar realized now that she could have just stayed there and waited for help, but the light of the train was peeking out from around the bend and she may as well return to it. Besides, she didn’t see Lyra or Midnight with the group below her and she wasn’t ready to confront any ponies alone.
There was still no sight of Whisper. That attack must have been threat enough for her.
The noise of the train was enough to drown out everything else. It would pass under Silverstar any moment now. Silverstar spread her wings and got ready to take flight.
The moment the train came into sight Silverstar’s plans came crashing down. Standing on top of the front car of the train was Whisper.
Whisper immediately saw Silverstar and lunged at her. Silverstar just managed to take flight before the other thestral reached the alcove and stabbed a spear at the spot Silverstar had stood. With Whisper between her and the train, there was nowhere to go now but up.
Silverstar flew up the mountain as fast as she could with Whisper following close behind. It quickly became apparent that Whisper was the faster of the two as the gap between the two began to disappear. Silverstar’s only option was to fly upwards as fast as she could to keep some distance between her and her pursuer.
The city of Canterlot was visible above them and was fast approaching. Entering the city without Lyra could be dangerous, but not as dangerous as what was behind her.
Silverstar made it the base of a wall, the only thing between her and the city, when Whisper had caught up with her. Whisper and thrust her spear she had found somewhere at Silverstar. Silverstar spun to the side to narrowly avoid getting skewered. Whisper lunged at her again with a blow that managed to graze Silverstar’s shoulder.
Silverstar managed to shrug off the cut and briefly landed on top of the wall before Whisper rammed into her hard, throwing her back into the air. Silverstar didn’t see what sort of building she had been thrown into, but from the looks of where she now stood she must have been knocked inside one through a window.
Silverstar looked up at the window she had just entered through just in time to see Whisper land with her spear readied. Silverstar picked up a broom that was lying next to her and swung it at Whisper.
Whisper easily sidestepped and slammed the side of her spear into the back of Silverstar’s head. She then rammed Silverstar into the wall. She pulled back her spear and lunged forward once more.
Silverstar heard the spear slam into the wall only a hair away from her face.
“Or else that,” said Whisper. “I’ll give you two days to come to your senses and leave.”
Whisper walked to the window and jumped out. Silverstar galloped to it and looked out, but by then Whisper had vanished.
Silverstar took a minute to calm down from her near-death experience before trying to think of what to do next.
It was obvious that she needed to get back to Midnight and Lyra. The question was the best way to do that.
They would have noticed she was missing by now, and were most likely looking for her. Her grandmother had always told her that if she was lost in the caves that she should just stay put and wait for somepony to come for her. Silverstar figured the same strategy should work in a city.
She trotted over to one of the windows and looked out at the city.
Her view wasn’t exception. There were so many towers and huge building in Canterlot that she could barely see the end of the street. Still, if Lyra came this way Silverstar would see her.
Two hours passed with no sight of Lyra. If it were not for those tall towers, Silverstar would have been able o see a much larger portion of the city. It was still dark, and there were only a few ponies in sight. Silverstar could easily fly to the roof of a higher tower without being seen.
Silverstar unfolded her wings and leapt out the window. She landed in the targeted window after just a second and, after peering inside to make sure the room was empty, crawled into the taller tower. Looking back down at the ponies was enough to confirm they hadn’t seen her, not one was looking in her direction.
Silverstar could now see a much larger portion of the city, but it was still obstructed by even taller towers. The one she was in now was already taller than any building had a right to be and yet there was one nearly twice the size just down the street. She considered going to that tower for an even better view, but realized that she had gotten lucky that this room had been empty.
As Silverstar looked over the city she noticed that some windows glowed with a brilliant light while most of the rest were dark. It didn’t take long to realize what this meant. The ponies of light needed bright lights to see anything, so the rooms that were bright were the ones that were inhabited. As long as Silverstar flew only to the dark windows, she would not encounter anypony.
Silverstar flew to the next tower in sight, then the next one after that. Now she was high enough to see what had to be the tallest tower in the city, and sure enough there was a dark window near the top.
Getting to this tower unseen would be a bit more difficult, however. There were several pegasi in the sky now, ones that looked like stereotypical villains with their white fur and golden armor. If she ended up having to ask somepony for help, it most certainly wouldn’t be one of them, she decided.
Silverstar waited for a path to open, then held her breath and zipped into the dark window as fast as she could. She hadn’t bothered to check if the room was empty before entering, but, Luna be praised, it was. The majority of the room was taken up by a massive bell. The only other exit from the room was a single door, but Silverstar had no intention of using it. She just had to find Lyra before anypony came in.
Silverstar glanced out the window. She could see the entire city now, but she also had a new problem. She was too far up to make out what each individual pony looked like. They were all just speck beneath her. Her eye sight was good enough to make out only basic details of ponies. She noticed one or two that had the same fur and hair as Lyra, but then she realized that she couldn’t even tell if it was an earth pony, unicorn or pegasus.
Silverstar blamed her lack of foresight in this area on the fact that this problem didn’t exist underground.
Things got even worse a moment later when the sun rose.
The sunrise was quick enough to force Silverstar to wince and withdraw back into the building. Even though she had spent days on the surface, she had spent it mostly in the dark areas prepared for her by Lyra, sleeping most of the day, and still wasn‘t used to the sunlight. Perhaps if the window had been facing away from the sun she could continue her search, but looking towards the sun would block too much of her vision.
Silverstar slunk back into the relatively dark room, and tried to think of her next move. She wouldn’t be able to find Lyra, so she would have to approach somepony and ask for help.
She wondered what sort of pony lived in this tower. They must have been very wealthy to afford such a large building, so it stood to reason they were a noble. If she was lucky, Silverstar might run into one of the sympathetic nobles. Whoever was below her would most likely be less intimidating than the armored pegasi outside, so she decided to go in that direction.
Silverstar cracked open the door and peaked through. Only darkness and stairs were on the other side. Silverstar was afraid of neither. She exited the room and began down the long, long, incredibly long staircase.
Again the spiraling. Perhaps that was the only way to deal with the massive heights that made up the city.
As she descended the stairs Silverstar tried to think of the best way to barge into somepony's house uninvited. She recalled Lyra saying that a true “vampony” couldn’t enter your house uninvited, so she could use her intrusion as evidence that she wasn't a blood sucking monster if necessary.
Silverstar wondered if they‘d be angry. Her usual way of dealing with awkward situations, but pretending there was nothing awkward going on, might not go over so well this time.
When she finally reached the next door down, Silverstar decided to listen in on the other side. Silence. Also something Silverstar wasn't afraid of.
She pushed open the door and entered a hallway, one that was massive like everything else. As she neared the end of the hallway, she began to hear the sound of voices and hoofsteps.
Silverstar crept to the edge of the hall and listened. The voices were too far away to make out the words, but she could tell that they were coming closer. The talking became louder and closer until Silverstar understand some of it. One of the first words she heard made her heart leap- “intruder”.
That answered the question as to how they felt about uninvited guests. Silverstar was thinking of how to salvage the situation when she heard an even more terrifying word- “princess”.
This couldn't actually be-
Maybe they were just talking about-!
“-It really would be best if you let us handle this, Princess Celestia,” said one of the voices.
“If this is what I think it is, then there is nothing to worry about,” said a female voice. “But it would be something I'd like to handle this personally.”
This wasn't a misunderstanding! Silverstar had broken into the lair of Celestia herself, and now the princess of the sun was coming to “handle” her personaly!
Silverstar may have had a chance if she was with Lyra, but she expected no sympathy from Celestia if she was caught breaking into the sacred hallway alone. Silverstar would undoubtedly be thrown into a dungeon, or maybe Celestia would just pounce and devour her on the spot.
Silverstar had blown the entire mission with this one move.
She may still have a chance. If she could get back outside without being seen she could just deny this had ever happened! Or something. She'd think of the rest later!
Silverstar turned and ran back down the hallway. Behind her one of the voices shouted something, then came the sound of running hooves. Silverstar got about halfway down the hallway before crashing into something.
Before her was a barrier of purple light, escape was impossible now. A white unicorn in golden armor entered the hallway behind her, and looked Silverstar over with a frown. Two of the armored pegasi Silverstar had seen outside entered the room next, followed by a fourth pony.
This last pony was neither a unicorn nor pegasus, but something else entirely, something huge, with both wings and horns. It was her.
Silverstar laid on her back, trapped in the castle of the sun princess, caught trespassing red-hoofed, staring up at the very countenance of Celestia herself. Celestia slowly trotted towards Silverstar, her guards stepping aside as she approached.
Midnight had been telling the truth when he said she wasn't made of fire, but she most certainly wasn't a normal pony either. She was big, larger than any stallion, but her build was tall and gangly, with incredibly long and thin legs, and a head too small for her body. Like her underlings, she was pure white and covered herself with excessive gold. Her mane and tail were the most bizarre part of the princess, however, an ethereal, endlessly flowing mess of colors that swirled around her.
Silverstar had not managed to get off her back by the time Celestia reached her, and now she found herself further paralyzed by the Princess's gaze. Celestia looked Silverstar over with a deep frown on her face, clearly upset. Silverstar wondered whether she could be thrown in the dungeon or killed on the spot.
“My,” said Celestia, her voice was smooth and feminine, “you're more injured than I thought.”
It was then Silverstar remembered that she was covered in bandages. She only dared to glance at them for a second before returning her gaze to Celestia; she doubted they would have their intended effect.
“Would you like to lie down somewhere more comfortable?” asked Celestia after another long pause.
Silverstar had no idea how to react to that, she half-expected Celestia to add “like the dungeon!” and have her guards drag Silverstar off while she laughed hysterically.
Celestia was smiling down at her, perhaps waiting to make her joke. After another minute of silence, Celestia's smile faltered slightly, then she spoke again.
“I believe you are Silverstar? We've been looking for you,” said Celestia. Silverstar didn't know what to say to that either. “You're friend Lyra has been very worried about you, we were beginning to think you were even worse off then you are now. Would you like me to take you back to Lyra?”
The answer to the question was obvious, at least, but Silverstar still found herself struggling to speak. She was certainly doing a good job of looking pathetic, like Midnight wanted.
“Y-yes,” she finally forced herself to say. Celestia seemed pleased with that and smiled more warmly.
“Good,” she said. “Do you think you can stand?”
Silverstar slowly rolled over and pushed herself up. Celestia nodded and told one of the guards to fetch Lyra.
“If you don't mind me asking, how exactly did you get here?” asked Celestia. “It appears something knocked the train car you were in off the tracks.”
“Yes,” said Silverstar. “There was this other thestral who did it. She chased me into the city and I only came in here to escape. I never meant to enter your lair, and I'm sorry! I'll leave immediately!”
“You don't need to apologize,” said Celestia. “I'd like for you to tell the whole story to a detective a little later, though.”
Silverstar nervously agreed to do so.
“It will take some time before Lyra returns,” Celestia said. “There's something I'd like to show you in the meantime, if you're feeling alright.”
Silverstar wasn't sure if she had the luxury to refuse. She had to admit that Celestia wasn't nearly as vicious as she had thought just a few days ago, and did seem genuinely concerned about her well-being, but Silverstar did not want to test her limits.
Silverstar agreed and Celestia told her to follow.
Celestia lead her down a few more shinning hallways, until they reached on that was much different.
There was no gold tacking or picture-windows here, only gray bricks and empty space, giving off the feeling that it saw far less use than the rest of the castle.
Stepping onto a spiraling staircase made it obvious that they were in another tower. Beyond that, Silverstar knew nothing. If Celestia wanted to harm her, then there was no reason to taker her off to the side like this, unless the princess wanted to kill Silverstar when nopony was looking, or if there was some sun-soaked alter at the top of this tower where Celestia would sacrifice Silverstar to... herself?
Silverstar wondered briefly if gods bothered to make sacrifices to themselves, only to conclude that the whole idea was silly.
Every room they passed on the way up was empty. Only when they reached the very top, just when Silverstar began to wonder if there was anything to be shown at all, did the scene change.
The floor was now covered in gold trimmed carpet, and the walls with tapestry, both the same deep blue color.
The patterns that were on the floor lead to a large door. Celestia pushed this open to reveal what appeared to be a bedroom. The tapestries, rugs and curtains around the large bed were all adorned with images of moons and stars.
On the far side of the room, atop a dresser, sat two of the most beautiful jewels Silverstar had ever seen. They were a crown and yolk, both made of some pitch-black metal that seemed to glow with darkness, the yolk bearing the same crescent moon that filled most of the room.
Hanging next to the jewelry was an ancient painting, faded to the point it was hard to make out. As she studied the painting, she began to realize that it was of a pony, one she recognized very well.
“Princess Luna?” she whispered.
“Yes,” said Celestia. “This is the bedroom of my dear sister Luna.”
Silverstar immediately saw the flaw in Celestia's claim. “Princess Luna's castle is in the Everfree forest.”
“It is true that we used to live in the castle you're referring to,” said Celestia, “and that this castle was built after I banished Luna to the moon. Our old castle was abandoned long ago, however. I've kept this room, exactly like her old room. I saved as many of her old possessions as I could, and made exact replicas of those that could not survive the ages. You can no longer see me in it, but that painting was the last one made of us together. I regret losing this more than any of her other possessions”
Celestia gave the portrait a long, wistful look. When she finished, she turned back to Silverstar with a sad smile and watery eyes.
“Would it surprise you if I told you that I long for my sister's return as you do?” Celestia asked her. “That I miss her just as much as you?”
It would, considering Celestia was the one who banished Princess Luna to the moon in the first place. It was Celestia's jealousy of her sister that started everything. Celestia deserved whatever pain and regret she felt, for it would only ever be a fraction of the pain that she had caused Princess Luna and her children. She had no right to miss Princess Luna!
Of course, Silverstar didn't say any of that. She needed the help of Equestrian, and didn't dare risk insulting their leader so flippantly.
“That's... That's nice,” said Silverstar.
“You don't need to worry about insulting me,” said Celestia, a comment that made Silverstar briefly wonder if she could read her mind. “What help I give your clan has nothing to do with my opinion of you. Besides, I understand why you would hate me. The damage my sister and I caused you is unforgivable. I intend to undo as much of it as I can, but I won't ask you to forgive either of us.”
Silverstar might have appreciated the sentiment more were it not for the part about Princess Luna. Princess Luna had never done anything wrong, especially not to the thestrals; in fact, it was she who blessed them with their beautiful forms and powers over dreams and darkness.
Celestia seemed to notice this thought as well and asked her to speak her mind.
“Well, what would Princess Luna have to be sorry about?” asked Silverstar.
“I am conflicted about this,” said Celestia. “You already have enough stress to deal with right now, but you also have the right to know the truth. I know that you share my sister's ability to enter dreams and search through the memories of a sleeping mind. If you wish to know the answer to that question, then come into my dreams when you are ready. I will show you my memories of those days.”
Before Silverstar could answer, Celestia stated that Lyra should be in the castle by now and lead Silverstar back out of the tower.
Eventually, they reached Celestia's throne room, a wide, open space that was as gold and white as the rest of the castle. There were several ponies waiting in the room, among them Lyra and Midnight.
Lyra's reaction was swift and predictable- she charged at Silverstar and hugged her tightly.
“Oh thank Celestia! I was so worried about you,” said Lyra. “At first I thought you had spontaneously combusted because of all the juice I gave you, and that the fire from that was so hot it threw the train off the tracks, but then I remembered that that didn't make any sense at all.”
“I'd like for you to tell me exactly what did happen,” said a pony Silverstar had never seen before. She was informed that this was the “detective”. The detective wasn't wearing armor as she had thought he would be, but instead a brown coat and hat.
Silverstar told everypony everything that had happened with Whisper. The detective was inquisitive, and asked her for many details. After some time, she managed to finish the story.
“Well if this Whisper character is the only other... one of you in the city then she shouldn't be hard to find,” said the detective. “We'll begin searching for her immediately. If anything comes up, I'll let you know.”
The detective tipped their hat at Silverstar and left.
Lyra took the news well. “This is so great! I can't believe there's another thestral here!”
“One that wants to murder me, yes,” said Silverstar.
“Oh. Oh, right,” said Lyra, her smile deflated. “That probably is a bad thing.”
“And she's after me as well you said?” asked Midnight.
“Yes. She said we have two days to get out of Canterlot or we're dead.”
“I think it would be best if you all stayed in the castle for the time being,” said Celestia. “You should be safe here.”
“I was hoping to get back to my mansion,” said Lyra, “but I guess if there's going to be assassins running all over the place, then we'd be safer here.”
“I'll arrange you'll usual guest room, Lady Lyra,” said Celestia. “For now I have other business to attend to. I'll speak with the three of you again later.”
They were lead out of the throne room, but after that, they no longer needed an escort, Lyra seemed familiar enough with the castle to show them to their room herself.
“You'll like the room we're getting,” said Lyra. “It's not as nice as the one I was going to give you, but...”
Lyra growled. “I can't believe that psycho is actually threatening to kill you two! Here we are trying to save her race and she's gotta do this to us as if we don't have enough problems to deal with already!”
“Actually this may not be such a bad turn of events,” said Midnight.
“You heard the part about her wanting to kill us, right?” asked Silverstar.
“Yes,” said Midnight, “but I also heard your description of her. The colors you described don't match those of a pony from the northern or eastern clans.”
“And if the north is white and the east is gray,” Lyra picked up the train of thought, “then that means fur color gets darker the further south you get, and this Whisper character must be from the southern clans!”
“I'm not too crazy about your logic,” said Midnight, “but if the western clans really did die off, then I think that must be the case.”
“That's nice I guess, but it doesn't change the part about the killing,” said Silverstar.
“But it does make her a valuable source of information,” said Midnight. “If we capture her, we could use her to find the location of some of the remaining clans. She could also tell us about their culture and problems, which would make it easier to convince them to move to your land when the time comes.”
Midnight became quite after that, occasionally stopping to rub his chin. He seemed more and more like a schemer as time went by.
“By the way, Midnight,” Silverstar interrupted his thoughts. “Did Celestia tell you anything weird about her history with Princess Luna?”
“You could say that,” said Midnight. “Her story is very different from the one recorded by our ancestors.”
“Yeah, Celestia told us the whole story about Nightmare Moon, and how the thestrals were made, and the moonflowers and stuff,” said Lyra. “It was all very dramatic.”
“Why didn't you tell me about this?” asked Silverstar.
“If I had gone to your clan with a history story that was less favorably of Luna, what do you think you're reaction would have been?” asked Midnight.
“We would have run you out of our caves,” said Silverstar. She frowned because she knew it was true.
“Exactly,” said Midnight. “It would likely be better for you to hear Celestia's version of the story from Celestia herself.”
Silverstar conceded that he might be correct. It wasn't much longer after that before they were in the guest room. Silverstar didn't take much stock of the room. It had a bed. That was all she cared about. The stress was getting to her once again, her body felt so heavy.
Lyra tried to ask her about her opinion of Celestia, but quickly realized how tired Silverstar was.
“You look so stressed,” said Lyra. “Why don't you take tomorrow off? I'm sure Midnight and me will be able to do without you till you're better.”
That sounded tempting. Silverstar needed rest, and her new companions seemed capable enough, but she still didn't feel right with doing nothing, even for a day. Fortunately, there was something useful she could do in her sleep.
_________________________________________
Silverstar slept for the rest of the day, and into the next night. It was only after sunset that she bothered to enter the dreamscape, knowing Celestia wouldn't be asleep until then.
One could tell the race of a dreamer by the color of their light. A thestral's dream was always silver, which painted the dreamscape near Silverstar's home as a sea of silver lights in the darkness. The dreamscape in Canterlot was filled with far more colors. Three colors made up the majority of the light- those of earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns, but there were a surprising number of other colors as well.
Through the rainbow of lights, Silverstar looked for two things- a silver light, one that may belong to Whisper, or one that was unique.
The latter was the best she could do in her search for Celestia's sleeping mind. Silverstar had forgotten to ask how, exactly, she was supposed to find Celestia here, but Celestia was the only alicorn goddess in the city, so she should have her own unique color.
Looking through the area that should be the castle, Silverstar found a light that shown a bright, golden yellow. Silverstar had never seen a dream this color before, and there were no other like it, it was as good enough guess.
Silverstar didn't dare try to spy on Celestia when she was unconscious, and went straight to awakening the conscious mind of the dreamer. Thankfully, it was indeed the mind of Celestia.
“Ah, I see you made up your mind quickly,” said the image of Celestia. “You are certain that you wish to see these memories, though? I will warn you once more that they are not what you believe, and that you won't like the truth I present to you.”
Silverstar confirmed that she wanted to see the memories. She was still uncertain if Celestia would show her the truth, while she had never heard of a pony being able to fake their own memories, she wasn't going to assume that a goddess, like Celestia, couldn't do it. However, she also recalled what Nightshade had said to her what felt like years ago, that even lies could teach you something. It would be worth seeing either way.
The dreamscape moved. A single flower blossomed between Celestia and Silverstar, giving off a faint, blue glow.
“Do you know what this is?” asked Celestia.
“Of course,” Silverstar answered. “It’s a moonflower.”
Celestia nodded. “And do you know where these flowers originally came from?”
“Our princess made them for us,” said Silverstar. “They give off just enough light for a thestral to see in, but not enough to be of use to the less- er, the other races. We use them to light our homes, and I use them in my potions. They are very beautiful as well, like all the species Princess Luna created.”
Silverstar smiled. She knew a lot about moonflowers.
“Yes, they are very beautiful,” said Celestia. “But I must correct you on one thing- the moonflowers were created before thestrals. My sister created many new species by altering existing ones. The moonflowers were the first.”
The moonflower vanished and the memories changed. The scene that appeared was one of a garden, atop a castle, at sunset. All around them were hundred of gray, wilted buds. They might not look it, but Silverstar easily recognized them as moonflowers.
Next, figures began to emerge. The first was that of Celestia and next to her appeared an elderly unicorn wearing a cape and hat, both adorned with stars. Finally, on the other end of the garden, appeared the image of Princess Luna herself.
Princess Luna appeared much as she did in the statues that the Crescent clan had made of her, but this vision of her was far clearer than any Silverstar had seen before, and it was amazingly beautiful.
She had both a horn and wing, both far larger and more powerful looking than a pegasi or unicorn would have. She was larger than a normal pony, with a tall, slender build. Her mane and tail were such that they made it appear as if the night sky itself was ebbing and flowing gracefully behind her. She wore the same black jewels Silverstar had seen the day before, and they served to accent her amazing form wonderfully.
Silverstar couldn't help but smile at the image. She felt the urge to bow before Princess Luna, but quickly remembered that it was a mere memory. If only this Luna weren't a dream, then Silverstar's nightmare would be over.
“I'm not sure I'd call killing all of the flowers 'amazing',” said the elderly unicorn, “especially when you consider that you've been working on this nonstop for weeks.”
His tone wasn't mocking or stern, but joking, as if he were very familiar with Princess Luna. He also didn't seem to know much about moonflowers.
“Yes, most comical,” said Princess Luna. “But you have yet to see the fruits of our labor. There was a reason we asked Celestia to hold on setting the sun. If you would.”
Princess Luna nodded to Celestia. Celestia's horn glowed, and the sun began to set. Nothing happened until the very last light of the sun vanished, and then the moonflowers came to life. All at once, they blossomed and filled the garden with their faint, blue light. Princess Luna turned to the other two with an excited grin.
“These flowers bloom only in the dark,” said Luna. “Is it not 'amazing' as we have said?”
“I must admit that turning the roses into these is a bit more impressive than simply killing them,” said the elderly pony.
“They are very beautiful, sister,” said Celestia. “Thank you for showing them to us.”
“Though I am a bit concerned,” said the unicorn, “You've been so isolated lately, and you constantly complain how your subjects do not appreciate your work. These flowers that bloom only at night- they don't have anything to do with that, do they?”
“I think it is a great thing,” said Celestia. “I haven't seen you this happy in weeks. You know how lonely Luna has felt lately, I think this botany will be therapeutic for her.”
“Yes, think of the therapy,” said Princess Luna. “These flowers grant us such happiness! Though if they make ponies appreciate the night more, then I would consider that a second victory.”
“You don't need flowers for that, Princess,” said the elderly pony. “What you need is to stop locking yourself in your room all day. The reason your subjects don't acknowledge you is because they never see you anymore.”
“He does have a point, Luna,” said Celestia. “If you want I could-”
“We do not need your help,” Princess Luna shot. “I can take care of this myself.”
“I hope you are right,” said Celestia, just before the memory faded out.
“I wanted to believe that Starswirl, the other pony in that memory, was reading too much into things at the time,” said Celestia. “I should have seen the same warning signs that he did, but at the time all I saw was Luna's happiness. She continued to make more flowers and other plants like this, and they made her so happy. I saw no harm in it.”
“I have a question,” said Silverstar. “You remember Princess Luna as being lonely and unappreciated, but that couldn't have been true. Before you banished her, she was worshiped by everypony.”
“I'm afraid you're wrong about that,” said Celestia. “My sister and I were never worshiped as goddesses, at least not until your kind deified Luna.”
“But my ancestors wrote that all once worshiped Princess Luna and Nightmare Moon as we do,” said Silverstar. “Are you saying that they were lying?”
“I'll understand if you don't believe me, but that is how I remember things,” said Celestia. “I have a question for you, now. Do you know how my sister created the moonflowers? How she created the first thestrals?”
Silverstar didn't know. When Princess Luna bestowed her blessing on a pony, they became a thestral. That was the most she knew about the actual creation of her race.
“Princess Luna is a goddess. She can do whatever she wants,” said Silverstar, not wanting to admit her own ignorance. “It was goddess magic.”
“I suppose if you define a god as merely a pony who is immortal or has some control over nature, then you could call us goddesses, but know that neither of us are all-powerful,” said Celestia. “I have personally seen Luna transform a pony into a thestral. If you want, I could show you that memory.”
Silverstar was beginning to think that Celestia may be trying to trick her, but she still wanted to see more. Silverstar nodded at Celestia, and Celestia nodded back.
“I think it would be unkind to my sister to skip from that last scene to your ancestors' creations,” said Celestia. “I would like to show you another memory between those two points first, so you might why Luna did what she did.”
That was a curious thing to say. Silverstar had been expecting Celestia to paint Princess Luna in the most negative light and herself in the most glorious. It would have made more sense for Celestia to skip straight to the part where Princess Luna committed whatever crime she was supposedly guilty of.
“Starswirl died a few months after that last event,” said Celestia. “He was the last mortal friend Luna had kept contact with, and she did not take his passing well. She stayed locked in her room for days on end, only opening the door to take the meals that were brought to her. As she began shirking her duties, public opinion of her began to wane even further. I tried many times to reach out to her, but it was never enough. The next time I saw my sister face to face she was a very different pony.”
A new memory appeared, one of a throne room. Unlike the one in Canterlot, however, this room had two thrones in it, one clearly meant for Celestia and another for Princess Luna.
In this memory, only Celestia's throne was occupied. Before her stood a single pony in armor, Celestia regarded him with a very grim look.
“We've taken to calling them 'owlbears',” said the guard. “It's exactly what the name makes you think. Like all the other new monsters, it is violent during the day and peaceful at night. We rounded up as many as we could before daybreak, but we don't know how many more are out there.”
The guard hesitated or a moment, then addressed Celestia again.
“Princess, if I may. There are rumors that-”
“I am aware of the rumors,” said Celestia, “and I intend to look into them immediately. You are dismissed.”
Silverstar didn't have to watch Celestia walking to Princess Luna's room, the scene simply morphed into Luna's tower, just outside her room.
“I have nothing to say to you!” came Luna's voice from behind the door.
“I know you're having a hard time, Luna,” said Celestia, “but if you have any connection to the appearance of these monsters, I need to know.”
The door opened and Princess Luna peeked her head out to look Celestia over with a stern look. Silverstar had seen Princess Luna many times in paintings and statues, but the princess had always been portrayed as regal, happy and loving. Even though she knew it was just a memory, seeing Princess Luna with such a serious and angry frown made Silverstar very uncomfortable for some reason. She lowered her head and shrunk back.
“And what if I do?” Luna growled. “What if I created these 'monsters' like everypony thinks?”
“What are you saying Luna? Did you really do this?”
“My ability to alter the forms of living things has increased greatly,” said Luna proudly. “I can perfect the forms of animals as well as plants now. Think of all the good that I will be able to do once I've fully developed this art. Far more than you, surely!”
“And what good do you think unleashing such dangerous creatures into the wild will do?” asked Celestia. “These 'owlbears' alone have injured dozens already!”
“Oh? Do you not like it when ponies have cause to fear the day?” asked Luna. “Perhaps you should get over it, move on with your life, find ponies who have not been mauled by bears!”
“I'm willing to overlook this because I care about you and I know you've been going through hard times,” said Celestia, “but I forbid you from doing anything of this sort again!”
“Forbid me?” Luna scoffed. “You have no right to forbid me from anything! We are supposed to be equals! Though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you forgot that, everypony else has!”
“Luna-”
“No matter how hard I work or what I do there will never be any appreciation! You will always-”
“Be silent!” said Celestia. “You're being completely irrational! IF you want me to treat you as an equal then you shouldn't so selfishly! You will do what I say and stop this foolishness at once. I'm leaving you with a chaperon from now on, one who will ensure you do not carry out any more of these atrocities. Be glad I'm willing to leave it at that.”
Luna looked at Celestia with a stunned gaze, then one of utter loathing. “They were right about you,” she muttered.
“'They'?”
“Never mind. I will do as you say,” said Luna.
“You'll thank me for this one day, Luna.”
The memory ended there. Unlike the last time, Silverstar was a bit happy to see Luna vanish. Seeing her angry had a strange effect on her, it left her trembling. Celestia seemed to notice this as well. She looked disheartened by it.
“Would you like to continue this on another night?”
“No, I'm fine.”
“Very well,” said Celestia. “Tell me, did you notice anything strange about Luna in that last memory?”
“Yes! Princess Luna would never create horrible monsters and unleash them on the public like that!”
“Yes. I don't think she would either.”
That comment was enough to stun Silverstar. “What? But you just showed me her doing that. Are you admitting that you're lying?”
“No, that was exactly what happened,” said Celestia. “However, Luna was not acting entirely on her own accord. I did not notice it at that time either, it was a long time before I knew what had actually happened. I believe you will be able to guess the truth as soon as I show you the next memory.”
The scene was now the outside of a city. Rows or armored ponies were assembled outside the walls. From inside the walls came the blazing glow of fire, and occasionally a flying figure whirling by. There was a fight going on inside the wall.
Celestia trotted next to a mare more ornately armed than the other soldiers were.
“I know we couldn't trust your sister! We should have stopped it before it came to this,” said the mare.
“I will deal with Luna myself, general,” said Celestia. “How is the quarantine of the city going?”
“Badly! Many of these things have already gotten out, and it won't be long until there are enough of them to break through our lines,” said the general. “We've captured several, however. Here.”
The general threw open the entrance to a tent. Behind it was a thestral in chains, hissing and screaming furiously as it tried to free itself. What made it unique, however, was the purple and black mist that constantly swirled around its hooves and wings. Though she had never seen a thestral in this state before, Silverstar knew exactly what the mist was.
“That pony is covered in the nightmare forces,” said Silverstar. “I've never seen so much of it before. Wait, are you saying Princess Luna used the nightmare forces to create us?”
“I'm afraid so,” said Celestia, “though it took me centuries longer to figure that out than you did. At the time, all I knew was that Luna had used some sort of dark magic to twist the minds and bodies of my ponies. The first thestrals were vicious creatures that would attack anything that was not their own kind on sight. Even worse, the nightmare forces that surrounded them could easily bleed out onto other ponies, transforming them as well. I'm not sure how many Luna personally transformed, but by the end of that day there were thousands of thestrals.”
“But we aren't like that,” Silverstar protested. “We're not vicious monsters and we don't turn other ponies into thestrals!”
“I believe that is because you are not consumed by the nightmare forces like your most distant ancestors were,” said Celestia.
That made some sense. It was true that if the nightmare forces built up too greatly, they could make you act violently. Maybe if it got intense enough it could have such extreme effects.
The scene changed again, back to the throne room of Celestia and Luna. Luna stood near the back, next to the throne room. At the entrance were Celestia and her general, both visibly wounded.
“You'll pay for this, Luna! I always hated you! I've been waiting for an excuse to do this for years,” shouted the general.
The general charged at Princess Luna, her horn glowing brightly. Before she could unleash whatever spell she had intended to use, Princess Luna released a wave of the nightmare forces that quickly wrapped around the general, until she was vanished in a sphere of darkness. The black orb tightened, then exploded outward and vanished.
The general lay on the floor, her colors were changed, her horn gone, replaced by a pair of bat wings. She had become a thestral, surrounded by the same purple mist as the one Silverstar had seen earlier.
Princess Luna glanced down at the new thestral and laughed. “Now you belong to me,” she said.
The general seemed ecstatic to hear this, and rushed to Princess Luna's side to nuzzle her leg.
“Thank you, Princess!” she exclaimed. “I love you so much!”
The memory of Celestia looked at this with utter horror. Silverstar couldn't help but share the feeling. To see a mare's behavior changed so quickly and so radically, just to know that such a thing could happen, was terrifying.
“Silence our sister,” Princess Luna commanded her convert. “We are tired of hearing her voice.”
“Gladly, Princess,” the general said with such glee.
The general hissed at Celestia and charged at her with the same ferocity she had shown towards Princess Luna a second ago. Celestia blasted her to the ground with a burst of light, knocking her out cold.
“I promise I'll save you,” Celestia said to the unconscious mare before lifting her up and moving her out of the room. “How could you do this, Luna?”
“Did you think I would sit idly by as they all basked in your precious light?” Luna called. “There can only be one princess in Equestria, and that princess shall be me!”
Luna smashed the podium in front of her with her hooves, behind her the wall crumble to reveal the sun, which Luna quickly eclipsed with her moon. She called the nightmare forces to her. Luna flew into the air as the darkness swirled around her in a ball until Princess Luna had vanished completely. Soon the darkness cleared, however, and Princess Luna emerged from the darkness as Nightmare Moon.
The memory ended there.
“So what? You want me to believe that Princess Luna is some sort of monster?” asked Silverstar. “That the only reason we care about her is because we're under her mind control?”
“That isn't it at all,” said Celestia. “I believe Luna was just as much a victim as those thestrals you saw, for she was consumed by the same darkness as them. The nightmare forces have some level of consciousness. It may have been them, feeding off and increasing her loneliness, that urged her down this path, slowly gaining sway over her mind until they could take over completely and transform her into Nightmare Moon. Or at least, I hope that is the case.”
That was more believable than the alternative, at least. The amount of nightmare forces that had surrounded Princess Luna near the end of that vision were immense, more than Silverstar would have thought existed in the entire world, perhaps even enough to drive even a goddess mad.
“I used the elements of harmony to banish my sister to the moon in hopes of stopping her, but that was a mistake,” Celestia continued. “Had I known about the nightmare forces, I could have simply destroyed them, I could have saved my sister instead of causing her more harm. Now, because I used the elements of harmony against my sister, they will no longer obey me. I no longer have the power to rescue her.”
“I could have saved your ancestors from their fate as well, but with both Luna and the elements of harmony gone, there was no way for me to dispel the dark magic that was controlling them, though I did try for many years. They were left in an uncontrollably violent state and appeared to have almost no memory of their old lives. If left to their own accord they wouldn't have stopped until they had killed or transformed everypony. I believed that I had no other choice but to drive them out into the Everfree forest, and to set up watched to keep them there. I know little of your history after that point.”
Silverstar thought the story over in her mind, hoping for some small detail that would reveal it was all a lie. She found nothing.
“I still can't believe you,” said Silverstar, “If you were right, that means we aren't...”
Celestia was able to notice Silverstar's growing saddens and spoke quickly to stop it.
“Before you leave, let me tell you one more thing,” said Celestia. “My sister did place you all under mind control, but it was also her who freed you from it.”
Silverstar looked at Celestia, confused.
“She gave you the ability to see into dreams,” Celestia explained, “so that you could see the nightmare forces building inside you. She gave you the power to destroy dark magic like the nightmare forces, even making your bodies destabilize such magic passively. If she merely wished to enslave you, she would not have given you the ability to free yourselves so easily. Some part of Luna's true self must have done this, and that is why you are not like the thestrals you saw in my memories.”
Silverstar had been taught that Nightmare Moon and Princess Luna were the same pony- that Nightmare Moon brought justice and Luna brought peace. Celestia would have her believe that Nightmare Moon was the evil half and Princess Luna was the good. Maybe... maybe that was possible.
“I need to think about this,” said Silverstar.
“I understand,” said Celestia. “I know this will weigh heavily on you, but know that this was not my intention. If there is anything else you wish to know, you are welcome to return to my dreams.”
Silverstar thanked Celestia and departed back to her own mind. She searched it for the nightmare forces and found that they had grown surprisingly strong in just a week, to the highest they had been in Silverstar's own mind. She destroyed them immediately.
Silverstar remembered how good she had felt when she saw Princess Luna happy and how seeing Luna angry had made her sick. She had been too afraid to ask the question, but wondered if the nightmare forces were what compelled her to feel that way.
She made a vow to destroy the nightmare forces every day instead of every week from now on. After another moment of reflection, she made a second vow- that she would no longer pray to Nightmare Moon, but to only Luna alone.
It was either breakfast or dinner, depending on whom you asked. Silverstar and Lyra had both just woken up, but the ponies across from her were near the need of their day.
One of the ponies Silverstar was meeting with was a unicorn named Shinning Armor. According to Lyra he was an important military pony, one of the most important Silverstar was going to meet. His frame was large and imposing, but his demeanor was far from intimidating.
The only other pony present was a noble named Magenta; she was involved with a number of charities including the one that was raising supplies for the northern clans. She was also fatter than any pony Silverstar had ever seen before.
Lyra was there as well, but she seemed more concerned with stabbing the things on her plate with her fork than the actual meeting.
“Oh you poor thing,” said Magenta, with more concern than could have been real. “Just look at you! Here, have a seat.”
The bandages Silverstar wore were finally paying off. Magenta practically pushed Silverstar into her seat.
“When I heard about the terrible things that happened to you, my heart just sank,” said Magenta, her hoof lifted to her forehead for dramatic effect. “It has always been my intention to spread civility to the world, and here you are even worse off then those poor, uneducated earth ponies. Isn’t it all just so horrible?”
Midnight had told Silverstar several important things to mention. Silverstar took a moment to recall them all before answering.
“Yes,” said Silverstar. “Onyx is a changeling who uses poison gas to take foals as slaves and hostages, and he is also causing starvation and the destruction of our culture and he‘s been raiding you for years and tried to burry me alive. And um, oh, I have this big cut on my leg.”
After finishing, Silverstar gave a large smile, just as Midnight had told her. The stunned look on everypony’s face made her realize smiling just then was probably a mistake.
“Yes, well. I would like to formally express Equestria‘s disgust for, uh… all that,” said Shinning. “Onyx is our enemy as well, and I appreciate the information you’ve given to us about him. You say you can tell us exactly where he‘s hiding?”
“Yes,” said Silverstar. “I can take you to him right now if you want.”
If it was seriously going to be this easy…
“I'm afraid it's not that easy,” said Shinning. “Assaulting them isn't going to work.”
That statement was complete nonsense. After everything Silverstar had seen here, she refused to believe there was anything Equestria couldn't do.
“But there are millions of you! And you have magic and trains and who knows what else! How can you not be able to defeat a few thousand dogs?”
“We could beat them in a straight up battle,” said Shinning Armor. “But we won't get that chance. They're going to resort to guerrilla tactics. Even just a few diamond dogs scattered about hundreds of miles of caves armed with poison gas would wreak havoc on any army no matter how large it was. Then there’s the matter of the hostages. We simply have no way to rescue them all simultaneously, and if we make the wrong move they could all wind up dead.”
“So even you can't do anything?”
“I didn't say that. There are other ways of dealing with this than brute force. Diamond dogs aren't renowned for their sense of loyalty. If they decide that helping the changelings isn't in their best interest. A combination of bribing the key chieftains and displaying our force should be enough to get many of them to turn tail, and once their forces start falling we'll see the effect snowball.”
“Once a significant portion of their forces have fled, we may be able to get the changelings to surrender and turn over the hostages in exchange for being tried in Equestria rather then turning them over to Chrysalis.”
“And don’t think I’ll be sitting by idly,” said Magenta. “I intend to help set up a refugee camp for all those poor thestrals
Silverstar thanked the both of them. She had been hoping that they would simply crush Onyx into the dust, but this was better than nothing.
Most of the meal was dominated by Magenta bragging about all the charity work she did for earth ponies. Some of the things she said seemed to make Shinning Armor uncomfortable. When she mentioned her desire to buy showers for all the earth ponies, Shinning Armor asked her to leave. Breakfast was over by then anyway.
“Before you go, I want to talk to you about the assassin,” said Shinning. “We haven't found her yet. We were able to trace her path from the train to the tower where you fought her, but before and after that. It seems like she appeared out of nowhere and then vanished again. The detective isn't ready to rule out the possibilities that she has some sort of magical teleportation or stealth ability. I don't want to take any chances, though, so I'm going to have to insist that you all remain in our quarters for the next 24 hours.”
“I'm assigning you both body guards. As I said, we don't know exactly what this mare is capable of. I have to ask that you stay close to them until further notice.”
So once again, Silverstar waited for an imminent attack.
The guards assigned to Silverstar and Lyra looked like female versions off all the other guards Silverstar had seen. There were two to three of them at any given time, usually one unicorn and two pegasi at any given times. The guards were very serious and completely silent, and on top of that cycled out every few hours; soon they became more like a part of the scenery than anything else.
The guards never once went out of eyeshot, and neither did Lyra for that matter. Lyra didn’t seem to be taking the threat very seriously, or maybe she was just trying to lighten the mood. She was constantly trying to keep the subject off the attack, and when Whisper did come up she stated how dumb Whisper would have to be to try and attack the castle herself, that she doubted there even would be an attack.
Silverstar wanted to believe what Lyra was saying, but it wasn't long ago that she had thought the Crescent clan was unbeatable, Luna was perfect, or that Equestria could do anything. After seeing the Crescent clan lose to Onyx, the vision of Luna’s past, and seeing Equestria unable to fight him, Silverstar just couldn’t have that level of confidence in something. She wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight.
The hours passed on like that until the sun finally rose. Whisper's two days were up. They remained on guard for several hours afterwards, until late in the afternoon.
The next few days were much the same. Silverstar would meet with a noble or two during meals and spend the rest of the night in her room. Everypony she met was the same- sympathetic, though somewhat condescending. They all wanted to help, but none of them actually could.
Silverstar had to wonder if she was actually accomplishing anything. Shinning Armor and all the nobles she had met were already on their side. They were already going to do what they could. Was coming here a waste? Would she have been able to do more good if she had stayed underground?
Lyra didn’t think so.
“To be honest I've only really been introducing you to the more pro-thestral nobles,” said Lyra. “A lot of them aren't going to be so nice to you.”
“And why aren’t I talking to them?” asked Silverstar.
“Midnight says that it’s better for you to meet with the friendly ones first,” said Lyra. “He had a whole list of reasons for us to do it like that. He said there are a few ponies in the military who won’t want to take action, and a few nobles who will protest once we do. It’ll still be a while before we’ve won over here.”
“How long are we allowed to stay in the castle anyway?” asked Silverstar. “Is Celestia really concerned enough to let us
“Are you kidding?” Lyra asked. “This castle is so huge they’ll hardly even notice we’re here. The castle usually has dozens of guests staying here at any time, and I’m paying for all our food, so I doubt they’ll care much.”
“Hey,” Lyra said, jumping out of bed. She had that look she wore when she had a bad idea. “You haven’t really been outside this room. Why don't I show you some of the cooler places here?”
Silverstar eventually agreed to go. It would be interesting to see what Lyra thought was cool, at any rate.
By this point, they had decided that Whisper wasn't going to attack them while they were staying in the castle, so security was toned down. They were no longer constantly guarded. Silverstar actually preferred it this way, having guards had only put her more on edge. Another good plus was that she no longer had to wear any bandages.
As usual most ponies were asleep by the time they went out, meaning the castle wasn't very crowded. The number of staircases and hallways they had to move through gave Silverstar some appreciation of how large the castle was.
Lyra took Silverstar to the castle's massive Library. The Starlight clan had about twenty books, the Crescent clan had thousands, but this library had some enormous number that was far beyond that. Bookshelves that reached up to the ceiling, balconies filled with books, and entire rooms filled with books on a single subject all filled the chambers of the library.
Lyra only seemed interested in the darkest, mustiest corner of the library, and dragged Silverstar there straight away to show her ancient scrolls of unknown origins that chronicled things that probably never happened, and taught sciences and truths that had been proven wrong long ago.
They all seemed so fragile, like they would turn to dust with the slightest touch, that Silverstar felt nervous just holding them.
Silverstar asked Lyra why she bothered reading scrolls that she knew were wrong.
“Just because they’re wrong doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from them,” said Lyra. “My dad always used to say that you can find the truth from atop a mountain of lies, just not by looking down.”
Lyra showed her the halls where Equestrian history was chronicled in glass portraits that doubled as windows. Here, Lyra skipped over the “boring” parts of their history to show her only the darkest moments, and those most shrouded in mystery.
“They never actually found the necromancer, though. He could still be out there, but probably isn‘t,” said Lyra, pointing to the last stained glass window in the hall. “The only reason they made this into a glass window is that the pony who made all the ones in this hall was really old at the time and he didn't think he had enough time to wait for something more important to happen.”
Lyra took her to what had to be the most rundown part of the castle. Lyra seemed to like it, even though it was nothing but rust and rubble. Lyra tried to explain the appeal, but didn’t come up with any coherent words. She was a bit disheartened that Silverstar didn’t find this place impressive, and vowed to take her to the best part of the castle next.
They went down several flights of stairs until they got to what had to be the basement. Lyra explained to her that the chambers were where the low priority vaults were.
“If we took a right back there we'd be in the other vaults, where they store the gold, magic stuff, things of historical significance and stuff like that,” said Lyra. “Crazy security over there. This side they don't really care about. There's usually nopony here.”
The entrance to these chambers was guarded, like many of the places they had entered previously. As before, these guards stepped aside when they saw Lyra. Lyra didn't even need to say anything to them to gain entrance.
“You seem like a very respected Pony,” Silverstar commented.
“The only thing the ponies here respect is my money,” said Lyra, rolling her eyes. “They only ever talk to me because they want me to invest in their business or give to some charity or something. I do more for charity than any of them, mind you. I mean, this is charity, isn't?”
Silverstar was a bit surprised at how fast she had started sulking.
“And then they have the nerve to lecture me,” said Lyra. “They don‘t understand anything about me, and they only care about money, so what right to they have to tell me how to live? At least all the thestrals I‘ve met aren‘t like that at all.”
Silverstar didn't have the heart to point out that she and Midnight were also following Lyra around because of her money and power.
“I mean sure, those edible boots saved my life, but-” Lyra stopped herself mid-sentence and shook her head until she perked up again. “Now I’m rambling. You have it way worse then I do, so I got no right to complain to you.”
Many of vaults they passed were locked, but there a few that you were allowed to enter and look through without much of a hassle. Eventually they reached one that didn’t even have a door.
“I come to this one all the time,” Lyra explained. “I have no idea why they don't lock it up. The stuff in here is really important.”
Silverstar wasn't too surprised by what was inside the vault, given what she knew about Lyra. It was a repository of skulls, fangs, claws, and entire stuffed monsters.
“Those are actually just rubber models,” said Lyra. “This vault contains samples from the most dangerous monsters ponies have ever encountered. They keep these here to study for any future encounters with them. Sadly, most of these guys are extinct. I still like coming here anyway. You know, for science.”
There was one furry, bipedal creature that Silverstar recognized immediately.
“Isn't that one of those Yeti things you've been looking for?” Silverstar asked.
“No,” said Lyra. “That's a sasquatch. Completely different. Count the fingers.”
Silverstar counted four fingers on each hand. She had no idea what that meant.
Lyra went on to lecture Silverstar about several of the creatures. Her knowledge of the ones that were extinct was simply amazing. The ones that were merely endangered, or possessed less horrible ways of killing you, however, she seemed completely disinterested in.
While Lyra was explaining the majesty of the bone-eating spider, Silverstar found herself drawn to the largest skull in the room. It didn't have much of a snout and only one eyehole. Its size dwarfed that of a troll's considerably.
Before she could ask about it, the skull dislodged itself from the wall and fell.
A golden light, Lyra‘s magic, wrapped around Silverstar and jerked her out of the way. The skull crashed into the spot where Silverstar had stood a moment ago and shattered, taking a good portion of the floor with it.
Silverstar landed hard on the other side of the room and fragments from the skull pelted her, but the damage was small compared to what would have happened.
Lyra surveyed the destruction.
“We didn't do that, right?” Lyra asked.
“No! I didn't even touch that thing! It must have fallen by-
Lyra's magic wrapped around Silverstar a second time and threw her across the room.
Silverstar rose to find that an arrow had hit the spot where she had just stood. To her left, standing atop a fanged skull and glaring down at her, was Whisper.
Whisper wore two crossbows at her sides, one already fired. Silverstar didn’t even have time to curse her luck before Whisper used her wing to fire her second arrow at Lyra. Lyra surrounded herself with a shield of gold light, which the arrow merely bounced off.
Lyra returned fire with a blast of magic from her horn. Whisper vanished just before the shot hit, leaving it to explode against the wall.
“Wait,” said Lyra. “Did I just kill that pony?”
Whisper reappeared behind Lyra, already with momentum behind her. She bit Lyra, digging her fangs into Lyra's shoulder, just short of her neck. Lyra tried kicked and screamed as the two rolled forward, but was unable to push Whisper off.
Silverstar charged at the two of them and kicked Whisper hard. Silverstar kicked harder the second time, and even harder the third, which finally managed to knock Whisper off Lyra. Whisper only vanished again.
“We've got to get out here!” said Silverstar. She lifted Lyra to her feet and began helping her to the door.
If nopony heard the crash from the skull, then nopony would hear them screaming either. If they wanted help, they would have to get back upstairs.
Lyra managed to shrug off her wound and soon the two were charging towards the exit. Whisper appeared in the threshold, this time armed with a spear. She couched it on her shoulder, ready to charge.
“What are you doing?!” Lyra demanded. “We're trying to help you! You should be on our side!”
“If you remain in this city any longer, you'll ruin all of Nightmare Moon's plans! I can't allow that,” said Whisper. “You have no idea how important my mission is.”
“Important enough to kill one of your own?!”
“I would kill thousands if I had to, and it would be worth it,” said Whisper. “I gave you a chance, but you didn't listen to reason.”
Before Whisper could charge or monolog any longer, Lyra grabbed the spear with her magic. The two were soon struggling for control of the spear from halfway across the room, neither gaining a clear advantage.
Silverstar took the opportunity to attack. She charged headlong at Whisper, trying to ram her unarmed side. Silverstar was just about to ram Whisper, when Whisper through her spear aside and vanished again. Silverstar charged through thin air and out of the vault, but managed to slow down before hitting any walls.
Lyra floated the spear to her side and kept it there.
“Ha!” she said. “Good thing she forgot to take this with her.”
That was fortunate. Now they were armed and the path was clear. The two move into the hall, Lyra keeping the spear levitated by her side.
Silverstar reeled when Whisper suddenly reappeared, now armed with clawed boots, and slashed at the air some distance in front of them. Realizing she had missed, Whisper vanished again.
Whisper appeared a second time, her claws already in motion just an inch from Silverstar's neck. The blow would have killed her, had Lyra not acted so quickly and caught Whisper's hoof with her magic.
As Silverstar rolled out of the way, Whisper and Lyra locked into another tug of war. Before Silverstar could try attacking, Whisper pulled her hoof out of the boot and vanished.
This was the second time Whisper had gotten rid of a weapon Lyra had a hold on. There must have been some reason she wasn't vanishing with anything held by magic.
“Try using your magic to grab Whisper herself next time!” Silverstar shouted.
“Right,” said Lyra. “You take the spear!”
Lyra tossed the spear to Silverstar, who grabbed it in her mouth.
Whisper reappeared, again a short distance from the best position. Lyra's horn and Whispers entire body glowed with a golden light. It was clear the Lyra was trying to lift her into the air, Whisper as able to remain grounded by flapping her wings, but just barely.
Silverstar swung the blunt end of her spear at Whispers head.
As expected, Whisper did not disappear this time. Unexpectedly, however, Whisper changed the direction she was pushing in. Now moving with Lyra's magic, Whisper shot into the air fast enough to evade Silverstar's blow.
Lyra was thrown off by this maneuver just enough for Whisper to regain control. Whisper pushed hard off the wall, breaking free of Lyra's hold, and slammed into Silverstar's back.
Silverstar collapsed on the ground. She felt Whisper grab onto her and the next thing she knew, she was sailing through the air towards Lyra. Unable to stop herself, she knocked Lyra to the ground, and in a moment, the two were on top of each other.
Though she couldn't move, Silverstar was able to see Whisper lift the spear back up. She also saw Lyra's magic get a feeble hold over Whisper's tail just before Whisper vanished again.
This time, however, Whisper took them with her.
Silverstar felt Lyra and herself pulled forward as everything faded to black and vanished. Silverstar couldn’t feel the ground anymore, it seemed as though she were falling through the air instead.
Even though everything was gone, Silverstar still managed to land on something. She looked at the ground to see she was standing on a glowing blue light, similar in appearance to a unicorns magic. It didn’t look solid, but it was. The blue light formed a sort of path or stream that lead off into the distance.
“Help!” Silverstar heard Lyra call out. Silverstar looked down to see Lyra falling into the endless abyss, already a speck. Without hesitation, Silverstar leapt off the trail of light and dove down after Lyra.
As she dove, Silverstar noticed several more streams of blue light passing her by. There was no ground in sight for the unicorn to hit, but Silverstar didn't want to take any chances. Silverstar caught Lyra in a swoop before long, though it was hard to tell if it was a close call or not.
Silverstar flew Lyra over to one of the nearby streams of light and put her down. Lyra thanked her and stood to look at their surroundings. There were dozens of blue streams of light all around them, all seemed to lead in the same general direction.
“So are we in outer space now or something?” Lyra asked. “Gotta admit, I didn’t see that coming.”
It was then that Silverstar realized that, in addition to the blue streams and endless darkness, there were thousands of stars surrounding them. The full moon, too, was visible. It was to the left, but it was below where the horizon should have been, making it necessary to look down to see it.
Silverstar looked over the stars, recognizing each constellation as she went. They were in the right sky, at least. It was the complete night sky that surrounded them, above was the spring sky, and below was the autumn sky. It was as if the earth and sun had disappeared, leaving only the night sky and this strange paths of light behind.
Lyra looked down at the moon and its brilliant glow.
“If that's the moon, then the earth should be right over, uh...” Lyra said as she looked over the stars that surrounded them. She didn't find the ground.
There was one constellation Silverstar had never seen before. It was off in the direction that the path of blue light led, and consisted of a few tightly packed stars. They were strange stars too, large but dim.
Silverstar squinted and studied them more closely. The light from the stars reflected off something, leaving a dark outline behind them.
“Look over there,” said Silverstar. “Am I just imagining things or are those buildings over there?”
Lyra squinted hard, and then gave up.
“I don't see anything,” said Lyra.
Silverstar had forgotten just how bad Lyra’s eyesight was in the dark.
“They’re there,” Silverstar assured her. “You just can’t see them because you have terrible eyesight.”
“Say that to me during the day,” said Lyra.
It didn’t take long for the two to agree that heading in that direction was the best idea, if only because it was their only idea.
There were plenty of stars to look at, but the scenery was so repetitive that it was difficult to tell if they were even moving at all.
Lyra gasped and grabbed onto Silverstar. This was something Silverstar was used to, but there seemed to be more urgency in it then usual.
“Did you see that?” Lyra asked. She took the liberty of turning Silverstar‘s head in the right direction. “It was one of you!”
All Silverstar saw was an empty path of blue light, and those were all over the place. Still, things seemed to appear and disappear here, so maybe there had been something there a second ago.
“You saw a thestral?” asked Silverstar. “Was it Whisper?”
“No, this one had purple eyes,” said Lyra. “It came and went really fast, but I saw the glow from its eyes. They were exactly like a thestral's other than the color.”
Purple eyes? Every thestral Silverstar had ever met had had yellow eyes. Lyra couldn't see very well in the dark, so it may have been something other than thestral.
Before Silverstar could mention this to Lyra, the purple eyes returned. Silverstar was able to see clearly that they were attached to a thestral, one who, fortunately, was not Whisper.
The newly appeared mare trotted backwards a few steps and turned to Lyra and Silverstar with more confusion than anything else.
“I'm with her,” said Lyra, pulling Silverstar even closer.
The mare continued to stare at them.
“And she's a thestral like you,” said Lyra.
More silent staring.
“So we're cool, right?” asked Lyra.
The mare let out a loud groan and muttered something to herself.
“Look, you two just wait here a minute,” she called out to them. “Don't move.”
The mare ran a short distance towards the buildings and vanished once more. Lyra turned to Silverstar.
“Do you think we should move?” she asked.
“What? Don't you want to hug her when she gets back?” Silverstar asked.
“Of course I do!” said Lyra. “But I also don't want to get stabbed up. If this is where Whisper is from then these ponies might be kind of stabby.”
She did have a point. They had clearly stumbled upon some lost thestral clan, one that may be even more fanatical about Nightmare Moon than Silverstar's own.
“Our problem is that there's nowhere to go,” said Silverstar. “I doubt we can leave unless one of them helps us.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said a voice Silverstar had never heard before. “Perhaps neither of you will be leaving without our permission.”
Silverstar turned in the direction of the voice to find a male thestral sitting on a stream of blue light some distance above them. His green eyes darted between a few key spots with great purpose, before adopting a look of dignified disinterest. Everything about him was sleek and slick, his black fur with not a hair out of line, his tall, slender frame, his elegant, grayish green hair, and again his strangely colored eyes, making not a single unwanted move.
“You,” he said, gesturing towards Lyra with a flick of his hoof. “I believe it is possible that you are Lyra Heartstrings. Am I mistaken?”
Him knowing her name didn‘t unnerve Lyra even a little, in fact she seemed elated by it. Lyra very briefly looked as though she would explode with excitement, but stopped herself and adopted an imitation of the thestral's restrained look.
“I see my reputation precedes me,” said Lyra. “Yes, I am Lady Heartstrings, the world's leading expert on thestrals.”
The stallion seemed to get some amusement out of that. If he had some witty retort, he didn't bother to say it, instead turning his attention to Silverstar. “And you are Silverstar of the Crescent clan?”
“I'm actually from the Starlight clan,” Silverstar corrected him. “But I am from the east.”
“My apologies,” he said with a short bow.
“How do you know our names?” asked Silverstar.
“Hm. Perhaps I was mistaken in thinking you came here looking for us,” said the thestral. “If you recall, you spent several weeks parading about the Hadrian Mountains loudly announcing your name as you went. Perhaps that is how we know your name. We may have been keeping an eye on you since then.”
“Hadrian Mountains?” Lyra began, but froze mid sentence. Realization began to dawn on her face. “You’re-”
“Yes,” he said. “Perhaps it was rude of me not to introduce myself. My name is Mot, of the Shadow clan.”
Lyra was trembling with excitement. It was clear she wanted to tackle Mot like all the other thestrals she had met, but Mot, who stood a few yards above them, was out of her hug range. Silverstar noted that Mot was very clever.
Meeting one of the four great thestral clans would have excited Silverstar as well. The fact that Whisper was apparently from their clan and that Silverstar had just stumbled upon what must have been a secret area meant that they might not be very friendly.
“But I searched all over the Hadrian Mountains for you,” said Lyra. “Where were you hiding? Okay, I guess you were hiding here, but what is this place? And why didn't you come out to meet me? And also, are you ninjas?”
“Is it fair to break into a pony's home and begin demanding explanations from them?” asked Mot. “My sister will speak with you of such things, but first I must insist you tell me how you got to this place.”
Lyra and Silverstar looked at each other. “We have no idea.”
“So then you did come here by accident?” asked Mot. “I suppose this wouldn't be the first time a pony has fallen into this place without meaning to, but perhaps it is too much of a coincidence that it would happen to you.”
“We didn't just fall into this place,” Silverstar explained. “We were fighting a thestral named Whisper-”
Mot waved his hoof for her to stop. “Ah! I think I understand now. Whisper tried to assassinate Lady Heartstrings, hoping to stall contact with Equestria, and during the struggle, you fell into this place. Correct?”
“Close enough,” said Silverstar. “Do you know her? Is she from the Shadow clan?”
“Whisper is a wanted criminal. She was not acting on behalf of the Shadow clan,” said Mot. “I would like to express my strongest condemnation of her action. Whisper has made similar death threats against my sister, as well as the ponies who voted for her. Ponies who resort to such tactics have little sympathy here. I will ensure that the waypoints in Canterlot are monitored, so that she will be unable to return to the city.”
Direct confirmation that he hadn't sent Whisper was a big relief. That still didn't mean the Shadow clan would be friendly, however.
“That's good,” said Lyra. “To be honest I was a bit worried you were all crazy, violent Nightmare Moon-obsessed zealots.”
“I suppose it is common to judge a group based on its most insane pony,” said Mot. “We are hardly zealots. In fact, few of us still worship Nightmare Moon or Princess Luna at all. Still, ponies like the family Whisper was from are allowed to worship Nightmare Moon or whatever goddess they choose. Religious freedom is a very important mark of civility, is it not?”
Lyra nodded eagerly, but Silverstar was a bit taken aback by that statement.
“Did you say you don't worship Luna? But Luna created us,” she protested. “How can you not-?”
Mot signaled her to stop again, with a touch of annoyance this time.
“Now is not the time to discuss theology,” said Mot. “There is something else I need to know before I take you to my sister. Were there any other ponies left behind that may have seen you vanish?”
Silverstar wondered if it would be best to lie and say there were dozens of ponies that saw what had happened and would be suspicious if they didn't come back. Lyra wasn't as sly.
“No,” said Lyra. “It was just us.”
“Excellent,” said Mot. He seemed to notice that Silverstar was less trusting. “I'd like to assure you that you have nothing to fear from us. My sister, who is the prime minister of the Shadow clan, has been planning to speak with you. You're presence here is a convenience to us.”
“And I take it I we can't leave until we've met her?”
“Yes, but it's not like what you're thinking,” said Mot. “In fact, I dare say that you may be very happy to hear what she has to say. It will be faster to travel in the other direction for a bit. If you would please move there.”
The stream of light he pointed to was a short distance to their left and a little below them. Lyra wasted no time in following the order. She fearlessly leaped off her current stream and landed on her target. Silverstar followed with more reluctance.
Soon Mot was trotting in front of them, leading them back in the direction they came from. As they walked, Lyra inched her way closer to Mot. Mot tried to avoid her, but the path wasn’t nearly wide enough for that.
“So…” Lyra began. “You live in outer space?”
“No. These stars,” Mot gestured to them, “and the moon aren’t real. They are simply illusions for the sake of decoration. Where we are is a pocket dimension.”
This made perfect sense to Lyra. At least one of them knew what a pocket dimension was.
“Or at least it is very similar. Explaining the geometry of this place would take weeks,” Mot explained. “Perhaps you’ve already noticed how strange it is. By using this place as an intermediate, we can rapidly travel through the outside world. I‘m sure Whisper used this power against you.”
Mot asked them to hold onto him. By this point, Lyra didn’t even have to move to obey that command. Once more, everything faded to black and a new scene emerged.
Silverstar now found herself in a very large, but mostly empty room. An incredibly flat and shiny floor dominated the room. There was some circular emblem painted in the middle, but Silverstar was too close to make out what it was. She noticed a large, central staircase on one side and a desk on another, but the wall to the outside was the most unusual part of the room.
The doors, and most of the wall, leading to the outside were made completely of glass. The room was too bright and the outside too dark to see what was on the other side.
They passed a number of thestrals as Mot lead them forward. They were more colorful than Silverstar was expecting. In the brief time she had to look about, Silverstar noticed purple, green, blue and yellow eyes, and four different colors of manes. One of the thestrals, whom Silverstar briefly thought was a pegasus, even had dull, green fur. Most of them seemed concerned to see Lyra, but a simple gesture from Mot was enough to send them back to their business.
Mot lead them to what looked like a closet closed off by a mesh of bars. Lyra was very impressed by the closet.
“You have an elevator?” she exclaimed. “Those are the latest thing! I’ve only seen a couple in Manehattan; I’m impressed you have one!”
“The Shadow clan is very progressive,” said Mot, opening the barred door to the closet, “We try to implement all the latest advancements of the modern world.”
Silverstar wondered what they were going to do in the closet, but had seen enough insanity to know it was best to just go along with it and see for herself what was special about this room. There was a nice view from inside it at least.
One of the walls was made of glass, and this room was dark enough to see the city outside.
It was every bit as amazing as Canterlot. It had massive towers, and multistory build, all of them black and smooth. Unlike the Equestrian cities Silverstar had seen, these building were not all placed on the ground. Instead, all of them rested on the same blue light Silverstar had stood on moments ago. Not all of them were on the same plane, either. There were buildings both far above and far below them, some resting on a long path of blue light, others floating on their own tiny island of it.
And all of the buildings here were inhabited by thestrals. Silverstar momentarily forgot her wariness and smiled at the knowledge that thestrals had built all of this. She wished she could fly up and get a better look.
As if to grant her wish, the entire room shook briefly, and then began to rise. Silverstar stared out the window, watching as the city passed before her.
Mot tried to tell Silverstar something about spinning magnets, but quickly realized it wasn't getting through and turned back to Lyra.
“I'm always telling ponies how important electricity will be in the future,” said Mot. “We could see electricity implemented through the entire industrial world on a scale even greater than what we have now in Manehattan. Imagine electric lights and heaters in every home, electric trains, telegrams replacing letters entirely and elevators replacing stairs... Though my sister disagrees with me on that last one.”
“Wow! You guys are really sophisticated.” Lyra was almost gushing over Mot by this point. “I wasn't expecting you to be like this at all. All the other thestral clans are back in the dark ages, but you're more modern than we are. You're like the coolest ponies in the world!”
Silverstar frowned. The Crescent clan was just as good as they were. Just because they didn't have electricity or-
Silverstar snapped her attention back to the window. Was she being jealous? No. That would be stupid. She was just annoyed. There were more important things to worry about besides.
“I wouldn't say we are as advanced as Equestria,” said Mot. “Our own achievements are only due to imitating yours. Believe it or not, we have the highest respect for Equestria.”
“If that's true then why are you hiding from them?” asked Silverstar.
Mot simply tilted his head and turned his eyes up, as if he was trying to remember some unimportant name.
The elevator saved him from having to answer that question when it stopped. The door of bars slid opened, revealing a thestral mare who must have been waiting for them for some time. The mare wasted no time in greeting them.
“Greetings. I am Loa, the current leader of the Shadow clan,” she said. “Perhaps I already know you, so that may save us some time.”
Even if Silverstar hadn't already known Loa was Mot's sister, she would have been able to tell. Loa looked nearly identical to Mot, a perfect female copy of him. Silverstar got the feeling they were twins.
“But let us talk in my office, over tea and chocolate,” said Loa, gesturing further down the hall.
Lifelike paintings of ponies covered the hall that they passed through. At first, they were all of thestrals, but about halfway down, she encountered one of a pegasi. She saw two more portraits of pegasi, and one of a unicorn that she recognized from Celestia's memories- Starswirl the bearded.
Loa pushed open the door to her office and lead everypony inside.
The room was cozy, though a bit too bright, with a nice thick rug. The tea and chocolate were already set at the table, Loa and Mot taking their place on the far side of the room.
Silverstar looked around the room as she moved to her seat. There were three more portraits in this room. To the left was one of Luna, to the right, and to Silverstar's surprise, was Celestia. That was something the eastern clans would never display. The Shadow clan really did have a very different worldview.
The third, and largest, painting hung in the center of the room. It was of a thestral standing heroically on a cliff, a turbulent sea and a rising new moon behind her. She looked more like a member of the Crescent clan than of the Shadow clan, wearing the same purple armor and having the charcoal fur and blue mane Silverstar had once believed all thestral's possessed.
“That,” Said Loa, gesturing towards the large paining, “is Shadow, the matriarch and namesake of our clan. I'm afraid I'll have to mention her once more tonight. But why don't we have some tea first?”
Silverstar looked down at her tea. Tea was a sort of ritual drink the ponies in Equestria drank during formal events. It was hot and bitter, and Silverstar felt she had already drank enough of it for one lifetime. She wasn't happy that the Shadow clan did the tea thing too.
Everypony else seemed to like the tea. Lyra was cheerfully sipping from her cup.
Loa put her cheek on her hoof and looked Silverstar over by tilting her head around, frowning.
“You look so very nervous,” Loa finally concluded. Loa let out a sigh and drank some more tea before continuing. “You would think you'd be happy to see your long lost cousins.”
Being called cousin eased Silverstar's worries a bit.
“I'd consider you a sister, even,” said Silverstar. “I am glad to meet more of Princess Luna's children. It's just... Well, this place is obviously supposed to be secret and-”
“And you are worried that we are going to kill you to keep you quite?” Loa finished Silverstar's question. “Ponies occasional stumble across this place, like the mother of that poor deluded child, but we always deal with them in more civilized ways than what you are thinking. When was the last time we killed somepony to keep them quite Mot?”
“It's been over two centuries since we've killed a pony for that reason,” said Mot. “We are far more civilized than that now. Our preferred method of dealing with intruders is to convince them to marry into the Shadow clan. It is something we are very good at.”
“So you're saying I have to marry you?” Lyra asked. She didn't seem the least bit upset at the idea. “I guess I'm okay with that. If I have no choice, I mean. When's the wedding?”
Mot stared at Lyra briefly, then cleared his throat and spoke.
“You misunderstand,” he said. “We are not going to make you marry me.”
“Then do I have to marry...” Lyra slowly turned her eyes to Loa. “You? Cause I'm much less okay with that.”
“Ha!” Loa threw her head back as she gave a single laugh.
Loa calmly drank some of her tea, then tilted her head sideways and looked up with her eyes at Mot.
“Tell me, Mot. How should we keep them quite?” she asked.
“I think they will have enough gratitude towards us that they will do so willingly,” said Mot. “Did we not have good news for Silverstar? I think it had something to do with the eastern clans?”
“Ah!” Loa shot her head back upright. “Yes! You like good news don't you? Ha! I suppose if you didn't it wouldn't be good news would it.”
Loa didn't seem overly eager to say what it was, because she stopped here to take a few more casual sips of tea. This gave Silverstar time to wonder what this “good news” was.
The best possible thing she could say was that Moonlight had somehow killed Onyx and restored order. It would mean Silverstar's entire journey had been pointless, but she would be elated to hear that nonetheless.
Eventually, Lyra broke the silence.
“Well. I like good news,” she said.
“Me too. We have so much in common,” said Loa. Loa unwrapped on of the chocolates and threw it in her mouth. She didn't entirely finish it before speaking again. “Needless to say, I am aware of what has happened to the Crescent clan. You have our deepest sympathy. The Shadow clan abhors acts of wanton violence.”
Silverstar had been hearing that a lot lately. Her thanks was a reflex at this point.
“Now answer me this,” said Loa, leaning forward. “Perhaps you've noticed our ability to move rapidly through the shadows, yes?”
Loa was clearing expecting a reaction from that. For a second Silverstar thought that this was the good news.
“Um, yes?” Silverstar asked.
Loa sighed and rolled her eyes.
“And is this not something that could be used to solve a certain problem the eastern clans are having?” she asked. “One that involves hostages?”
Silverstar's eyes widened as she realized what Loa meant.
“You mean-”
“Yes!” said Loa. “We could use this ability to free all the hostages taken by your invaders. If done properly, we could have the entire cave system evacuated within a few hours. They would have no time to react, and would be left without their greatest advantages.”
Mot continued for her. “Without anypony to use the poison gas on and without enough force to make any direct attacks, the invaders would have no offensive options. Their defeat would only be a matter of time at that point.”
“That's amazing!” Lyra leaped halfway onto the table before turning back to Silverstar. “Isn't that great?! Now we can save your clan and everything else will fall into place. This is it!”
Silverstar was breathless. Was this really it?
“R-really?” she asked. “And... and you're going to help us?”
“Do you think I'm playing a cruel trick on you?” asked Loa. “I am quite certain that we are going to come to your aid.”
Silverstar's heart was beating hard, she was on the verge of sharing Lyra's enthusiasm, but something was restraining her from doing so. She was frozen. Maybe she was becoming jaded, but she expected there to be some sort of catch.
“And what do you want in return?” Silverstar asked.
“Hm?” Loa casually turned her head towards Mot. “Was there something we wanted in return, Mot?”
“I don't believe there was,” said Mot.
“Are we not family?” asked Loa. “Is it not a good thing to help your fellow ponies? To save those who are suffering? To free the enslaved? To bring justice where it is needed? Are these things not noble enough that they are worth doing in their own right? I certainly believe so. We will do these things because they are noble and worth doing.”
“You see?” Lyra said. “These guys are awesome! All our problems are solved.”
Maybe Silverstar was being too jaded; maybe she really could trust the Shadow clan. She felt a smile coming to her face and tears to her eyes. Silverstar was thinking of the best way to get to the other side of the table to hug Loa when she noticed something that stopped her. Loa frowned the moment Silverstar smiled.
“There is a catch, isn't there?” Silverstar asked.
“Well,” Loa said, and stopped immediately.
Loa leaned back and looked around the room with a sigh. She leaned forward again, drank some tea and sighed once more.
“We are not asking anything in return for our help,” said Loa, “but it is possible that there may be certain circumstances preventing us from doing so at the moment.”
“And what is it, exactly?”
“Our ability to teleport is not unlimited,” said Loa. “We have a certain artifact that allows us to do so, but we can only travel to certain waypoints and the artifact has a limited range. At the moment, the farthest east we can travel is a short distance past Canterlot.”
“We could still reach your caves by physically moving the artifact east, however,” said Mot.
“My brother is correct,” said Loa. “But even then we would have to create the waypoints to your home. We can do this from a distance, but it has to be from a particular spot.”
“We've already done the calculations, and that spot is an Equestrian village,” Mot said. “To complete this project, it would take one thousand thestrals working all night for about a week. This is not something we can do with stealth.”
“So you see,” Loa said, “To rescue your clan we would have to reveal our existence to the outside world.”
“And that's a problem?” asked Lyra. “I thought you liked the outside world.”
Loa gestured back to the heroic painting of Shadow.
“Centuries ago,” she began, “before anypony here was born, Shadow broke into Celestia's castle in hopes of stealing treasure for our clan.”
“It was a very thrilling adventure,” said Mot. “She uncovered a hidden passage into the abandoned chambers of Starswirl the Bearded and vanquished a vicious hydra.”
“One of the objects she stole may have been the very artifact that we use to move between the waypoints,” Loa explained. “Actually she also stole the one that generates this pocket dimensions, as well as a few others. Our survival has become dependent on these. They were not forgotten to time, either. Were I to name them, you could easily find writings about their mysterious disappearances, and ponies still search for them to this day. If Celestia knew that it was us who had stolen them, she would likely demand their return, which would be disastrous for us.”
“That doesn't sound like a very big problem,” said Lyra. “Just explain to Celestia that you need it to survive and offer to pay her for them or something. I'm sure she'd understand.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said Loa. “But it is entirely possible that the Shadow clan stole a few other things as well.”
Silverstar stared at them for a moment. She didn't like where this was going. After a moment, she forced herself to ask the question.
“What else did you steal?”
Loa made a show of remembering it, rolling her head and eyes all over the room. Finally, she shrugged, took a sip of tea and casually turned to Mot.
“What was it we stole again, Mot?” Loa asked.
“On an annual basis,” Mot began, “we steal fifteen thousand tons of food, thirty thousand gallons of water, five tons of salt, one hundred tons of metal and about 70 million bits worth of miscellaneous goods.”
“There are also a few other treasures we've taken throughout history,” said Loa. “The lost treasure of Greyhoof, for example, is not lost to us.”
“A large portion of the things we own were stolen by our ancestors. This kettle, for example.”
“The rug in the hallway outside.”
“This table.”
“That painting.”
Silverstar and Lyra had listened to this list with awed horror. Lyra reached her tipping point first, when Loa gestured to the stolen painting of Celestia.
“What?!” Lyra slammed her hooves onto the table counter. “Why the hay did you steal the painting?! Stealing food I can almost understand, but paintings and tables?”
“Technically, it was my great grandfather who stole that painting,” Loa said.
“That doesn't-” Lyra was too frustrated to finish that sentence. Instead, she put a hoof to her forehead and let out a groan of frustration. “I thought you were the coolest ponies ever, but it turns out you're all just a bunch of kleptomaniacs!”
“Please do not think we are proud of this,” said Loa. “This is the greatest shame of the Shadow clan. We are aware that this is an uncivilized thing to do.”
“Then stop!” Lyra implored them.
“'Stop' she says,” said Loa. “Why didn't we think of doing that Mot?”
“I believe we did,” said Mot. “But it turned out that the matter was not so simple.”
“Yes, I remember now,” Loa said, nodding to herself. “There is no sun or rain or soil in this place. It is impossible to survive without taking food and materials from the outside. We try to use the waypoints to forage, but it is simply not efficient enough to sustain our population. Stealing has always been the only way for us to gather enough.”
“Our less civilized ancestors had no problem with stealing,” said Mot. “But by doing so they made us ever more dependent on it. It is a crime that we inherit from our parents, and that we are forced to pass onto our foals. The only way we could end the cycle would be to reveal ourselves to the world, but doing so would mean losing our means of survival and facing retribution.”
“But we do not wish to live like this any longer,” said Loa. “Tell them Mot! Was not my election a sweeping victory?”
“Indeed,” said Mot. “It was the most one sided election in our history. My sister beat the isolationist candidate by a margin of eleven to one.”
“And in the fifty moons I've been in power I have done everything I can to reduce the amount we steal,” said Loa. “What we take now is the absolute bare minimum we need to survive. So much so that I have had to impose harsh food rations as a result. Even still, the ponies endure it with little dissent. They put up with it because we truly wish to abandon this lifestyle.”
Lyra's indignation had cooled off quite a bit by this point. She still glaring daggers at Loa, but was now leaning back with her forelegs crossed, rather than pushing her face an inch from Loa's.
“Well, you could at least return the paintings and gold and stuff,” muttered Lyra.
“We intend to!” Loa assured her. “We intend to return everything we've stolen and pay for whatever cannot be returned, but we need to secure a new source of food before we can do that.”
Silverstar was still trying to wrap her head around how the Shadow clan could have stolen so much over such a long period without being caught. Unlike Lyra, Silverstar was conflicted about how to feel. She hardly condoned the stealing, but did understand it. Were she born into the Shadow clan, Silverstar undoubtedly would have had to do the same thing.
Besides all that, it was hard to judge the ponies who were going to rescue her clan.
“And you want the land over the eastern clans, right?” asked Silverstar.
Loa's face light up at that. She hit Mot on the shoulder and pointed to Silverstar.
“Ah!” said Loa. “You see that? She is finally starting to catch on. Yes, you are correct. Perhaps you've realized by now that somepony is going to be living above you, yes? Certainly you would prefer it to be your fellow thestrals.”
“It would be of no inconvenience, I assure you,” said Mot. “If you decide to remain underground you would be free to ignore us, and the surface has more than enough room for every thestral in the world to live comfortably in.”
“Our original plan was to simply wait until the eastern clan's territory was made habitable,” said Loa. “But perhaps we have to resort to other means, now. The wait may be too long and there may not be much of the Crescent clan left by the time this is finished. However, we are the best option Equestria has of ridding themselves of this threat and we can use this as leverage.”
“Rest assured we'll be returning as much as we can and we will offer to pay a debt of some twenty billion bits,” said Mot. “We wish only to negotiate that no further retribution be taken against us.”
“And you'll stop stealing once this is over?” Lyra asked wearily.
“Certainly.”
Lyra thought and grumbled about this for a while.
“Well, I guess if you're doing everything to stop...” Lyra muttered reluctantly. “I just don't want you ruining the reputation of the other thestrals, ya know?”
“I'm glad you support our course of action,” said Loa with a short bow. Loa leaned back and took a few casual sips of tea. Silverstar knew what that meant by this point. “Though there is a favor I have to ask from each of you.”
All the work in calming Lyra down as lost in a second.
“But you said you weren't going to ask anything-!”
“-Of the eastern clans, yes.” Loa shrugged. “But perhaps we need the assistance of the noble and generous Lady Heartstrings.”
Lyra looked about ready to snap at them. Silverstar herself wasn't sure how many more twists she could take
“Please, Lyra.”
Lyra glanced at Silverstar and settled back.
“Fine. What is it?” Lyra asked.
Loa took a victorious sip of tea before continuing.
“It is simple really,” said Loa. “The land won't yield food immediately, yes? There will be a period of a few months where we cannot get food from stealing or more honorable means.”
Lyra raised an eyebrow.
“Unless there are way fewer of you than I think I don't know if I'll be able to afford that,” she said.
“But don't you have a charity that has food stockpiled for hungry thestrals?” asked Loa.
“That's for the northern clans,” said Lyra. “I can't just-”
Loa stopped her there.
“We aren't demanding this of you,” said Loa. “I am merely asking you to do what you can as far as this is concerned. We will help the Crescent clan and find a way to feed ourselves regardless. I would like to stress that giving this aid to us would also be in the best interest of the Aurora clan, though. It would allow us to more quickly establish our new home, where they will be welcome to flee.”
“Either way, we will repay any assistance given to us,” said Mot.
Lyra thought for some time, and then agreed to see what she could do.
With that settled, Loa turned her attention to Silverstar.
“As for you, Silverstar,” Loa said. “I wish for you to help us create a map of your cave system. Obviously the more information about the area we have the easier the rescue will be.”
Silverstar agreed in a heartbeat.
“If you're going to save the Starlight clan, then I'll do anything you ask of me,” said Silverstar.
“Excellent!” said Loa. She and Mot both raised their cups in the air. Silverstar repeated the gesture. Lyra let out a “humph”.
Mot moved over to one of the drawers and took out a roll of paper.
“As a show of trust between us, I will give you a list of all the waypoints in Canterlot,” said Loa. Mot handed the paper to Loa, who handed it to Silverstar. A quick glance over it revealed a map of Canterlot with spots marked as waypoints, as well as a few other notes. “If you need to speak with us again before the full moon, simply go to one of the places marked on the map and wait. One of us will come for you eventually.”
“When do we go?” asked Silverstar.
“There is some political nonsense I must take care of first,” said Loa. She waved her hoof around as if trying to dismiss some bad stench. “One of the drawbacks of democracy. However, rest assured that this matter will be settled by the next full moon, when I will reveal myself to Celestia. Until then I'm afraid you must remain silent about us.”
“We will,” Silverstar promised. “And thank-”
“Ah! Save your thanks for later,” said Loa. “You will have plenty of time to thank me when you're back with your family. For now let us drink to the restored alliance of the Shadow and Crescent clans!”
Loa drank from her mug much more deeply now, and Silverstar took her first sip of her own tea.
By now, the tea was cool. It wasn't too bitter either.
