Moss Moon and the Lunar Spring, Part 9

You are a human warrior, and you can see nothing at all.

Moss Moon walks at your side, an invisible shape in the darkness.  You hold on to her mane as she guides you, your ears picking up only the faint chirp of her echolocation as she gauges the path ahead.

You’ve lost track of how long you’ve been wandering these tunnels.  It’s easily been hours, following the labyrinth carved out by earthcrawlers you have yet to encounter.  You consider yourself fortunate.

Every part of you aches.  Weariness weighs heavily on your body.  Your broken arm pulses with dull pain.  You’d like nothing more than to curl up on the ground and go to sleep, but you know that you cannot.  You have to keep going, both for you, and for her.

You find it strange how close you’ve gotten with this bat pony, this mare who seems so friendly and yet so guarded at the same time.  It feels good, but strange, and unfamiliar; it has been a long time since you’ve been able to call someone “friend.”  And yet here you are, walking side by side with the unlikeliest of companions, far deep beneath the mountain.

You don’t know what you were thinking, with the hug.  She had been standing there and you both were afraid and it had occurred to you to put your arm around her.  It was no secret that you were terrified of this dark place, but in that moment you had felt a strange sort of peace, as she relaxed against you, her heartbeat slowing, her breath on your neck.  It had been a wonderful feeling.

Even now it feels good just to be beside her, not only because she can actually see the path, but also because you know that you are not alone.  You hope she feels the same comfort.

Now there can be no words between you, however.  You both are trying to move as quietly as possible, boots and hooves sliding over rough, raw stone.

You wince as gravel suddenly crunches underfoot.  Moss Moon stiffens, and stops.  You feel her groping around in the dark, trying to get your attention, and you lean down to listen.

“Fresh tunnel,” she whispers in your ear.  You had felt distant rumblings and vibrations earlier, but you couldn’t tell where they were coming from.  It seems that you’ve located the remnants of at least one crawler’s recent travels.

You nod, signaling your understanding of the danger, and Moss Moon sets off once again.  The tunnel slopes sharply upward, to the point where you must climb in places, the path zigzagging up and over veins of hard rock.

You continue for an indeterminate amount of time, perhaps half an hour.  As you climb, the earth begins to rumble again.  This time, it’s close by.

You hear Moss Moon’s hooves scrabbling on something above you, and you blindly boost her up.  A moment later she’s pulling on you as you struggle to climb onto a sagging ledge of stone.

The whole mountain seems to vibrate, and the sound of grinding stone fills your ears.  Moss Moon isn’t moving.

You almost yell to her to ask why she’s stopped, when she shouts over the cacophony: “A hole!  There’s a hole here!  I can see the road!”

Relief washes over you.  The road.  Finally, you’ll be getting out of this accursed place.  You’ll reach unknown lands and see the Lunar Spring.  You’ll get to see the other side.

The rumbling continues, and you hear the sharp sound of stone striking stone.  Moss Moon is trying to buck through the thin rock and widen the hole.

You begin turning to help her, when out of the corner of your eye you see a small blue light.

It rolls around in the depths of the tunnel below you.  You watch as it slowly draws closer and closer.  The light is joined by others, until a glowing circle is rising gradually from the deep dark.  The rumbling grows louder and louder, the shriek of rock burning like fire in your ears.  You feel a profound dread sink into your stomach.

You tap Moss Moon to get her attention.  She turns to look.  You faintly hear her curse, then redouble her efforts to break through the rock, bucking frantically at the wall.

The circle of blue lights draws near, and with a sound like a thousand knives grinding together, the circle opens.  A maw lined with row after row of razor-sharp teeth opens wide beneath you, bathed in a sickly blue glow.  A high-pitched whine escapes the earthcrawler’s gullet as its teeth begin to spin at blinding speed.

Where the cave-in earlier had felt surreal, this feels as if all your senses have been attuned for this one moment.  You smell the alkaline stench of powdered stone, the scent of sweat and fear.  Your heart pounds steady in your chest.  Your muscles hold taut.  Your eyes hone in on the one thing you’ve seen in what feels like an eternity: a vision of death slithering toward you, its slimy body and many teeth.  You hear Moss Moon shouting, pounding on the wall, shouting.

There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.  She won’t be able to break through in time.  There is only one thing you can do.

You had wanted to see the other side, but what you wanted most of all was to see your companion’s face again.

The earthcrawler lunges, its mouth widening to engulf you both.  You draw your sword with your unbroken arm, and leap.

***

“…moonlight, like sunlight, is diffracted into two parts: the spirit, and the substance.

The spirit of moonlight is what we typically call “moonlight”; that is, the illumination provided by the moon.  The substance of moonlight is its point of origin and progenitor; that is, the moon itself.

If both the spirit and substance of the moonlight were to be combined, the effect would be quite powerful indeed, drawing upon the vastness of dreams, and the inherent power of the lunar.

Needless to say, such a combination is quite impossible, so long as the moon remains lodged in the firmament, and ponykind remains earthbound.”

- Excerpt from “Properties of Lunar And Celestial Light And Those Bodies From Which They Originate,” a dry and dusty tome with a red vellum cover, most certainly hundreds if not thousands of years old.

This book lies in a stack in Grandmother’s study, its pages rather dog-eared, resting in the shade of a shelf of colored powders.  Beneath that book is a lacquered, jade-hued codex, substantially newer, and radically different.  An excerpt:

“As late as three centuries ago, references can be found with significant frequency to goddesses of both the sun and moon.   These figures were believed to hold such power over the celestial bodies that they could move them on a whim, and in fact these goddesses were believed to control the cycle of day and night.

Gradually this ditheistic belief disappeared, to be replaced by monotheistic apprehensions of the same myths, with variants devoted specifically to either the sun or moon goddess.  A common theme in the evolution of these faiths was the idea that the moon goddess – whether through banishment or of her own volition – had gone to sleep within the moon.

What is most curious is the shift in the popular image of the moon goddess.  In surviving shrines and temples, we see that the moon goddess was associated with the dreaming of mortal ponies, and that she acted as a sort of guide or shepherd for mortals as they slept.

Over time, the symbols and practices associated with the moon goddess began to change, as she became associated not only with dreaming, but also with death.  In the same way that she guided sleepers in their dreams, so too did she guide the spirits of the dead, as their lives ended and new dreams began.”

These books, of course, are quite old, and the religions and scientific principles discussed within bear only a passing resemblance to those currently accepted by the bat ponies of Hollow Shades and the lower Crystal Mountains.

Grandmother snoozing in her chair, her implements of imprecations and curses scattered on blood-stained parchment upon her worktable, prays to a Goddess much like her ancestors did; but in this era, that Goddess is far different from what she once was.

But still do the bat ponies pray to her, whispering “Goddess save the little foals” for the countless orphans that crowd the enclaves of the Asperi.

And so too does a lone bat pony mare, her wings cut from her back, pray to her Goddess, as with all her strength she drags the body of a human from the depths of Foal Mountain, his tattered cloak soaked in blood.

You are Moss Moon, and your friend is dying.