Chapter 19: A Walk on the Other Side
"...Horus, wait." The Alicorn springs forward as they descend into the wildflower strewn lee of a gently rolling hill. The field and hillocks that stretched out from Mount Canterlot's base had been replicated in exacting detail, right down to the soft rippling blades of grass tussled in the gentle western breeze. Luna's stride slackens to a trot as she pulls alongside the towering primarch. "Are you really going up to the castle?"
He doesn't answer immediately, instead, Horus takes a breath and draws himself up the hillside, cresting the summit. From there, he pauses to look out across the luscious expanse of Equestrian grasslands. "Yes. Hmmm, Luna, would you kindly indulge this relatively young man?"
"It's rare to hear poly-centenarians say that." She replies, but when no reply comes, the Alicorn nods curtly, "But if I can, I shall."
Horus merely tilts his head up to regard the unblemished crystal blue skies. "As picturesque as this is, little moon princess, I would rather see what you make of the night sky. Or is this another 'I have to wait until the time is right' type of talents, hmm?"
Ignoring the smarmy prickle of accusation, Luna snorts. "Oh, is that all?" Luna's horn lights up as she sighs haughtily. But the smile that slips across her muzzle appears unbidden. The clear blue erupts into fiery reds and oranges before fading to luxurious purples and rich blues of dusk, slowly revealing the shimmering starscape of truest night. The pitch black canvas unfolds in its time, and the slow spread of swirling nebulae and milky star-spangled bands stipple themselves across the heavens. Every cosmic nuance and intricate stellar twinkle beams down as day slips into the embrace of night. A soft wind rises up from the sudden change in temperature, teasing the grass into waves as the blustering winds combs its invisible fingers through the grasslands. "Satisfactory?"
The Warmaster breathes a sigh of contentment. But the smile never appears. Instead, his face pulls taut as he lapses into a pensive lull. The Alicorn gently brushes his leg with her wing. "Is something wrong? Do you not like it?"
"I do." he whispers far more quietly than she'd heard from him since their first meeting.
She notices the change immediately and gently lays a hoof on his hip. "Horus, might I ask, is something wrong? Why did you want a starscape?"
Her voice fades into the soft void, a gulf between thought and answer appearing in the Lupercal's voice. When he speaks, it carries a thoughtful softness, "Isn't it enough that I like your stars?"
"Uh, well... yes." she replies, swallowing the slight surprise at the confession before fixing her attention squarely on him. Still, it didn't seem like he was lying, even if the Warmaster wouldn't meet her gaze, "But I'm still curious."
He never redirects his attention, golden eyes staring intently at the winking heavens. But his hand quietly drifts to her wing, giving the covering feathers a pat. "Memories. Good memories. It's actually night time, isn't it?"
Luna nods simply, "Yes."
"Strange," his sigh is the first that passed his lips with a sense of true weariness now that the cries and adulation of the crowd had faded into a distant memory, "it's getting hard for me to tell."
Luna wiggles her muzzle for a moment, some of the tension gone as the smile creeps unbidden to her features. "That's because you don't get weaker in the day and stronger at night. I know, because I am the Night."
The phrase tears a slight chortle from Horus as he finally looks down with a knowing smirk. "Conrad would likely take issue with that."
"Who? Is that one of your friends? Offspring, wait, one of your brothers, yes?" Luna queries with a cautious softness, leading to a place they had barely spoken of.
"The latter," Horus nods, muttering with a harrumph, "One of the stranger ones."
"Stranger?" she does loft an eyebrow at that and heads down the next hill at a slight canter, enjoying the reprieve before fanning out her enormous pinions. "Doesn't one have wings? I thought you said that wasn't something humans normally had."
"I never said 'the strangest'." Horus smiles a bit and follows after, his strides keeping pace with her. Shooting out a hand almost as fast as she could see, Horus runs a single finger along the feathery primary, eliciting a little warbled gasp of surprise.
"Don't do that!" She harrumphes indignantly while ruffling her wings and quickly tucking them tightly against her body.
The Warmaster shakes his head, "I do as I please, I am the Warmaster, my little winged pony princess. And don't you forget that. Besides, I had my suspicions."
She mock glares at him. "Pray tell, what 'suspicions' might those be?"
"I suspected that they might be some vat-grown plastek. They had too much of a sheen compared to a typical avian feather." He points to her pinions again. "Seems that I may have been... not entirely correct."
Luna's voice creeps higher, into her upper register with more force and power. "W-we take care of them as best as we can. The preservation and maintenance of such is oft laborious, but it is important to appear the part for our ponies." It resonates across the grasslands, still short of her Royal Canterlotian roar, but loud enough that it would have been awkward in an open market square.
"And that my companion might be too sensitive about the little things. But at least she understands the importance of playing the part, why, she even has the pompous speech of a noble down perfectly. " By then, the Warmaster had shifted himself, a leg slightly forward like some ancient courtly king, a hand across his breast and the other braced to his hip.
Luna scrunches her muzzle and glares, not quite mock but the slight prickle and hue to her cheeks betray some embarrassment. Instead she merely shoots out a wing, buffeting him and trotting past to the sound of ringing laughter. The irritation fades, but the Alicorn does unfurl her wings and flits to the next rise to put that small bit of space between them. After a few moments, she hears the heavier sound of footfalls through the grass. And while she doesn't glance back, she took note that it was the first time that she'd made him run to catch up. The resultant silence was no longer strange, it was a companionable lull.
After what felt like ten minutes, but Luna was certain may have just been a few seconds, Horus tilts his head back to regard the twinkling around him. He'd caught up in moments and she'd done nothing to span the distance again. "He'll be back. No question about it."
Silence. Dead Silence. They both knew it was a true statement, but that wasn't the cause. A slight prickle on her nape halts the Alicorn with one hoof up, dangling in mid air, ears swiveling to and fro.
"Luna?" Horus whispers, sensing the change as he scans the surrounding hills.
The Alicorn scrunches up her muzzle, body tense and neck muscles corded with effort. "Somepony else is here." she whispers from the side of her mouth.
Horus doesn't jerk to look or otherwise give any indication he heard her. But the rasp is just barely audible as a bass rumble from his chest, "Something else?"
"No," Luna whispers, "somepony."
Luna turns, stamping a hoof and calling out in a resounding Canterlotian shout, "COME FORTH AND BE RECOGNIZED!"
Her eyes dart back and forth, scanning the rolling hills. With a flash, her horn illuminates the hilltop in pale moonlight as bright as the mid-day sun. Nothing new greets her.
"We're being watched?" Horus queries beneath a whisper, unafraid but motionless. But Luna's turn had put them back to back, a position both seemed comfortable preserving.
"Yes I'm... just, not quite sure how." Her ear flicks, and a scent of ozone fills her nostrils. "Magic."
The Primarch grunts with a huff, "I'm getting to hate that smell, Luna."
"As much as those enormous rotting toad-things?" Luna glances back and forth, now a little more uncomfortable than before.
"Well... no." he admits.
Luna licks her lips and quickly turns to gallop to the top of the hill, "I think it may be time... I'll try it, just... remember it might be danger-"
"If you're going to do something, then spare me the lecture and just do it." He smirks and folds his arms across his barrel chest, "Princess Luna."
"Princess Luna!" Sunset shouts just a hooflength from the Alicorn's face. The world was flickering, caught in a storm of monochromatic static. She stamps her hooves, weaving back and forth with her tail practically touching the princess's chin. She'd been spat out here, and now nopony seemed to notice her at all.
Wherever Sunset stepped, Luna's gaze or pivoting ears would sluggishly follows shortly after. The frustration of being so close and still beyond reach was building. If she could just talk for a moment, she could get her answer. How could she help? The world that she'd seen had left her disoriented, and she'd found herself caught up in the cloying maelstrom and set down right where she wanted only for it to mean nothing. It wasn't some foolish little memory, it was here and now.
And it was slipping away.
"Is it more magic, is it more of a connection. Think. Think Sunset, THINK. You're good at this." But as she reaches forward, her hoof feels like it was repulsed by the Alicorn as Luna closes her eyes and perches atop the grassy knoll. That other enormous blood spattered warrior just... okay he was big, bigger than the Serpent King, but he didn't look at her, just Luna. None of it did anything to help Sunset's mood as she voices a strained growl and kicks at a stone hidden in the fetlock length grasses. Unsurprisingly, the stone didn't so much as wobble.
"Trouble, little thing?" A silken voice calls from behind the Unicorn, causing her to yelp and spring like a cat. Hairs standing on end, she regards the intruder, laying luxuriously on the slope of an adjacent hill. What she saw was strange. A minotaur, almost no question, and a female judging by the swell of its exposed chest. The lithe being reclined in the grass with one leg up, one long cloven hoof dangling next to the chain wrapped around its mid-point. It was slender, elegant, with just a loincloth of lush violet silk keeping her partially modest. Sunset's eyes trace the form from the tip of the golden specked hoof, up her lavender hued legs and to her taut frame, but had to blink twice as she spotted the well toned arms crossed over her generous bust. They were folded back under her arms, but a second set seemed to stretch out behind her as she posed, sunbathing on the slope of the moonlit hillock.
Finally, Sunset finally noticed her eyes: swirling golden pools with a single ruby red slit. A golden choker encloses her slender throat. But the petite bovine face flashes a close-lipped smile at her. "I can help, you know."
Feminine, sweet, there was something alluring that hove just at the edge of Sunset's mind that sent it spinning. The fugue of perfume wafts like a fog, and a thought of stars slips from her just as she struggles to clutch at something. Something important.
"So, which one are you really after? That pretty pony princess, or the strapping primarch? Mmm, maybe both?" She, as Sunset was certain it was a 'she', made a gesture at the pair, swallowing as she did so. And for an instant, Sunset glimpsed a black tongue-tip peak out to wet thin lips.
"I... I think I'm good." Sunset replies, feeling a cold spear in her chest. The being smiles, sliding its legs up and over the other, revealing what Sunset's mind registered as a tantalizing tease. 'Wait... what?'
Sunset knew her preferences, but something was skipping like a broken record. There was a detail her mind was trying to register that was just beyond reach. Familiar. She was familiar. The voice-
The female's stance widens for just a moment before she gracefully eases her form forward, bowing upright with all the practiced ease of an acrobat. Sunset spots the second set of pincer-like claws that, once more, coquettishly slides behind its narrow frame. "Come now, there has to be something I can do for you. At least, won't you tell me your name?"
A thought trickles like melting ice through her mind, 'What is she doing inside Luna's head?' . She can practically see the star-spanning smirk and the crown of horns flicker in front of her eyes for a moment. Sunset blinks as the perfumed haze clears, the image of the Serpent King staring up crosses her mind.
The Lurker.
"You're the Nightmare!" Sunset's eyes widen and she reels back, hoof over hoof, nearly stumbling downhill.
The creature just chortles and crouches. It wasn't until that moment that Sunset realized just how close it had wandered, just how tall it was, and that she could feel its breath washing over her face as it knelt down in front of her and stalks closer like a panther. "Mmm, not much of a name, my little ray of Sunshine." The bovine female bites her lower lip. "But I suppose I could be a Nightmare, or a very pleasant recurring dream. It's really your choice, my little ray of Sunshine. They call me Kanathara, Whose Hooves Shatter Mountains. But you can call me... well. Anything. You. Want."
The time had come and the siren call came to Luna from across the unknown expanse. Slipping from dream to dream was as natural as walking for her, but the strain to take leave of the Lupercal's mind was far greater than she had anticipated. It was as tiring as swimming through gelatin while carrying another pony slung across her withers. But the warmth of the Canterlotian countryside wore away as she slips beyond its sunlit boundaries into the gathering dark.
There were others. Softer, quieter dreams from not far away, but the dreamscape here was no silent field of stars. The clarity was gone, replaced by misty shapes and fleeting winks of light. The collective Gestalt of the dreams of those who dwelled within Equestria had changed over the eons, but often all but radiated with the warmth of a summer night.
Mankind, evidently, did not.
She wades through a sickly cold morass, her mind putting context to the sluggish syrupy constraints that tugged at her limbs to try and arrest her progress. And as such, all she could think of was a deep blighted swamp swarming with meandering clouds of fireflies. There were other formless blots of light in the distance, but nothing substantive. Nothing helpful. Not when other things slunk beneath the waters, like eels and reptiles of every hideous description. A swamp, a mire of sadness and despair. Cold, dark, and ever shifting to try and engulf them. It went on forever, and yet every trudging pace tries to hold her back. The whispers of the passing lights brush across her fur, yet still feel distant. One, just one, truly calls in a flickering spark of red. Wading through the slurry of torpid water, she reaches the dream she'd sensed not long before.
After a familiar tug, she blinks her eyes open and, for a second, ponders if she'd gone anywhere.
The air hangs heavy and moisture laden, mist drifting past ferns and sticking to briers of black thorns. Luna pushes past the thickets, the scrape of thorns prickling her coat. She could easily pass as mist and shadow, but part of a dream was seeing the mind of the dreamer. She emerges from the squelching thickets, hooves slick with loam, with rotted leaves plastered to her limbs. But she persists, and in front of her in a small forest clearing, rises a tall granite fortress.
But something is wrong, she's seen it before: the front portcullis lies in ruins of twisted iron, thick metal locks ripped from punky stone. It was a fortress in ruins, its guardians gone, its lord now absent. Tall walls still stretch up to overlook the twisted canopy, and a starless night of deepest shadows shrouds everything. With the scent of forest beasts in her nostrils and rotting loam as a spice all around her, the Alicorn wordlessly steps over the twisted scraps of rusting iron, and into the yawning abyss that was once an entrance.
Trotting through the entrance arc, she spots the tattered flags of stylistic golden eagles, mold clinging to the black edges. Other banners bear numbers and a wolf head, all of them suppurating in the cloying mist. The number 18 held some prominent position next to 16. Here, the soot stained arches of the inner gateway smelled of neglect. But some other scent hung in the air as she steps into the inner ward. The bare expanse is devoid of any grass or trees, just hardpan and unidentifiable scraps of detritus. But the stink of sulfur and another harsh chemical stings her nose and sets her eyes watering.
She hurries through, just as the wind began its whistling howl through the empty sockets of the crumbling towers. Luna hastens her trot through the courtyard, her hooves making a quiet clatter that rises above the wind. Once inside the shattered doors of the dilapidated castle keep, the first simpering sounds carry over the wind.
Luna's ears perk up, suddenly aware of the presence of another nearby. The Alicorn draws closer, through the even blacker expanse of crumbled furnishings and scorched decorations. Her hooves crumble ancient fixtures to ash, and nudge aside caked metal baubles in her quest for the soft weeping that whispers like a phantom.
It grows ever colder, and yet her search could have been minutes or hours. It matters little when she arrives at the doorway to a broken room with only the faintest light from the depths of night, she spots the scraggly form: it was tiny, scraggly, destitute. The figure had collapsed to its knees, back to her. But its emaciated form wasn't what stopped the Alicorn's heart. It cradled a yet smaller limp figure in its arms, clutching desperately with gnarled fingers at the vestiges of threadbare green cloth.
Even from a distance, the weight of a thousand years hung on Luna's withers. It wasn't the first time she'd seen this: the sibling of a foal who'd passed away still clutching desperately in the dreadful dark of deepest night. But it never lessened the pain. How could it? Experience didn't mute the terrors of not being able to let go, even for an instant, lest everything else crumbles away. Few ponies knew it as well as her.
The creature wasn't her kind, it was no pony. The greasy golden locks clumped together as it cradled the cold ashen form across its knees. But she could only call it a foal.
There was no thought involved, no pause. Luna found herself closer by instinct and impulse, staring over the shoulders of the shivering youth to stare at the waxy features of another. Its green eyes were misted and cloudy, staring up through eternity at an empty sky. The broken toy sword clutched in dirt encrusted hands hangs limply from nerveless fingers.
The scent of decay swells in her nostrils, as if a rotten wind laden with offal and carrion meat had shifted to sour the air. With it, the sound of flies and crawling insects pricks her ears as her gaze shifts from the pair to another, darker lump at the unlit edges of the room. The massive bulk might be unrecognizable, but the smell was potent and growing worse. It was flesh, a carcass, something lingering at the margins of the room. She spots a single bulbous, malformed hand sticking from suppurating rags, clutching a barbaric stone sword.
The more she stares, the more the youth seems to look as well, while clutching its pitiful burden. And despite the scent and cloying air, she stretches her wings around the pair of forms to enfold them in her midnight pinions. The figure stiffens, not having noticed her until that moment. But the cold clammy touch of grungy fabric slowly warms from the ambient heat of Luna's own fur. She leans in, sitting behind the frail figure.
It looks back and up at her, and teal eyes meet red-rimmed sea green orbs glittering with light.
The thoughts of the Lupercal pass for a moment, whatever the nightmare was, had been very real. And while she sensed the hesitation, the instinct to push her away, she didn't relent. Her wings spread over them both, and with a press, pulls the waif into her breast. And after a long moment, the scratch of fingers against her fur let the Alicorn tuck the youth's head under her chin and cradle him as the weeping grew even louder. The pain and ire bleeding away amid the veil of tears.
All that could be heard, that could be felt, was the dual-beat of a heart trying to match the rhythm of her own.
