Anon and Amber Eyes 8: Rage against the dying of the light

>Be Anon.
>Be a somewhat drunken Anon, reeling at a celebration that's being held for Amber Eyes' safe return to the Flocks of the Red Sun Aerie.  Well, both of you, really.
>Like most ponies, bird-ponies are ready to drop literally everything and party at the drop of a hat.  You have no idea how anypony--gets anything done here, and really, you still don't even after over six years.
>But it works for them.
>They seem to have far fewer stress-related diseases than humans suffered through in your own world, and that alone seems to indicate that, whatever it is, they're on to something.
>They're better at putting down burdens than most human beings you've met.  With exceptions.
>You don't call Twilight Spergle that just to be cute.
>Anyway...you once mentioned over 5,000 varieties of beverage, and right now, you figure that you've drank over half of them just in the hours since you started.
>The thing you're drinking now is ice-cold, malted, yeasty and slightly sweet, yet sour in a perfectly nice combination, and it's better than nearly anything else you've had since you got here.
>"One, two, three, DRINK!"

>>27930607
My gall bladder and work happened.  Ever have to work through a gall bladder attack?  Yeah, I'm sort of dead from the neck up.  But I have to try to get something down. I NEED to get something down.

>the air is filled with music--there's singing, behind you, you can hear bird-pony musicians and they're actually jamming with some folks who came in from Canterlot,  Ponyville and even from as far away as Manehattan.
>You're told that this is pretty much unprecedented.  Well, it was, before...well, the Incident, which was...equally unprecedented.
>There's at least thirty different groups of musicians around here, and the music's ranging from electronica to something that sounds surprisingly Celtic, which is fairly similar to bird-pone traditional music
>And it's surprisingly more harmonious than you'd expected, all things told, but that could just be the alcohol talking.
>Luna's around here. Somewhere.  You'd spoken with her earlier, right?.
>Oh, right.  She's right there in front of you, chugging a mug of this...stuff.
>Bread.  It's made from bread.  The bird-ponies are bread fiends--it's not the best for them, really, but they prize it as one of the best foodstuffs.  They don't waste ANY of it, and in addition to eating it, they brew the stuff into a variety of drinkables.
>Some of which are perfectly suitable to give to foals, flavored with fruits, nuts, berries and various herbs and combinations of all of the above.  They're varying degrees of sweet and most of them are pretty refreshing.
>Then there's the variations like this, which basically have enough alcohol to simply eat the brain away.  You'd been told this stuff is over 60%, and just to prove it, Amber had set some on fire.
>You're not entirely sure what happened after that,  but it seemed to revolve around a discussion of what the human liver is capable of doing, versus that of a pony.
>Human eating habits led to the development of a liver capable of metabolizing nearly anything.

>>27931953

>meanwhile, pony livers were forced to value quantity over quality, since the foodstuffs they apparently evolved to eat were generally relatively nutritional poor, and their systems had to be able to wring every last bit of nutrition from what was available.
>And, indeed, the operative word was "anything,"
>You've had a few experiences with what they COULD tolerate that you couldn't.  false hellebore salad, skunk cabbage casserole, opanax souffle, and a few other things.
>But regardless, you vaguely remembered that Luna had been involved, somewhere, and had challenged both you and Amber to this game.
>You had no idea who was winning.

>>27931953

>meanwhile, pony livers were forced to value quantity over quality, since the foodstuffs they apparently evolved to eat were generally relatively nutritional poor, and their systems had to be able to wring every last bit of nutrition from what was available.
>And, indeed, the operative word was "anything,"
>You've had a few experiences with what they COULD tolerate that you couldn't.  false hellebore salad, skunk cabbage casserole, opanax souffle, and a few other things.
>the reverse was also true.  You could take acetominophen.  Indeed, Sparkle had cracked the synthesis of that early on and you got a standing prescription of it, but the number of creatures who could use it safely here were limited mostly to dragons, primate-family sapients and you.
>The patent for that was a good, early source of income for you.
>But regardless, you vaguely remembered that Luna had been involved, somewhere, and had challenged both you and Amber to this game.
>You had no idea who was winning, but you seemed to be having too much fun to care right now.
>Beside you, Amber is drinking a mug of the same stuff you are.  You're not sure where she's putting it, since she's matched you glass for glass, and you're...you're thinking this is the fifth mug of this you've had.
>"Okay....now, got to put..." Luna mumbles.  She picks up a bottle of something clear, and it smells like sweet juniper.  Slightly clumsily, she adds a couple of hefty shots to each one of your glasses, including hers..

>>27931953

>meanwhile, pony livers were forced to value quantity over quality, since the foodstuffs they apparently evolved to eat were generally relatively nutritional poor, and their systems had to be able to wring every last bit of nutrition from what was available.
>And, indeed, the operative word was "anything,"
>You've had a few experiences with what they COULD tolerate that you couldn't.  false hellebore salad, skunk cabbage casserole, opanax souffle, and a few other things.
>the reverse was also true.  You could take acetominophen.  Indeed, Sparkle had cracked the synthesis of that early on and you got a standing prescription of it, but the number of creatures who could use it safely here were limited mostly to dragons, primate-family sapients and you.
>The patent for that was a good, early source of income for you.
>But regardless, you vaguely remembered that Luna had been involved, somewhere, and had challenged both you and Amber to this game.
>You had no idea who was winning, but you seemed to be having too much fun to care right now.
>Beside you, Amber is drinking a mug of the same stuff you are.  You're not sure where she's putting it, since she's matched you glass for glass, and you're...you're thinking this is the fifth mug of this you've had.
>She's not quite nonverbal, since she's singing loudly, noisily and off-key, interspersing it with random pigeon-pone coos and some story she was trying to tell involving a dragon and a tennis ball.
>"Okay....now, got to put..." Luna mumbles.  She picks up a bottle of something clear, and it smells like sweet juniper.  Slightly clumsily, she adds a couple of hefty shots to each one of your glasses, including hers.
>The original game had involved taking a sip and then replacing what you'd just drank with the stuff in that bottle.
>It had, of course, rapidly deteriorated into downing the mug, putting a couple of good fingers of the stuff in, and then putting more bird-pony brew in on top of that.

>>27932035

>"That is...indeed quite a story," Luna slurrs.
>"They..they used to fill them with arcanite," Amber says.  "The tennis balls.  Or was that golf balls?   Can't remember..."
"Verily," Luna agrees.  "I cannot either."  She sloshes the bottle around, then knocks it back and drinks the rest.
>"There is...there is not enough in this bottle."  There's a flash and a pop and another bottle is there.  "Ah.  Now we are cooking with gas, as they say in this time.  And as they said in MY time, bottoms up."
>She pours a couple of generous fingerfuls in each of your glasses, and Amber clumsily refills all your mugs with more brew on top of that.
>"One...two...three...DRINK!" she slurrs out.  >You each down it again.
>You look at her.  her tongue is lolling and she can't quite focus on anything.  Clearly human supremacy is winning the day here, since you're as sharp as when you started.
>Now, if only the world would stop spinning around.
>Luna.  Lunar Princess.  Princess of the Moon.  Sailor Moon.
>"We walked  you know." you say.  "On the moon."

>>27932126

>"I was there, for a thousand years," she slurs a little morosely.  "In another life.  I do not remember much of it.  It is just as well..."
>"So what'd y' do there, all that time?" asks Amber, slurring her words but the writefag is not writing them down that way because he is really not patient enough to try to write down drunktalk as it really is, so let the reader imagine it.  They're shitfaced, okay?  Let's all move past this.
>"As I...I said," she says.  "I do not remember much of it.  I built sandcastles I think.  It was another life really."
>You remember Twilight showing you the surface of the moon through a magically-enhanced telescope and seeing long, long chains of ordered bits marching across the landscape for hundreds of miles, and pyramid-shaped structures the size of cities.
>Apparently Luna was really bored.
>Not for the first time, it goes through your mind that you're actually getting falling-down drunk with a being who, in your own world, would probably be worshiped as a physical goddess.
>As usual, you let it go, because it's just too big, and if ponies can ignore the implications, you can too.
>"You say your people walked on the moon," Luna says.  She takes a sip directly from the clear bottle of spirits and passes it to Amber, who chugs from it and then passes it to you.  "How did you...how did you do this thing?"

>>27932126

>"I was there, for a thousand years," she slurs a little morosely.  "In another life.  I do not remember much of it.  It is just as well..."
>"So what'd y' do there, all that time?" asks Amber, slurring her words but the writefag is not writing them down that way because he is really not patient enough to try to write down drunktalk as it really is, so let the reader imagine it.  They're shitfaced, okay?  Let's all move past this.
>"As I...I said," she says.  "I do not remember much of it.  I built sandcastles I think.  It was another life really."
>You remember Twilight showing you the surface of the moon through a magically-enhanced telescope and seeing long, long chains of ordered bits marching across the landscape for hundreds of miles, and pyramid-shaped structures the size of cities.
>Apparently Luna was really bored.
>Not for the first time, it goes through your mind that you're actually getting falling-down drunk with a being who, in your own world, would probably be worshiped as a physical goddess.
>As usual, you let it go, because it's just too big, and if ponies can ignore the implications, you can too.
>"You say your people walked on the moon," Luna says.  She takes a sip directly from the clear bottle of spirits and passes it to Amber, who chugs from it and then passes it to you.  "How did you...how did you do this thing?"
>You think for a minute, as best as you can right now.  "We built a tube, and filled it with kerosene, and put another smaller tube on top of that, and a tube on top of THAT one, and so on.  And then we lit one end of it."
>"Basically like a giant firecracker," slurs Amber.  "And then, they compressed their air in tanks and carried it with them."
>Luna looks up at the sky, looks at her moon.  "For beings without magic, an amazing feat."
>You know she can move the moon here.  You know that it's approximately the same size and mass of your world's own.  You have not let yourself consider the implications of that.

>>27932204

>"My magic is not restricted, as it once was" she says. "Not anymore.  I think...would you two like to walk on the moon?  I think I can show you."
>And there's a flash.
>You and Amber both find you're standing on a vast, stony gray plain, and for a moment, it feels almost like you're in an elevator, falling.  You feel lightheaded, and not from the effect of the strong drink
>You're still breathing.  You look down, and Amber's eyes are as wide as saucers, her pupils pinpricks.  "Oh...bright lady," she says.  She looks down at the hard-packed ground underfoot, dusty and dry and very slightly powdery.  Her wings flutter--she's surrounded by a thin, glowing envelope, which is probably the source of the cool, clean air you're breathing, but she can't get any lift.
>You pick her up and put her on your shoulders, and both of you stare and take in the new world around you.
>"So this is the moon, I guess," she says, looking around.  "It's less...oh my...Anon?  Do yourself a favor and turn around."
>there's a smell in your nostrils, of something like gunpowder, and the soft crunch of lunar soil under your shoes.  In the distance, you low hills and mountains on the horizon, but as you slowly turn around, you finally see the huge structure behind you.
>It's bigger than anything you've ever seen, made of bricks and pillars and cubes of polished, multicolored glass the size of factories.
>the colors seem mostly toward the blue end of the spectrum, but with the brilliant sun behind it, it's resplendent with rainbows.
>It has to be at least a mile high, and miles on a side, and it goes up level after level after level.
>"It's beautiful, no?"  you hear.  Beside you, you see Luna now, drinking from her bottle of spirits.  She passes it to you and Amber, and wordlessly, you each drink."I barely remember building it.  It took so long..."
>there's another flash, and suddenly the three of you are standing on the top of it.

>"Oh Celestia, this is...this is beautiful," breathes Amber.
>All you can do is agree with her.
>The top of the...castle?  Citadel?  Fairy City?--is absolutely covered in sculptures, some abstract, some simple shapes, some sculpted into dragons, ponies, and still  stranger creatures, all in colored crystal and glass.
>the sun is shining through them, creating a wonderland of shifting, coruscating rainbow colors.  And along one raised wall, you see a mural of a beautiful pony in ink-black and midnight blue, her dark wings stretching wide to cover an orb of cerulean blue and green--the world of Equestria.
>it's so beautiful that for a moment, both of you forget to breathe.
>"You...created all of this?" says Amber, directing her question to Luna, who has stood beside you silent the entire time.
>"Yes.  No. It was..." she says, finally, staring at her hooves. "It was not truly me.  Not entirely.  I can only remember flashes of it, here and there.  When I...when Nightmare Moon.possessed me, I was not completely in control of myself.
>"We would spend years at a time, building these edifices, and then, we would see that they were not perfect, not like the image we had created in both of our minds.  And we would fly into a rage, and smash years of our work into dust.  And then we would start again."
>Her magic protects you both.  You stare at the sun, which should be blinding, and between your newly enhanced vision and the spells around you, you can see the colors in it.
>There are bits of colored crystal on the rooftop.  You stop and pick up a couple of them, and pass one of the sparkling, rainbow-hued, intricately-shaped bits  to Amber.  Her eyes light up--like many actual birds, bird-ponies had a great love of shiny, glimmery things.
>You'd seen her tent--it was a wonderland of shiny things, ranging from pieces of brightly-colored foil she'd folded in origami-like shapes, to the tiny crystal-and-metal things her sister made, and literally everything she'd ever found.

>>27932401

>>27932401

>You wondered where she was going to put this.
>You start to take out your cell phone/hi-tech brick in order to start snapping pictures...;.and then you stop.
>This is beautiful.  Perhaps the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.  And it's a relic of your world, that you still feel the urge to take a picture, commemorate each and every wonder, every bit of the magnificence around you for eternity.
>But now, here...it feels just *wrong.*
>Luna is showing the two of you something she's shown almost nopony else. At least you assume so--you've never heard of any startup called "Luna's Lunar Guided Tours," so you assume it's something she doesn't feel comfortable showing around casually.
>Luna leads the two of you up a stairway on the other side of the great mural...and you see it.  The grand hall.
>You revise your estimates of the sheer scale of this place.  the edifice on the other side of the grand courtyard and garden, covered with topiary and trees of colored, cut crystal and glass, is probably at least as big as you'd initially estimated the size of the entire structure itself was.
>Wordlessly you walk, the three of you bouncing slightly in the low gravity, and enter the great, shining hall beyond.  Amber's breath stops in her throat, and yours does too.
>Crystalline pillars, crystal fountains, the water somehow protected from the vacuum by presumably the same magic that protected you both. Statues of ponies.  One, you recognize as Starswirl the bearded.  Another of Celestia.  Most of them you don't recognize.
Have you ever shown anypony--anyONE--else these?
>"No,' says luna softly.  "Only my sister.  I came here once after my...redemption, with her."    You hear the pause in her voice.
>You wonder why she's showing you this.
>And at the far, far end of the hallway, you see it.  It's at once the grandest sculpture in this magnificent place, and the most horrifying, and at last you understand why she didn't want others to see it.

>>27933347

>At the far end of the grand hall, you see a low dais, and a single great, crystalline throne, this one made of platinum and obsidian, and inlaid with bits of jasper, rubies and emeralds.
>(A distant, irrelevant part of your mind regurgitates the factoid that platinum-group metals were rare on Earth--or Equestria, presumably--but common on asteroids.)
>Behind the throne, you see...
>...a great, obsidian statue of Nightmare Moon, bigger than the Statue of Liberty, holding aloft the severed head of Princess Celestia in one hoof while the other rested on her headless corpse, rendered in exquisite, lifelike detail in crystal and precious metals.
>In comparison with the rest of this place, it was tiny, miniscule even.  You look back behind you, and you wonder just how big this place REALLY was, and how you had managed to cross so much territory so fast.  Had you really been walking that long?
Oh...my...
>your words are mirrored by Amber.  You look at each other in shock.
>"We...I..spent a century laboring on this one piece," Luna said, her voice hushed and distant. "I showed this to my sister, on my release.  When they had verified that I posed no more threat, that the Nightmare entity was truly gone from me.
>"I wanted her to understand that, regardless of what Nightmare Moon had done with me, it had only been possible with my permission. With my acquiescence.  To use a metaphor that you might understand--Nightmare Moon might have been driving, but it was Princess Luna that unlocked the door, let her in and then gave her the keys.
>"All she said, though, when I showed her this, was to comment that it was a little too big to fit in the castle gallery.  And then she hugged me, and said, 'I love you, sister.'"
>She drained the bottle of spirits you had been sharing, and then another appeared with a flash.  She started to drink, then looked at the bottle, put the cap on and handed it to you.
>"I...don't think I need anymore of this."


>>27933446
>"Gimme that," Amber says.  You pass her the bottle, and the pigeon-pony chugs down a good swallow.  "If she doesn't need it, I think I do."
Luna...why are you showing this to us?
>She looks aside, and for a long time, she doesn't answer. You'd almost  given up waiting, when she finally does.
>"I come here, sometimes, to remind myself of what I once was. What I had allowed myself to become, in my jealousy and pride.  I come here to remind myself what comes of power unchecked when combined with madness."
>She gestures toward the great statue behind the throne.  "As much as I might wish to, I cannot destroy this.  My sister, she may have forgiven me for my sin and my fall, and the ponies I love, but I cannot allow myself the luxury to forget.
>"This place...it is beautiful, but nothing truly lives here.  For all the centuries I dwelt here, I did so utterly alone.  I built palaces to my own magnificence, that only I and I alone would ever be able to appreciate.
>"I created art that no one would ever enjoy, wrote words that no one would ever read.  I was alone. The ultimate reward of power, corrupted and absolute."
>for a long time, there's only silence.  Finally, you feel brave enough to break it.
You said...you don't remember very much.  But you do remember her.  Do you remember what she felt?
>She was silent again for several seconds.
>"Yes.  I do.  Very much so, in fact,.
Then what was it?
>"Rage, hatred...and loneliness."  She turned around to face you.  "I think...I think that we should leave."
>There is a flash, and you stumble as normal, equestria-standard gravity reasserts itself.  You're surrounded by music again. and drunken antics and the smell of cooking and laughter.
>Luna hugs you and Amber both.  "I should probably go," she says, strangely sober now.  She smiles, a little sadly.  "You two should enjoy the party."

>As she leaves, you reflect that this is the LAST time you ever get Luna drunk again. >She's far too maudlin.
>It doesn't occur to you in your inebriated state that she never DID answer your question.
>Not quite.

>Be Luna.
>Be luna, two days before, awakening from a dream you couldn't remember only a few hours after you'd turned in for the morning, and stumbling from your bedroom onto your balcony in a state of shock only to find Celestia, the princess of the day, already there, along with one you recognize as an elder storykeeper of the Red Sun Aerie flock.
>"Do you see, sister?" she says. Effortlessly, you slip into arcane sight, and the world around you fades from normal light and into the glow of Power.
>You both see the multicolored rainbow flickers and sparkles of light and life around you, ponies and the other citizens of your realm moving about their day to day lives, and the steady, stately glow of the life of the trees, the plants and grasses, of the living pulse of Equestria itself.
>And far, far over eastern Canterlot, you see, like the light of a new dawn, two red and blue-hued bursts of light shining like novae. You'd sensed them even in your sleep. They were rapidly fading now, but even yet, they were outshining everything around them.
>"The press conference was today, wasn't it?" you ask Celestia. "Over there."
>The princess of the sun nods.
>the elderly pony beside your sister merely looks impassive. "The end of a great cycle is always a bit sticky. Interesting choice of midwives this time around, I think. Do you think they're up to it?"
>"When the time is right, they will be. Do you think WE are?" asks Celestia.
>You wonder the same thing.
>The elder snorts. "Time will tell. It always does."