Blue as the Midwinter Moon

She looks up at me, and her pale eyes are luminous in the dark. Blue as the midwinter moon. "It has to be done," she whispers, that voice soft as it ever was, a velvet whisper in the night. "You see that, don't you, Twilight? It has to be done."

It is almost a physical pain to look away from her, to break the eye contact that is the only way i can reach her now, but I cannot hold her gaze. Those gentle blue eyes, so full of compassion. Even through this. Even now.

The worst of it is that she is right. She is glowing now, her ears tufted and her wings ribbed with leathery skin, redolent with the Lady's power. And what am I? Weak. Indolent. My fur is dull, the glyphs carved into my curved horn unpainted as the gilt peels off. I am not even half the mare my Fluttershy has become.

I have been infected with a sickness, a drain upon my magic and my Night. My duties have suffered. My devotion to the Lady has been tested. For a moment, only a moment, I dared to put someone else ahead of her.

Run away with me.

A hoof outstretched -- mine -- an invitation. A plea.

Blue eyes gleaming in the night, like stars. Cold and remote. As alien and pitiless as the Lady herself.

No.

There is a dull rumble outside, a horrible murmuration that shivers through the black marble floor and up each vertebrae of my spine. Midnight Sparkle, they shout, thousands of them massing at the tower's foot. They still call me by my old name, the title I gave up that night.

I was the Lady's right hoof, and now I am nothing. Now she stands in my place, and I must face the consequences.

For love, I threw it all away. For Fluttershy.

For her.

---

The night sky is vast and spangled with stars. A hundred thousand diamonds scattered by a careless hoof upon a black damask counterpane. When you look closer, you can see that black is not the only colour. There is plum there, deep and mysterious. Purple and violet and inky blue. Down below us, at the furthest reaches of the horizon, there is even a hint of pale cerulean as the thrice-cursed sun makes its daily attempt to breach our Lady's confinement.

It is an interesting colour, that shade of blue. Still in the shades of night, yet so much brighter than anything else in the Lady's limited little world, here aboard the Night Eternal. Almost the exact colour of the glow-light crystals that feed the mushroom orchards.

It is beautiful out here tonight. Perhaps later, after my work is done, I can bring Shiny up for a breath of fresh air.

The wind stirs my mane, and the cold silver-steel of the balustrade presses against my chest. Up here in the highest reaches of the Night Eternal, the vast silver orb of the gas-moon rides above me, linked by great silver chains to the ancient wooden decks and the heavy island that drifts beneath. The forests and farms of the Lady's domain are down there on the land, and here there is nothing to mar the view of her sky and her night. The gas-moon slides through the heavens, stately as the true moon it is named for, and the airship and the island are carried with it, reflected in the ocean far beneath.

This is our world, and the Night Eternal dominates the eternal night.

"Twilight Sparkle," a voice interrupts, low and respectful, lingering on the syllables of the first word that is title and name both. "Dark One, a moment of your time."

The tones are warm with devotion, the vowels lengthened slightly beyond standard Lady's Equuish by the remnants of an island accent.

"Duskjack." I do not need to turn and face her. Aboard the Night Eternal, might is everything, and there are none stronger than I.

She inhales sharply, electrified by my attention. She has the tufted ears of an ascended batpony, the sharpened fangs and the appetites for fruit, but she was an earth pony once, and remains as flightless as I do. She will never fly with the Lady on those dark witching hour flights, no more than I will. Neither of us will ever know where the wild hunt rides when they descend to the earth's surface, what the Lady and her winged soldiers find.

No matter. I am a Twilight, the Twilight, just as my mother was before me. The only second-generation bearer of the title in all the storied history of the Night Eternal. I am Twilight, and Duskjack is only that: a Dusk. Only one step above the common people, for all her fervent faith.

I am stronger than she will ever be.

"The Lady has returned from her flight," Duskjack murmurs reverentially.

"She wants me." A warm feeling floods my breast. I am her highest magus of the night. Her closest confidant, if a goddess among mortals can have any such thing. She has returned from one of her mysterious outings, and mine is the first face she wishes to see. "I will come immediately. Announce me."

The scrape of cloven hooves on the deck as Duskjack bows. "At once, Twilight Sparkle."

She leaves me, and I take one last look at the Lady's night before I leave.

The beauty of the sky is subtle, complex. Obscure. A hundred different layers waiting to be peeled back, with fresh treasures tucked within each. Dusk fell on the last day one thousand years ago, but I have seen the paintings. Garish smears of colour, unrefined as the first daubings of a foal. The dead princess could never hope to compare to what the Lady can achieve.

I think again of Shiny, and a small smile flits across my lips. Yes, he will like the view tonight. I'll go to collect him as soon as the Lady has no further need of me.

Even in his retirement, my brother is a massive stallion, and the chair is too heavy for my father to carry. The team of three earth ponies or two unicorns it takes to carry or levitate him is a frivolous expense, and Shiny tries to refuse outings. He says he does not want to be a burden. He wants to be dutiful. I know what that means, but no brother of the Twilight will go to the altar. He is no traitor, no day cultist. Shiny was a royal guard, and he was injured doing the Lady's work. He was mighty, when he walked the halls of the Night Eternal, when he bucked down doors and broke the skulls of all those who sought harm to the Lady. Before the riot that broke his horn and his legs and his spirit as well.

Shining Armour is my brother, and no matter what he might think, he is not a burden. He is not one of the feckless ponies who shirk their duty and their Lady's demands. He is one of the faithful, and he deserves to live.

A view of the Lady's stars will remind him of that.

With regret, I turn away. Duty calls, and a Twilight never rests.

---

The spiralling ramps leading down from the decks to the island feel almost endless. I circle the massive spell-silver chain almost fifteen times before I feel the soil beneath my hooves. I try to take a different ramp each evening, studying the glyphs as I go, each taller than the height of a full-grown stallion. Glyphs for strength and steadiness, for longevity and resistance to tarnishing by the elements. All of them pulsing with that same pale blue crystal-light colour. More stars, crafted by the Lady just as the true stars were.

My breathing is unsteady, and I try to take a breath. To feel the grass as it flicks against my fetlocks, to appreciate the scent of pine and nightsap carried on the breeze. I am not at my best, and I cannot face the Lady when I am drained. I seldom find a flaw, but today I saw an Ansuz that was beginning to fray, its blue light just the slightest bit dimmer than its fellows.

I stopped to fix it myself, of course. Who is stronger than I? Who better to protect the Night Eternal than me, the Lady's Twilight vizier? I can best a team of fifteen unicorns in a duel, ten if they are ascended batponies like myself. I am leagues above them all.

Yet when I poured my power into that Ansuz, it took all I had to give and more besides. It grabbed hold of my mana and pulled, and though at long last the sluggish glow brightened again, it took far longer than it should. I walk those ramps for minor tweaks, for minor adjustments on top of the routine maintenance the chain-gangs are meant to perform, but that rune felt as though it had not been touched in weeks.

I grit my teeth. An investigation will have to be launched, and if I find that anypony has been slacking, heads will roll. Literally. The Lady always needs lifeblood, and the faithful waiting for ascension need the dying breath of a traitor before they can become as I am.

The thought of traitors calms me, reforging the fear and the worry into something colder and more silvery. Something like the spell-silver chains themselves.

No, there is nothing amiss -- and if there is, I shall find it. I am fine. I've weathered greater drains on my magic than this. I force my trembling knees to straighten and stride out across the meadow with deliberate precision. A brief spell of weariness means nothing. I am Twilight Sparkle, the Twilight, and I will push through. I always do.

---

The Lady waits for me at the centre of her labyrinth, the hedges of blue roses and thorny briar twisting and turning for miles. The unwary might wander for days, but I know every secret door and hidden passage, and I meet her at the centre almost as swiftly as one of her bat-winged outriders.

Even with her back to me, she radiates power. Coiled strength in every inch of her towering frame, great wings flared high, her inky mane roiling with a tiny sky all its own. When I was younger, I tried to map those stars, to find in them the constellations I knew. I never found one. The Lady's mane is filled with alien stars, unknowable mysteries.

She pins me in place with her ice-fire eyes, and all else is forgotten.

"We have heard whispers."

Those eyes are fathomless. Timeless. Ancient and maleficent as the night sky. Too late, I sink into a bow, pressing my horn to the loamy ground.

My voice is muffled by the grass and the orchids underhoof. "Whispers, Lady?"

"More unrest. Cultists, imbeciles. Worshippers of my fool sister."

It is one of the great secrets of the inner sanctum, that the fallen princess was once the beloved sister of our Lady. I was told it when I became Twilight Sparkle, when the unicorn foal Serene Sparkle lay dead on the altar alongside the body of the nameless green-feathered colt who gave his life that I might begin mine anew.

As it always does, that reminder of the secrets I know sends a delicious fizz of pleasure racing down my tongue, sweet as champagne. She trusts me, and I will not fail her, no matter what she asks.

"I will root them out, Lady." She does not like questions or prevarications. Only actions, plain and simple.

I glance up in time to see a flash of fangs amidst the oily midnight black. I think she is smiling.

"You already know where they are meeting?"

I swallow. I do not. "My -- my wisdom is not as deep as yours, Lady. I will find them by the next full moon. I'll burn them out, root and stem."

She makes a small noise of pleasure, deep in her throat. "Hm. A sacrifice will show you the way. The new beastkeeper is bringing you a bear."

A bear? She wants answers fast, then. Our predators are rare beasts, slow-growing and a challenge to breed. We keep a few caged, ready to be sacrificed when the need is great. For the Lady to want to shed their blood so soon in this process and have me read the patterns of their guts is a heavy investment.

I do not question her. That is not a Twilight's place. "I will read the augury, Lady."

"See that you do."

One great flap, one huge gust of wind, and she is gone. Slowly, carefully, I raise myself from my bow, and look up after her. Remote as the true moon she raises, she rides the wind up, silhouetted against the gas-moon for a second before she is lost to sight.

I sigh. I will not be seeing Shining Armor tonight after all. But work never waits, and the Lady is impatient. A Twilight is diligent, and I am twice the Twilight my mother or any of her predecessors ever was.

---

Her eyes are the first thing I notice. The same blue as the shadow of the day as it tries and fails to break, the same mystic shade as the glyphs on the chains and the glow-lights in the meadows. A pretty colour, alight with mystery and magic even before she smiles at me. That smile transforms her again -- no longer an experienced beast-wrangler forcing the bear back into place on the altar stone, but a softer and subtler creature. Just a mare. A mare like me.

"Down, Harry," she coos to the great shambling creature, and it whuffs out a hot blast of air -- but it obeys her. It lays its head down on the stone, and when she asks, it actually tilts its head to provide access to the throat.

I push down my wonder: the work comes first -- and I lift the knife in the purple glow of my magic and slash down.

But after, when the innards are cooling on the stone and I am sifting through the meaning beyond the obvious -- the swollen gallbladder shows that the cultists are inside the palace, inside the Lady's service, and are more dangerous than any we have faced before -- I turn to the beastkeeper and ask her.

"How did you do that? Zecora used to chain them."

She smiles, two little dimples flashing briefly into existence. "I trained under Beastmaster Zecora, but I've found kindness is a lot more effective."

"I see."

She inches a little closer, peering at the tangled mess of intestines and organs. "What did Harry tell you?"

"Ah," I laugh. "Those secrets are for the Lady only -- though you're a lady almost as lovely as she is."

As soon as the words are out of my mouth I feel myself flushing puce. What am I doing? A Twilight does not flirt.

She blushes too -- and she does it so prettily that I think my embarrassment was worthwhile after all.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. It's just...my brother was a sacrifice. They said he was workshy in the examinations, and..." she tails off and shrugs. "That was it. I've always wondered who it was that he gave his life for."

"It doesn't matter," I say, my voice as reassuring as I can make it. "The sacrifices serve a greater purpose. The Lady needs her faithful to ascend, and the sacrifices make that possible."

She ducks her head. "Yes. Yes. You're right, of course. Zephyr was...he was an unhappy colt. It was probably the kindest thing, in the end." She runs a hand over the bear's skull, closing the glassy eyes that stare up at the gas-moon and the Lady's night. "He didn't suffer."

"No," I agree, though I remember the scream of the green pegasus colt who died for me. The swan-song cries of the many, many throats I have slit for the Lady to bend her delicate neck to sup at, before she gives of her own blood to the one she wishes to ascend. "No, they don't suffer."

"Well," the beastkeeper says, ruffling her feathers. "I'd better start carving this one up and get him to the ice-cave before he rots. The others will eat him. If you're done, that is?"

"Yes," I say instinctively -- a Twilight is dutiful, a Twilight is focused, she is always moving to the next task -- and yet I must know. "But...what's your name?"

Another flash of that smile. "Fluttershy. And yours?"

"Twilight Sparkle." I swallow. This is not what a Twilight does, but here I am doing it. "Fluttershy, can I...can I see you again?"

She giggles, a sound so foreign in my world of duty and toil that I have almost forgotten what it means. "I think I might like that, Twilight."

---

She kisses me, and it is like moonrise. Like starlight on my tongue. She is so beautiful. When she touches me, soft and feather-light, magic swells inside me like music, and I paint the planets for her in the air above our bed of meadowgrass.

"I love you," I tell her, and her eyes shine like lapis lazuli in the night.

"I love you, Twilight," she promises me, and though I am Twilight to the dark Lady, though the acme of my life's ambition has been fulfilled every day since I was a filly, since the day my horn curved and my hooves split and my ears changed, somehow this is the thing that means the most to me.

I love you too, Twilight.

Never has the name I earned sounded sweeter than it does upon her lips.

She presses one last kiss to my forehead and starts to leave.

"No!" I protest, pulling her back down. The Lady is off with her wild hunt, and who knows when another opportunity will come? A little indolence is permissible once in a while, even for us. "Stay with me."

"Twilight!" she laughs. "I can't. I have beasts to tend. And the palace will be full again soon. Don't you have work to do?"

I grimace. "Only the spell-silver chains." The ancient magics are unravelling, and all my spellcraft cannot tell me why. Only constant influxes of raw strength can keep the spells together, and I am so weary all the time. These stolen moments with Fluttershy are all the respite I get.

"I can't stay, and nor can you."

"Run away with me, then," I suggest, wild and impulsive. Romantic, as I have never been before. She loves me, and that is irresistible. "We'll find an island somewhere. A cloud. I know spells. The tides are always high, but there were mountains in the world before."

She hesitates. "You'd leave the Lady for me?"

It sinks in then, the enormity of what I have just offered. But...perhaps it is true. Perhaps I would. "Yes," I say, and it is the truth.

She kisses me again, sweet and wet and wanting, but this time when she pulls away, she does not return. "I have to go," she tells me. "I have to attend to something. But thank you, Twilight. That offer means more to me than I can say."

---

Twilight, Twilight, Twilight.

The crowd is still baying my name.

"What do you think?" she asks, flaring those dragon-leather wings for me, opening her beautiful blue eyes wide to show the slitted pupils within. "You said I was pretty before, Twilight Sparkle. What am I now?"

I watch her there, her eyes gleaming with their own horrible light, just as mine do. Her fangs shine, slick with saliva. A batpony in truth. Whose blood paid for those wings? Whose life did the Lady drink?

Pretty? No. Fluttershy is the triumph of night incarnate, the pale colour of the dawn as it tries and dies on the horizon each evening. She is not pretty. She is awful, and wonderful, and terrible in her beauty.

"My brother would have liked to see me this way, I think," she remarks, and I feel a tingle of something creep along my spine.

I think it is fear. When she looks at me like that, her eyes narrowed, I see another face. Another expression of hate, from many moons ago.

Before her lips shape the word, I know what she will say.

"Do you think your brother would have liked to see you now?"

Would have, she said. Deliberate and vicious, that use of the past tense.

I see those bat wings and slitted pupils with new eyes, and suddenly I know what she has done.

"Tell me you didn't."

She smiles, small and cruel. Her eyes are the same colour as the Lady's, and now they share her expression, too.

"Fluttershy." Her name is a plea. "Tell me you didn't hurt him."

"The brother of the Twilight is worth protecting," she remarks. "The brother of a nobody? Not so much. It's a shame I wasn't Twilight when Zephyr was marked as workshy, isn't it?"

"Fluttershy." My voice fails as I speak her name, croaking like an old mare. "Fluttershy. I didn't choose Zephyr Breeze. You have to believe me."

"Oh, I believe you." She reaches through the bars and taps me gently on the nose. "And I know you'll believe me when I tell you I did choose Shining Armor. I think he appreciated it, in the end. He smiled as the knife came down. Imagine living like that -- a lazy little slug confined to bed. It was a good choice. The kindest thing for him."

I shut my eyes once more, screwing them tight shut to block the sight of those eyes, blue as the moon in midwinter, blue as the crystals, blue as the glyphs and all the lovely things in this world. I don't want to see her smiling at me like that anymore.

She killed my brother. She killed Shiny.

A strangled sob is the only response I can manage.

"Don't worry. You have your role too. Your blood will fuel my friend Rainbow Dash's ascension," she tells me confidentially. "Rainbow Dusk, now. She's wanted to be an outrider since we were fillies, and now I can give her that. You can give her that. It's kind of you, Twilight. Or should I call you Serene now? That was your name before."

Numbly, I nod. Serene Sparkle. I have not heard that name since I was a filly, since I hatched the ancient egg that spilled the hideous dragon onto the stone floor of the hatchling. My mother not one week dead, and my power was such that I was named Twilight in her place. Serene Sparkle. Is that who I am now?

"You'll see this is the right thing, Serene." Fluttershy is implacable.

What will her name become, after the ceremony tonight? Twilightshy? Twilight Flutter?

I will never know.

Beyond the bars of my cage, the mare I once loved smiles wide as the crescent moon, and the mob roars the name she stole from me.

Twilight, Twilight, Twilight.

The Lady is waiting, and her great thirst is as eternal as the night.

Twilight, Twilight, Twilight.

Fluttershy spreads her leathern wings wide, and the crowd screams its adulation. The Lady descends, black as pitch. Fluttershy gestures, and one of her acolytes pushes my cage forward in her wake. The altar looms, crusted with older stains. Which of those was Shining Armor?

Twilight, Twilight, Twilight.

Time to die.