Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
Silhouette stumbled blindly through the streets of Canterlot.
He turned corners at random, hurrying down every avenue with a sense of urgency despite having no destination in mind. Where he was going didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered right now was putting as much distance as he could between himself and the train station.
But his efforts were in vain. Even now, he could feel his thoughts turning back toward what had just happened, to the things he’d seen and heard after Princess Cadance had brought him back to life. That he’d been resurrected by the servant of a different faith was mortifying enough, but that had been nothing compared to the sight that had awaited him then.
Whereas Cadance’s goddess had given her the power to perform a miracle beyond anything Equestria had ever known, his own was in no state to do any such thing. Far from it; he had barely been able to recognize the unicorn in the train car, surrounded by the other princesses. Had the cutie mark not been unmistakably that of the pony he worshiped, he never would have thought it was the same person. But once he had seen it, once he’d realized just who the mangled mare was…
His foreleg, the one that had withered so badly after he’d begun receiving divine magic, suddenly gave out under him. Having broken into a run without realizing it at some point, Silhouette couldn’t recover his balance in time, hitting the ground hard and going tumbling. It was only after several seconds that he came to a halt, lying in the middle of the street in a daze.
He could hear several voices whispering, and others were raised in offers of help or questions as to whether he was alright or not. But Silhouette ignored them all, his brain filtering them out as unimportant. Instead he looked at his mangled foreleg, the symbol of his devotion. He’d been so proud of it, so pleased to wear the proof of his faith – of how the one whom he revered had bestowed her power upon him, of all ponies – upon his very body. But now…now he found himself seriously considering tearing the offending limb off completely, hating the sight of it.
She tried to apologize for this, too, he suddenly remembered. She hadn’t meant to twist his foreleg like that; it had been an accident, an unintended consequence of her bestowing the tiniest fraction of her power on him. She’d started to say that she was sorry for it, but he hadn’t wanted to hear it. Transcendent beings didn’t apologize. That wasn’t how it worked. By their very nature, they existed beyond such petty concerns, surpassing and exceeding the mundane problems that mortals had to deal with. They didn’t worry about what others thought of them, and they certainly didn’t feel the need to express remorse for their actions!
And yet he couldn’t block out her voice from mere minutes ago…
“S-Silhouette!” she croaked, tears running down her face. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! What happened to you was my fault! I wasn’t strong enough!”
The memory made Silhouette clench his teeth so hard they almost cracked, and he could feel a scream welling up inside him. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to keep it in, he looked around wildly. But he’d stumbled into one of the plazas that dotted downtown Canterlot, and there was nowhere that offered any sort of seclusion. So instead, he did the only thing he could. Loping toward the plaza’s central fountain as fast as his three undamaged legs could carry him, Silhouette threw himself at the edge of it, dunking his head beneath the water just as the last of his self-control snapped and a wild cry escaped his lips.
He screamed and screamed and screamed, until his lungs were burning and his ears felt like they were going to pop. Even then it wasn’t enough, and he thrashed wildly, banging his head on the bottom of the shallow pool around the fountain again and again. It was only when he couldn’t make himself utter even the most strangled of gasps, blood clouding the water, that he lifted his head out of the pool and fell back, collapsing next to the fountain.
Dimly, he noted that his demonstration had caught the attention of everypony nearby. They were all looking at him with wide-eyed expressions, ranging from complete shock to abject horror. For their sake, Silhouette hoped that none of them approached him, because he felt not at all mollified, his attempt to release the agony in his heart having failed. The only difference was that now he found it even harder to stave off the memories of what had driven him to this…
Of that mewling, defeated wretch of a mare back in that train car, bleating apologies at him like a squealing pig.
Of what had been left of Luna, his beautiful, elegant Goddess after Lex Legis had finished with her.
Hacking and coughing, Silhouette somehow climbed to his hooves, stumbling away from the plaza. It was too open here. Too exposed. He needed someplace where his memories couldn’t get at him, couldn’t make him see that image of the mare he’d once worshiped in his mind’s eye anymore.
His hooves dragged along the ground as he trudged through the city. Several times he stumbled, and once he threw up, spewing water in great lungfuls until he could barely breathe. But somehow he made it to the edge of the city, almost collapsing down the stairwell that led to the basement entrance, fishing the key out from behind the loose brick to the left of the door.
Having been built into the side of a mountain, space was always at a premium in Canterlot. Even the tiniest apartment cost more to rent than a spacious loft would have in Manehattan. That was why almost every member of the Royal Guard lived rent-free in the castle barracks. But after one week there, Silhouette had known that he needed his own place. The other guards lacked the proper respect for the Goddess, their games and carousing interrupting his prayers. Worse, some of them were prone to speaking lightly of her, or daring to mention her time as Nightmare Moon with fear or disdain, instead of recognizing it as a holy expungement of her mortal imperfections, allowing her to return from her thousand-year cleansing ready to look within the darkest of dreaming minds and be unsullied by the filth she found there. It had been maddening.
The breaking point had been when one guard had dared to speak of the Goddess in a lustful manner, as though she were some ill-bred tart rather than a savior. Silhouette had put a stop to that quickly enough, however. After that, everyone knew to speak respectfully of the Goddess in his presence if they didn’t want to spend their meager salary having their teeth replaced.
But although his compatriots had restrained their iniquity, it had been clear to Silhouette that he couldn’t worship in peace in that place. So he had found somewhere else to dwell, trading proximity to the Goddess for a place where he could pray to her without interruption. It wasn’t much of a dwelling, being a dingy little basement apartment with only two rooms (a living/dining area and the bathroom) and an equal number of windows, but at the time he hadn’t cared. Quite the contrary, he’d turned the far wall of the living area into a shrine to the Goddess.
It was composed of a series of shelves that he’d repurposed, all filled with trinkets that he’d dedicated to the Goddess. Pictures of her clipped from the local newspaper. Figurines of her that he’d carved and painted. A now-withered bouquet of lavender that she’d placed in the wall-sconce of the guard barracks while he was there (and which those ungrateful mongrels hadn’t even noticed). A spoon that had touched her elegant lips at a repast she’d shared with her sister. And his most prized possession, a few strands of her beautiful hair, which he had secreted away after noticing them on her pillow.
It didn’t amount to much, but it was the very least he could do after all that she’d done for him. In the wake of the Elemental Bleeds, when he’d been tormented by nightmares every night about what had happened to his brother, Luna had been the one to come into his dreams and soothe his pain. Thanks to her, he’d no longer seen Manehattan burning each time he’d fallen asleep, no longer witnessed what had become of his brother after he’d gone back to the kennel, insisting on making sure all of the dogs there had been freed from their cages. He’d succeeded, but not before the monsters that had come with the flames had found him…
Luna had saved him from the torment of those memories, her resplendent presence protecting him as he slept, mightier than any nightmare. And he had known then that he’d survived for a reason: to love her and worship her and make her benevolence known throughout Equestria. But the reminders of his devotion for her assaulted him now, and he felt a new surge of anger flowing through him at the sight of them, hating them for daring to ambush him when he was trying to recover! Despite what Princess Twilight had said about the strain on his body, and despite what he’d put himself through on the way back, Silhouette was still an earth stallion, and he lunged across the room in sudden anger, lashing out at the shrine in fury.
The collected baubles went flying now, crashing to the floor as he tore the shelves from the wall in a rage, hurling them across the room. Nor did he stop there, smashing the sole chair he’d bought for himself to splinters, before turning his wrath on the cot that he’d set up for himself. At one point someone knocked on the door, but that merely resulted in him turning his wrath against the offending portal, throwing a lamp against it as hard as he could. It had very nearly knocked the door off the hinges, sending whoever had been there scrambling back up the stairs in a panic, which was just as well. Silhouette still didn’t want to see anypony. It was only when there was nothing left to destroy that he slumped down into the corner, thoroughly exhausted and utterly miserable.
Once again, that fatigue allowed the events of earlier to come back to him, hearing the words in his mind even when he covered his ears.
“I think that’s what you said the guards saw! Remember how the ones that were still conscious said they saw Lex’s magic lift Luna up and wrap her in some sort of black aura, and how it seemed to sink into her? I think that’s it! That’s the magic of his curse!”
That had been what Princess Twilight Sparkle had said. Those words, combined with that horrifying imagery of Luna held aloft in that pink aura, tugging ineffectively at that horrific black substance had clung to her like a second skin, told him everything that had happened since he had been slain. And although the knowledge felt like someone had poured acid on his very soul, there was nothing he could do to stop it from sinking into his mind now…
His sacrifice hadn’t saved the Goddess from Lex Legis’s wrath. The sorcerer had fought her, and he had won, and he had been merciless in his victory. If his Goddess had met her end in battle, spitting in the evil sorcerer’s face in defiance and fighting him to the last, then it would have been far kinder a fate. That would have allowed her dignity to remain intact, so that she might remain in his heart and the hearts of all those who revered her forever, unblemished.
But Lex Legis hadn’t wanted to kill her. He’d wanted to ruin her. To desecrate her. And he’d done exactly that, reducing her from a transcendent being to a fallen one. By making her less than she was, Lex Legis had turned her from being a Goddess into being a victim, and victims by their very nature were objects of pity.
You couldn’t worship someone you pitied.
That was the inescapable truth that Silhouette struggled with as he sat there rocked back and forth amidst the wreckage. As badly as he wanted to continue worshiping Luna, to keep revering her as the Goddess of his heart, he couldn’t. The awe he’d felt for her had been ruined now, the memory of what had become of her spoiling what had formerly been a sense of rapture. Even if the other princesses succeeded in changing her back, the knowledge of how Lex Legis had sullied her would, he knew, never go away.
And so there was nothing Silhouette could do but sit there and let that horrible memory eat away at the most important thing in his life. Devouring the one thing that had given his existence meaning. Until all that was left was hatred for the pony that had done this to him.
Hatred for Lex Legis.
With no one else to help him handle what's happened to Luna, Silhouette's thoughts turn toward a dark path!
What will become of him now?
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Well... he's an oracle, and oracles aren't required to worship (or like, or tolerate) their patrons. So at least he should still have divine magic?
Growing thrashing, kicking, biting.
All adoration gone; hate is inviting.
Silhouettes of shadows, near are lurking
This stallion's soul is surely jerking.
When told that he is already dead
Silhouette will try to end
Lex Legis instead.
Wow...a homemade shrine and everything. Given what happened to his brother and how Luna soothed his nightmares in his vulnerable state, it's no wonder why he latched onto Luna the way he did. The only good thing is that he's focusing his hatred on Lex instead of thinking of ending Luna to 'preserve' his memory of her when she was his goddess. A little dark perhaps but given the contents of his shrine to her, I couldn't help but jump to that conclusion.
Still, I do wonder one thing. With Luna in her diminished state, does Silhouette still retain the fraction of his former goddess' power within him?
9993456
STOP THE BOAT.
Ok, so which Everfree deity of death, destruction, revenge etc has just found a really good Apostle or even Avatar right there?
Um...okay, wow... If there's one thing we can take away from this chapter it's that, assuming she's able to, in the future, Luna needs to do a MUCH better job of vetting any followers. This goes straight from religious fanatic to crazy stalker territory, then puts a brick on the gas even as it careens off the cliff in a flaming ball of WTF.
Honestly I really hope Luna didn't know about at least half of this, especially his views on Nightmare Moon, because I would hope, if she did, she would have been horrified enough to have not touched him with a 20 foot pole, let alone grant him divine powers. And if she DID...here's hoping she never gets out of that curse because she was heading right back into NMM territory, so bullet dodged there.
9993703
Given that divine magic is explicitly stated, at least in settings that have actual divine beings, to come from the god they worship, probably not...so aside from anything he might have had prepared before Severance offed him, he shouldn't have access to any more magic. Granted I'm not that familiar with Oracles.
9993738
Luckily the Everglow deity of death is pretty chill. In fact she'd probably be pissed at Sil for getting resurrected.
9993797
Considering that Silhouette had a spoon Luna used...yeah I can the reasoning behind your reaction. It was...unsettling to say the least. Still, I think you were a tad hasty to place the full blame at Luna or Silhouette's feet-er hooves either.
Remember, it's been established that this Equestria has no institution or medical professionals to deal with mental trauma which pretty much leaves Princess Luna as Equestria's closest thing that resembles a psychiatrist. So you can imagine that having one of the princesses coming to help you with your nightmares would leave a big impression on you(as evidenced by the CMC), even more so given Silhouette's loss.
As a result, Silhouette truly never recovered from his loss. He simply latched onto Luna and given how enamored Luna was with his devotion, she latched onto him in return which made dealing with his attitude towards others all the more difficult since she wouldn't want him to leave her(this is going to suck big time for Luna when Shining asks what's going on)
To put things simply, it's Celestia's fault for being too lax in her authority in establishing a proper government...nah, just kidding. Really, it's the Elemental Bleeds that led to this so...wait, did I just put the blame on Twilight and her unquenchable curiosity?
this is going to be good.
9993871
Still doesn't make him less of a crazy stalker who thinks Nightmare Moon was a good thing.
9994345
Yeah, and since Shining assigned someone to follow and observe him, I think it would be prudent to prepare a room for him at the castle...after removing any and all potentially deadly objects of course.
9993382 The specifics of what oracles need to do to regain their spells is, rather surprisingly (and disappointingly), not specified under the game rules. If you take a look at the "Magic" chapter of the Core Rules, it talks about how sorcerers and bards (which we can extrapolate out as being for all spontaneous arcane spellcasters) regain their spells. It also covers how preparatory divine spellcasters (i.e. clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers) regain their spells. But that's it; because we didn't get a spontaneous divine spellcaster until the Advanced Player's Guide came out, there are no rules covering them in general (or oracles in particular) regarding how they regain their spells.
The best we can do is to try and extrapolate out how they'd regain their spells by working in parts from spontaneous arcane spellcasters and preparatory divine spellcasters. So I suppose it would be something like not actually needing eight hours of rest, but still needing to pray for an hour to regain their spells per day slots. Now, that latter part might not fit with how oracles, having been chosen by their gods rather than having volunteered to serve, might not like their status, let alone pray to receive spells. But on the other hand, they're still receiving their powers from a divine source that presumably approves of their outlook and agenda, and so has some sort of compatible ethos with them. I mean, yes, you can use the oracles lack of alignment-related restrictions to make a good character that uses evil magic all over the place, but that's a rules-based exploit. The role-playing idea is that your god has decided that you're too good at advancing their cause not to draft into their service.
Also, I'll point out that while the basic oracle flavor text says that they don't serve one deity, Princess Luminace's Guide to the Pony Pantheon has a sidebar explicitly stating that Everglow's deities can indeed pick out an oracle to serve them specifically, and even notes what mysteries each god can grant. Now, that's Everglow and not Equestria, but given how Luna is Silhouette's patron goddess, it seems to be the same thing there.
9993456 Heh, that does sum it up very well. One can only hope that this doesn't end with an elegy.
9993703 We got a look into how Silhouette typically conducts himself as one of Luna's worshipers, outside of the disaster at Vanhoover, and what we learned wasn't pretty. Of course, given what drove him to her in the first place, that's not too surprising. Even so, this almost makes him seem like a disaster waiting to happen, and there are a lot of things that we can recognize as being warning signs, boding ill for what happens next.
As for whether or not Luna can still grant powers to her faithful, that has yet to be seen, but I suspect we'll find out sooner rather than later.
9993738 Heh, well, the Everglow (I presume you mean there) goddess of the moon isn't very wrathful, and while the Night Mare is (albeit not in a chaotic fashion), I doubt Silhouette will want anything to do with the goddess of his enemy. Still, that does leave other options, if things go that route.
9993797 The funny thing about this chapter is that, taken on a small scale, Silhouette is coming off like a crazy, obsessive stalker of Luna's. But if you pull back and look at these actions as being archetypal of how deities in the real world have often been treated, there are a lot of parallels to what's here. Collecting things she's eaten with? Well, it's no Holy Grail, but close enough. A bit of her hair? Relics are often the body parts of saints. Images of her from the newspaper? Another form of votive work, perhaps.
Even his rather radical reinterpretation of her fall as Nightmare Moon can be called a sort of mythical theology. He's essentially taking what happened to Luna and presenting it as being a cohesive event, from her fall to her redemption, that essentially "had" to end the way it did. By saying that she fell because she had to in order to attain the steadfastness to protect everyone from their nightmares, he's basically saying "Luna
died and was resurrectedfell from grace and was redeemed, all to cleanse you of yoursinsnightmares." Now, that's not actually the case (e.g. it eliminates the Mane Six's role in the process, as well as Celestia's, and for that matter why Luna actually fell to begin with), but it sounds better, and creates a nice little bit of religious grandeur in the process. And if it's not actually true, well...it wouldn't be the first religion to take artistic liberties with the truth, now, would it?9994113 And there's still so much more to go!
9994814
I was kind of surprised that Silhouette was so disgusted by her turning into a unicorn -- I thought he'd do a similar mythical reinterpretation of it. It made me like him a lot less and I already didn't like him.
I don't think the curse would stop her from granting spells (although I can think of mechanisms where it would) but her resulting lack of confidence in herself seems much more likely to do that.
9994792
When reading your comment, to me, elegey stood out.
I found It is a poem for those who have passed on, not out.
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/yandere-simulator/images/5/58/Senpai-shrine.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20151015104150
9994872 The problem with his trying to "reinterpret" what's happened to Luna is that it's still ongoing, with no greater triumph to bookend it (at least so far) and so no way for Silhouette to suggest that Luna has somehow taken on this burden for some greater good. Maybe if Lex had been killed or otherwise weakened as a result, but from what Silhouette was able to glean, Lex simply won the fight and struck Luna down. Another issue is how badly Luna is taking all this. She's quite clearly a victim and from what little he saw is acting like it; he finds it impossible to respect, let alone worship, someone like that.
As for whether or not Luna can still grant spells to her worshipers, that remains to be seen.
9994927 Well, at the rate this is going you have to wonder if someone (else) will be passing on very soon!
9995258 Darn it, I laughed.
9995527
What’s wrong with laughing?
9995559 It betrays my suave exterior.