RAINBOW DASH

It was an hour before midnight, give or take. Rainbow felt bold. Something about the late night always did that--it was a little easier to be reckless when you were a certain sort of tired. She kissed Rarity.

Rarity kissed back, of course. Her answering smile was visible in the light from the magic light she had conjured, and it was not a happy smile. It was a strained, worried one. It was the sort of smile you put on when things were going bad, or were about to go bad--it was the "everything's fine" face. Someone else might have believed it. But Rainbow liked to think she had an eye for insincerity.

She wanted to say something about it, but didn't. Who had time to bicker about something pointless?

Instead, Rainbow smiled back as best she could. "I'll be okay," she said, and it sounded weak. A glance at Rarity's eyes said that her lover thought the same.

"Oh, I'm sure you will," Rarity said. Rainbow was a straightforward sort of mare... But she appreciated when Rarity smoothed something over. It was better sometimes when you let things die and someone had a second chance to say what they meant. "You are the best young flier in Equestria, if memory serves."

"Thought we didn't mention that day," Rainbow said, smiling more genuinely now.

"No, we shan't remember my part. Only how magnificent your flying was."

Around them, legionary fliers harnessed themselves to covered air-carriages. A few lightly barded Pegasi checked their equipment. She was bathing in the sound of determined quiet--and there is a certain sound to it, familiar and ever-repeating. The quiet breathing, the measured paces, the ritual of preparation--all of these things are old as time. Mares and stallions preparing to do or die and perhaps both.

Rarity was looking at her again. “You’re beautiful, you know,” she said. Her voice sounded strange, almost as if she were falling asleep. The words sort of drifted off.

“Meh,” Rainbow said, giving her second best smirk, trying to get a rise out of Rarity.

It worked, a bit. “One day you’ll believe it,” Rarity said. “Dash…”

There it was. “I’m coming back,” Rainbow said firmly.

“Please do. I will not forgive you if you do not,” Rarity said stiffly. Not like one in anger but like one in distress. “See to it.”

“I might actually be a little safer this way,” Rainbow mused. “Smaller target, less priority.”

“More noise, if you’re going to pull off one of your… your Rainbooms,” Rarity said, and then turned her face away to cough. “Anyhow. I will speak anymore bits of gloom to you, not tonight. Or, this morning. Is it tomorrow yet?”

Rainbow chuckled. “Not quite.”

“Well, it certainly feels like I’ve been up all night. I have my own duties now, Rainbow. I will…”

“See you again in Canterlot.”

“Yes, in Canterlot.”

“My place or yours?”

“I’d prefer a house to a cloud, thank you,” Rarity said, wrinkling her nose.

“Well, I’ll have to rebuild my cloudhouse eventually,” Rainbow replied, stepping back.

“You are the picture of a hero out of legend,” murmured Rarity as she too stepped back. The air between them was uncertain--not uncertainty about each other. But things were unsettled. There would be some sort of rendezvous, one way or another, and Rainbow knew deep down that she could not guarentee anything anymore.

“Thanks for paintin’ me up again, Rares,” Rainbow said, quietly.

She had chosen a more traditional design. It was Canterlot’s militia painting. It seemed fitting. Rarity had actually asked around to get the design right. She had asked about Ponyville, but it was a groundpounder place. It had never really had enough pegasi to warrant a regiment or its own pattern.

She’ll change that, Rainbow thought, because the idea that Rarity would not live to do so seemed silly. It was Rainbow in danger. It was Rainbow who was going to bite it. She’ll make us one in Ponyville, I bet, and its gonna be silly and way too complicated.

But for once, she really, really didn’t care.

“Goodbye,” Rarity said, and her voice lost its composure. She was wavering.

“I’ll see you in a bit,” Rainbow replied, firmly. “And I’m going to want whiskey, a preening, and a good bed, so try to get that all arranged, got it?”

“You damn fool,” Rarity said, with a broken little smile and a hiccup that sounded like an abortive laugh and eyes that shone in the moonlight with tears waiting to run down her cheeks. “Absolutely, all of it. I’ll procure her majesty’s bed myself.”

And with that, Rarity turned, stiffly, confidently, and stood. And then she turned back, approached, kissed Rainbow one last time, and fled with only a little dignity back into the night.

LUNA

It would have been difficult to explain the way that Luna felt, looking over her city.

Because, and she accepted this grim fact with a surprising ease, it was half destroyed. Soon after Spike had died, the Manicheans had started lobbing the occasional mortar into the middle tier. They were infrequent and not as bad as the artillery that Canterlot had lost foolishly, but they added up. The lower tier, the Terrestrial, was utterly destroyed. Yes, not beyond saving. Buildings could be repaired or razed and rebuilt. Ashes can be swept away and fields replanted. Ponies cannot be won back from the grave… but they are replaced, with time. The wounds of war and savagery can be sewn up.

Luna thought about these things, but she did not dwell on them because for her, they were understood. She had seen enough captured cities and razed towns to know that, yes, they could return.

She thought about Rarity leading the relief army somewhere out there. Would they make it in time? Would they make it at all? It was a valid question. Her reports suggested that the late Manichean had spread soldiers from Fillydelphia to Canterlot.

After she had struck him down, Luna had personally led the raid on House Blood. The houses involved in the coup were purged--not executed, not killed unless they fought back, but arrested. They waited sentencing in the bottom of the dark prisons beneath the palace, in the catacombs of their fathers. In House Blood’s compound, Luna had found plenty of records and the scope of the Manichean’s revolt was staggering. He had whipped his cult into a frenzy and held much of the coast under a cloud of terror and threats.

But she did not think about House Blood as much. Or any of the others--they were ephemera. Ghosts. She did not fear the threats of dying mares in their sickbeds, and she did not fear deposed nobles.

Honestly? What did she think of, staring over a forlorn city?

She thought about Twilight and Celestia. Twilight, so far away, and Celestia… somehow closer. Is this how you felt, sister? Is this what it was like in Everfree when I was gone?

There were some parallels, weren’t there?

Luna grimly noticed movement in the streets below. A normal pony would not have noticed, but she was attuned to the darkness of Night. The moon was waning, but there was still enough light to see by, and see she did. Thousands of them.

She had seen the numbers. The battle before the walls, in the plains, the taking of the gate… thousands of house levies and guards had fallen. Ten thousand civilians at least--none of her staff could find a solid number. All of them agreed that it could have been worse, but there was too much chaos even to speculate.

She had seen more death than this in shorter time, but… She supposed that when she had, it had not felt like the end of the world. There had been the certainty the sun would rise in the morning and the world would continue. Often, there was a hope it might even be better.

Where was that? Where was her hope? No help was coming to Canterlot, unlooked for and unasked--Rarity would no doubt fight through the rebel picket only to be weeks too late to prevent the life being choked out of Canterlot. Luna wanted to push into the city, take the fight to the enemy… but her forces were ragged and they had lost much of their food and supply in the lower city. They would lose. Would the battle be a closely fought one? Yes. Would the army of Canterlot be overcome? She was almost certain. Too many rifles, too many spellcasters left out there. She could do much on her own, but she could only turn away so many arcane bolts or disrupt a charging formation so many times. She could not turn bullets back by any other means than her shield, and she had never been quite as good as her sister with defensive magic. Offensive magic? Well. She would make them work for it.

Where was Twilight? Had she reached the end?

Luna remembered the end. The Well. The Pool, the Garden, the Shore.

Imagine if the world and all its creatures were an island. A small island, in fact, and on all sides a seemingly endless sea. The “sea of mountains”, the roses, the Garden… they were the gateway to the shore, and beyond was eternity. Other worlds and other things, further up and further in. Luna had never been there. She had never wanted to go. One world is more than enough.

But she had wandered up that hill. Only two had ever broken that place’s silent law and gone together. Only she and her sister.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Luna tried not to think of that place and what it had shown her. She didn’t want to remember. She had emerged with the Moon at the back of her mind, waiting for her to shepherd it, and all the stars in agreement, but had she profited? Was that worth what she had seen and done and been?

She wasn’t completely sure, even now.

Twilight, would that you were here, she thought. I would feel that we might not struggle in vain, if you were here. Some plan would come to you, some…

Luna thew her wings open and lept from the balcony, overcome by a restlessness that defied words. She had to move. She had to act. Something had to happen.

There had to be something left for Twilight to come home to, because she would come home.

CANTERLOT

It was midnight and all was not well.

Word of the betrayal of roughly half the Houses Major had spread. So had word of Luna’s quick retribution. Ponies remember Spike to one another, saying yes, I saw him once and he came this way with a sword looking for the blacksmith and I heard my brother in the guard say he held off a whole squad on his own. And the tale grew in the telling.

It is one thing to make legends of great stallions and mares who are glorious while alive. We resent the great even as we exalt them. But what do you do with an anounymous hero? A blank slate upon which to write legend?

It grew and grew. Spike had stopped a manticore, they heard. He had turned back a whole warband with a roar, they conjectured. He could outfly a pegasus, they outright lied. He had been a curiosity. He was becoming a myth.

A mare walked among the whispering refugees and cityponies of Canterlot, a hood over her head and obscuring her wings. Silent, she observed them all.

The hopeless air had transmuted into something very different. They had been frightened and unwilling to dare before, trying to live and let live, trying to outlast or outrun the darkness at the door.

She had seen a pair of her Nightshades already, watching for surviving Whitecloaks. They had seen her but not known her, enshrouded in illusory magic as she was. There was a Duskwatch on the wall, and Luna knew that he in fact saw her very well and knew her. But he would say nothing. If anyone could appreciate the desire to go out unnoticed, it would be a dhamphir.

She came across a tavern that glowed against the cold night. It was full, and she thought she heard music within.

Luna wandered through the open doorway, squeezing between a stumbling patron and the doorpony--Bouncer? Twilight said that the old doorpony was another thing of the past. Hea great hulking stallion who took a single look at her and gestured for her to pass.

“Got some of the spiced mead. Colonol’s got it on tap,” he said with a grin. He looked like a brawler. Luna allowed herself a grin of her own.

“I think I shall,” she said.

Every table and booth was full. A little stage in the corner was occupied by a single mare dressed much like Luna herself, but with her hood down. Her mane--cyan? mint?--had a white streak. Her golden eyes were focused only on the lyre she played with magic and cradled in her hooves. Luna paused in the crowd to watch and listen. It had been a long time since she heard a lone lyre play.

The mare sang,

Luna, Luna protect me,
Raise your hammer for all to see!
Watching faithful all the night,
Keep me safe ‘till morning’s light!

And Luna took a step back, feeling unsettled. She had not heard this song before.The mare on stage and her golden eyes seemed so… Luna shook her head. No, the bard did not see through her. She simply sang a song. Luna turned as the first verse faded away and headed towards the bar.

Luna, Luna, comfort me
Sing your song eternally!
Watching o’er my dreams by night
Guide me towards the gentle light!

Luna ordered mead with mulling spices and took a seat at the crowded bar.

Why was she even here? These ponies didn’t know her, certainly. They didn’t know she hadn’t heard the thrice-damned song. Watching over dreams… yes, she did that. After a fashion. She tried. But it was more trouble than it was worth. Maybe. She took a sip. The stallion at the door was right. This was nice on a cold night.

Luna, Luna, rescue me--
Banish darkness is my plea.
Eyes like Stars throughout the night,
Grace to give us second light.

“I’ve never heard this song,” she muttered. She wasn’t sure she liked it… or, rather, she did like it and wasn’t sure she wanted to like it. The tune was nice. She wasn’t sure what they meant by second light, but… Another sip. The moon, maybe? It made sense.

Why am I here?

“What do I owe you?” she asked the barkeep when he came back around. It really was good mead. She’d always been partial. Celestia had always preferred wine. Her motto was that wine had two duties foremostly: to be dry and to be red.

“Three bits,” he said. He flashed her a grin.

“Surely you jest,” Luna said, and then tried not to wince at how archaic her word choice was. “I mean… three?” She smiled, but was torn between grattitude and a tiny suspicion that she was about to be the subject of attention she would not appreciate.

“Yeah, I know its cheap. It’s been a hard few days, and I figure that right now… hell, I thought about giving it away. If I thought it wouldn’t turn into a riot, I would.” He wiped the bar.

“Like you’d do it, greedy bastard,” said the stallion to Luna’s right, cheerfully.

The barkeep smiled an old smile, the kind she imagined a pony had when meeting a long lost friend. He said nothing, but hummed a little tune.

“Got a strange accent. Can’t place it. Where you from, lass?” asked the pony to her right.

“Ponyville,” Luna replied automatically. “Well, close to is,” she said, glad that there were few refugees from Ponyville.

“Hm. Never actually went there. Guess I’ll never go now.” A dark, promising chuckle. “Or maybe I will. You know, on account of the Princess.”

“Pardon?”

“Oh, she’s right mad as hell, she is,” said the pony on her left. “Think she’s gonna really take the fight to those monsters.”

“Shove their bayonets right up their--”

A pony wormed her way between Luna and her neighbor to the right. It was the bard, and she smiled at the barkeep. “It’s my break. Where’s that mead you promised? Free mind you.”

“You’ll have it presently, Heartstrings,” said the barkeep. He rolled his eyes. “Greedy little lute player, ain’tcha?”

“It’s a lyre, thank you very much.” She huffed.

“It’s a lovely one,” Luna murmured.

The bard glanced at her, looked her up and down, and smirked. “Thank you. Seems we’ve come in the same attire… one of us simply must change.”

Luna chuckled. “It would have to be you, I am far too cold out there to forego my lovely cloak.”

The barkeep brought Heartstrings the bard her promised flagon. “You’re back in thirty, right?”

“Yessir,” the mare hummed.

“It was a lovely song, the last one you played,” Luna said carefully. “Where did you learn it? I’ve not heard the like.”

“Learned it? I’m the one who wrote it. Name’s Lyra Heartstrings, from the burg of Ponyville. Probably a slag heap now, but it was a great little place.”

“Hey! From your neck of the woods, stranger!” piped up one of her neighbors.

“Huh? You from Ponyville?” Lyra looked at her curiously.

Luna decided it was best if her neighbors didn’t comment further, so she spoke quickly. “Why Luna?”

“Why?” Lyra sighed. “You know what? I was just gonna drink in the corner behind my lyre, so why don’t you come sit with me? ‘sides, you’re cute, and Bon wouldn’t mind me having a chat.” Lyra smiled.

I should just leave, Luna thought. Why am I here?

Because she was restless. Because she was tired of being a princess. Because she wanted Twilight to help her, or Celestia to offer one of her soft, firm speeches, and she was rather alone now.

This Lyra was attractive, Luna noted. She took notice in a detached way, admitting this as one admits that the sky is, in fact, rather nice today. They sat beside her lyre, drinking.

“So, why Luna? Well, that’s a good question. I could dissemble and say… I’m not the only one, and a folk musician knows which way the wind is blowing. Gotta follow the zeitgeist,” she said, and took a long draught. “Ah. That does warm the bones. So that’s one answer. You could also say that maybe I just think Luna’s an interesting topic--she’s an alicorn. Dreams and magic and night time… it speaks to the romantic in me.”

“So, whimsy.” Luna raised an eyebrow.

“What’s your name, filly?” Lyra asked, and took another.

“Starry Night,” Luna said automatically. She had used this disguise, after all.

“Right, right. Well, Starry, you could also say that I’m a student of myth. Myths aren’t simply stories we made up to explain why things happen like they do. They’re more than that. But it’s not something--” she took another long drink, “--ah, Celestia blind my eyes, but that is heady--myth isn’t something to approach with a fully analytical mind, if you follow me. The significance of it. Myth’s at it best in being understood when its being felt by a poet. It’s alive forever and ever in both directions and it’ll die before you dissect it.”

“I… I am not sure I follow.”

“It’s okay, neither did Bons, but I love her anyhow. But that isn’t the only reason. I love the mythic importance of the living Night, but that’s not why she’s important. She’s important because finally, after all this time, ponies have something to believe in. A dragon who fights for ponies. An alicorn who weeps. They lost Celestia and with it everything that made sense.” She finished off the flagon--impressively, Luna added to herself--and then wiped her lips with a hoof. “The shared myth of Celestia, the Mother, vanished. And into its place has stepped another. The warrior--Spike, recently fallen--and the Avenger, Luna.”

Luna looked down at her own drink, cradled between two hooves. “I’m… not sure what to make of that.”

“I’m not so sure it won’t make you, Your Highness.”

Her head shot up. “What?”

Lyra spoke low. “You aren’t from Ponyville, because I would know you elsewise. You’re a pegasus, but you get cold? You handle things with your hooves like a unicorn would. Being that I am a unicorn, I would know. Also, I may have gotten a philosophy degree from Canterlot U, but I was great with magic. I noticed something off earlier, and just put the pieces together. I won’t bow or tell anyone, I promise.”

Luna pursed her lips. “You assume much.”

“I do… I just confirmed those things, though. May I say something, Princess?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she hesitated, flushing. “First… do you not like my song? It’s a childish thing to ask, I know.”

“I do like it. I am unsure what I should feel about it beyond a mere aesthetic pleasure, however.”

“Fair enough.” Lyra cleared her throat. “Your Highness, there are songs of you and Spike in the streets. I… I didn’t want to sing about him because I didn’t know him, but I have met you before, if only briefly. You came to Ponyville a few times for Nightmare Night. But I knew I had to be a part of what is happening. Do you know what happens, Princess, when ponies reach a point where they can endure only so much sorrow? So much wickedness? So much naked hate and evil? They reach that point and they snap and are ruined, or something miraculous happens. We were made to rise up, I think. When they betrayed you, those skeevy bastards, we realized what we were: insects. We let others just decide our lives. We were just waiting to die, and we’re not going to do that ever again.”

“From that? It was… How do you see that and feel anything but lost?” Luna hissed.

“I was there, you know. In the far crowd. And I couldn’t bear it, Princess. I couldn’t bear what we had become. We were awful. We let that happen. We could have stopped them--yes, some of us might have gotten hurt, but we could have! Even if it was a bad idea, we didn’t restrain ourselves because we were wise. We hid because we had lost ourselves. But I saw you look evil in the eye and stab it through the heart… And I knew that nothing would ever be the same. We were not sure what sort of pony you were, but now we are sure. You are the Avenger and the Friend. You wept like we wept and you mourned as we mourned.”

Luna set her mead down and took a shaking breath. “I… I am unsure how to respond, Ms. Heartstrings. To thank you seems vulgar. To be truthful, I find myself restless and lonely. I miss my sister. I miss… Twilight. I miss Spike.” She swallowed. “I am the Princess of the Night, and I love it, but that does not mean I love darkness itself. Not this sort. I put work into the lights of the sky, after all, and not in the voids between them. I feel very much that I want to go home.”

“As the Avenger should, my lady. You do the work that is in front of you.”

“And that would be?”

“They rise up, Princess. The city rises up. It will do so and it will rally to you. We are all yours now. Whatever we were, whoever we were, we are yours.” Lyra looked about to make sure none of the patrons had listened in. She sighed. “This is really happening, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Luna said, smirking, still feeling strange.

“I am glad that my playing pleased you, my lady. To be honest, I always sort of dreamed I might play for you one day. So this whole thing is going to catch up with me in a moment and I think I might faint when it does.”

Luna chuckled. “You would not be the first.

Luna sat again on her balcony the next night.

She waited, and she not for what she waited.

Until there, in the distance, she saw it. A moving shadow that raced across the sky. She regarded it warily… and then it exploded in color and sound. The night was lit by an expanding sun of color, expanding and pushing at the darkness around it. She recoiled, shocked, panicking. What was it? What had they done?

But then recognition stole over her. “No…” she flared her wings and reached out with her magic, searching… searching…

And so it was that Luna caught Rainbow Dash before she made impact with the balcony headfirst at lethal speed.

Rainbow panted on the cold floor, gathering her wits. Luna, for her part, simply stared as if seeing a ghost. “You… are the others… has Rarity…?”

Rainbow stumbled to her hooves and saluted. With a small shock, Luna realized that she recognized the barding--Imperial Scout.

“The Ninth Legion and the levy of House Belle, Princess. We’re coming… told me to give you this…” she took a deep breath and pulled a crumpled letter from beneath her breastplate with some difficulty. Luna grabbed it with her magic, mouth still hanging open.

“This…”

“It’s time to finish it,” Rainbow said.

Author's Notes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wwwPJJoJPg