Celestia bolted awake with a snap. A deafening sound from right next to her bed had woken her; she glanced down and saw that the beautiful painting above her bedside had fallen and shattered on the ground.
Who would do this?! she thought, livid with anger. A loud CREEAK from the windowsill answered her question: it was the storm’s winds that had destroyed her masterpiece.
The sun goddess rolled out of her luxurious bed and trotted slowly to the windowsill, her groggy mind still processing how the window could have opened on its own. Of course the storm’s winds were very intense that night, but they still could not have opened those windows—they were sealed with her own magic, stronger than almost any force of nature.
Moonlight shone brightly through the dark clouds woven across the sky. Celestia’s eyes flitted to the gilded clock on her wall, and she frowned. It was nearly dawn. The moon should be approaching the horizon by now, the clouds should be glowing blood red…but the moon was still in the center of the sky, gazing down triumphantly at its befuddled onlookers below.
Sliding open the window, Celestia peeked her head outside. The cold night air greeted her in a blast of wind, rushing inside the room with enough force to make her flinch. Storms of this intensity rarely came to Canterlot; the pegasi have always stopped them before they could even reach the great mountain. One could almost say that this one was…unnatural…
For a moment the wind died down, and Celestia heard a soft shuffling sound from right above her. Somepony was poised right above her room on the roof, trying to sneak into the castle…!
But no…as she looked up, all that was left of the apparent intruder was a wisp of indigo smoke that disappeared into a fine mist trailing across the sky, towards the other side of the castle.
Becoming more and more confused, the Princess lifted herself into the freezing night air with a beat of her powerful wings. Each raindrop was a bullet striking her body, stinging her like a thousand angry bees. With one burst of golden magic an invisible shield formed around her, causing each raindrop to vaporize on contact. Celestia followed the evaporating trail of starry mist over the grand scape of Canterlot Castle, and it led her directly to…
Luna’s room.
Curious, she gazed through her sister’s open window. Thunder crashed and lighting lit up the sky, temporarily blinding the sun goddess.
Inside Luna’s room it was completely black…and yet a dark form was visible for only a second by the light of the storm’s fleeting fire.
Celestia paused for a moment. A soft melody had reached her ears, made faint by the angry storm and yet not drowned out completely. She could not make out the words, but it sounded ominously familiar to a song she had heard out on the olden castle’s highest tower one thousand years ago…a soft ballad, sung by her sister right as she donned a pale blue war-helmet cold as ice.
Floating to her sister’s window, Celestia opened it just a crack and peeked her head inside.
It was nearly sliced clean off as a bolt of pure energy shot past her ear. Recoiling, the sun princess craned her neck as the streak of black magic sailed by her and expanded out behind the window, forming an unnatural shade that blocked all light from entering the chamber of the Ruler of the Night.
Strengthening her resolve, the solar goddess descended into darkness.
Rainbow Dash awoke to a very loud, very annoying noise right next to her ear.
“HOO! HOO! HOO!”
“I’m trying to sleep…” complained the cyan mare, rolling over and covering her head with a pillow and then stuffing it as far into her ears as possible.
“HOO!” screeched the voice, now accompanied by a sharp pinch on her foreleg.
Rainbow whirled around. “What IS IT?! Oh…” she saw the owl’s talons wrapped around her foreleg, desperately hanging on, “…hi Owlowiscious. Why are you waking me up in the middle of the night?”
“Hoo!” The owl pointed her talon at the wall next to her window. The clock read that it was just about dawn.
“Oh. Ya know, Owlowiscious, not everypony gets up as soon as it’s light out. My job means I don’t even need to be awake until-”
“HOO!” The owl flew to the wall and landed on the puffy white windowsill, jabbing its claw outside. Right outside of her window was a purple hot-air balloon, filled with four familiar ponies watching her expectantly.
Rainbow shot out of her bed, all of a sudden concerned. “Why are you all here? Is something wrong?”
They all simply nodded. Owlowiscious handed her a scroll; she opened it to find a letter from Twilight in Spike’s messy claw-writing:
“To all of my friends: I need you to come to Canterlot immediately. The Elements of Disharmony have arrived…”
Celestia trotted further and further into the darkness; she knew exactly what lied in its center…and yet the rising, bubbling panic in her mind could not accept its existence.
Another flash of lightning revealed the outline of an alicorn mare sitting in the center of the room, facing the back wall.
Her song came to a close; the mare stood up and for only a moment her body was illuminated by a faint ray of moonlight that had snuck through the veil of magic. The mare’s coat was pitch black.
The sun goddess stopped in her tracks; her mind completely frozen in a state of dread.
“Hello again, dear sister. Did you miss me?”
A wave of sorrow and bitter acceptance washed over Celestia’s entire body, sending painful chills down her spine. That voice…she could no longer deny the painful truth. But…how could this have happened? She wanted nothing more to go to her poor sister, take her under her wings and ask what was wrong, just as she had done when Luna was not but a filly.
Yet the all-powerful solar goddess could not move. Her body was paralyzed; her mouth would not open. Not by a magic spell was this feat accomplished…but by memories of pain, of grief, and of doing what was necessary.
The Night Mare still had not turned around; she seemed to speaking as much to the empty blackness as her elder sister: “You know, it’s interesting that the last time we met like this, in the middle of MY night, was the night I was born…a tiny feeling of resentment in your weak sister’s mind. A powerful need for justice, to overthrow the tyrant sun.”
Celestia knew exactly what had to be done. And yet, on a night just like this one over one thousand years ago, she had sworn never again to take such drastic measures. Even in Equestria’s darkest hours, from that fateful day forth, she had never banished anypony into their sphere of control in nature….a process which dulled their mind as they slowly became that which was their prison. For Luna the banishment had passed in a second; for Celestia it was an eternity of staring up at her sister’s beautiful moon and stealing control over it, knowing that Luna was trapped in a world beyond pain, beyond anger, beyond rational thought.
“Besides the night of my birth, you NEVER awoke at this time, never ONCE stopped for even a moment to gaze at my beautiful stars. Why now should you come into my presence? I let the storm wake you, but why even now should you pay any attention to your own sister?”
Opening her mouth to respond, Celestia found it forced shut—by magic this time. The bitter mare was not yet done.
“Oh yes, that’s right…NOW I AM A THREAT!” The Night Mare’s head whirled around as she as her angry voice rose to a shout…but then it dropped to a heated whisper. “So go ahead, dear sister, battle me. Strike me down with your all-powerful magic, O Goddess of the Sun.”
The mare’s dark magic released her jaw, and yet still Celestia remained silent.
“I said, attack me. Draw up your magic and FIGHT ME!”
“I will not fight you.”
“STRIKE ME, YOU FOAL!” Night Mare Moon’s furious scream echoed through the dark room and through all of Canterlot.
“One thousand years ago, I took an oath that I dare not break now. Banishing you was so painful, so heartbreaking…I knew I could never bring myself to harm you again,” Celestia stood firm. “Sister, I will not fight you.”
The room’s silence was broken only by the patter of the thundering storm and rain against the veil of darkness as Night Mare Moon hunched down, squeezing her eyes painfully shut. The glow of the crystal pendant against her armor flickered, its light fading. When she next spoke, her voice was…different.
“You…didn’t want to hurt me?”
Luna’s pure, sweet voice nearly broke through that of her alter ego, struggling against the powerful shouting overtones of Night Mare Moon. The outcome was a disharmonic chord of anger and sadness.
Now was the time to act. In a loving melodic whisper, Celestia said, “I do care about you, dear sister, and sometimes…” she hesitated, but then continued, “Sometimes I wish that I could just leave it all behind—my responsibilities, our subjects, the government…all of it, to spend one night with you under the beautiful moonlight.”
Luna’s voice, nearly silent, whispered in the night: “You wanted to be with me?”
Then a blinding light exploded like an inferno from the lightning pendant on the black mare’s chest. Bolts of bright blue electricity fired all over her body. Night Mare Moon fell to the ground; she shrieked and writhed in pain as the powerful light consumed her. The flickering lights snaked over her face, stinging and biting, leaving invisible burn marks that would have scarred, no, killed any other pony who endured such torture…the lights left no spot untouched, searing every part of her body even beneath her armor.
Celestia watched in horror as her own sister lay on the ground, spasming uncontrollably, in unimaginable pain. Luna’s voice, whether or not it was real or only a memory brought on by déjà vu, echoed in her mind:
“H E L P M E ! . . . ”
Then, with a flash of blinding blue light, it stopped. The tendrils of cyan fire withdrew into their controlling master, the crystal necklace. Calmly and collectively Night Mare Moon rose up and with one bolt of magic blasted the sun goddess into the ground.
Pain collided with the Solar Princess and shoved her onto the cold floor. Coughing and wheezing, Celestia tried to get up only to have her legs collapse beneath her. She opened her eyes and was seized by an intense vertigo; the approaching form of Night Mare Moon was whirling in her vision.
Her head spinning, Celestia forced her mind to stay awake as it screamed to fall into the dark pit of sleep. Night Mare Moon was speaking, but the solar princess could barely hear it as she was on the verge of blacking out.
“You are an arrogant, impudent foal. You had the chance to strike me down here and prevent your own downfall, but you chose instead to stand and let me do as I wished with you.”
Each word was a powerful blow to Celestia’s heart. All hope…was lost.
“You will regret this. This storm has risen up out of the depths of Equestria, and with one blow it has struck down its leader, its sun. And…” Night Mare Moon leaned in close and looked her sister in the eye, “I want you to know that everything we do to your kingdom and everypony in it is now wholly, absolutely, and directly your fault.”
The sun goddess closed her eyes and fell to the floor, her strength gone.
With her fell the hope for the dawn.
Spike bolted awake in the freezing grass. Sharp, stinging rain pelted his scales, but he could not feel it—a strange warmth emanated from his neck that kept away the cold and the rain. Opening his eyes, he saw two faces staring down at him. One unfamiliar pony kept his face hidden beneath a shiny silver mask, but the other was quite familiar…
Backpedaling away as quickly as possible, Spike tripped and fell flat on his face—in doing so he found that his appendages were quite a bit longer than he remembered. As he spoke, he nearly choked on his own deep, unfamiliar voice: “Q-Queen Chrysalis? What are you doing here?”
She smiled at him and said in a very familiar, motherlike voice, “Welcome to the family, Spike.” The tone then jumped up an octave in pitch and became a nasally whine, “We’re so glad that you could join us!”
He was almost knocked back again as a flood of recent memories overflowed his mind, memories of curiosity, of anger…and of greed. Spike glared at the Changeling Queen, who was grinning uncontrollably back: “You.”
Chrysalis gave him a devilish smile. “Who else but the powerful Queen of the Changelings could have corrupted the oh-so-innocent little dragon assistant to our most dangerous enemy? The Shadow here certainly couldn’t have done it by only fear,” Chrysalis said, gesturing to the pony on her right.
The colt remained completely silent. Something about his presence was…unsettling. It wasn’t his shiny armor, though, and it wasn’t the sharp metal claws extending out of his left hoof.
It was those eyes. Those bright red glowing eyes.
He spoke directly at Spike in a deep, gravelly voice: “Welcome to the Corrupted.”
Spike then noticed that they were wearing black pendants around their necks, each with a different crystal hanging from its center. He reached a claw to his own neck and found a warm metal necklace curled around his neck, and hanging from its center…
Hanging down from his neck was the hauntingly beautiful green diamond. It was his at last.
As he grasped it awkwardly in his palm, he found its touch soothing and comforting. Suddenly his vision intensified and all of the loose objects around him were made apparent to his narrow dragon eyes; the motionless stones and silent leaves made his claws itch.
Standing up to his full height, Spike was pleased to find that he stood a good head above the other two, who were watching him with an air of mild amusement. He began gathering all of the rocks, leaves, and other random objects around him into a pile.
Chrysalis stifled a giggle. “What?!” Spike asked, curling around his new collection of objects. The Element on his neck glowed warmly as he closed his eyes, feeling all of his precious possessions shift beneath him.
Suddenly, with a flash of lightning and a deafening BOOM of thunder, Nightmare Moon appeared in the clearing. Indigo smoke curled off of her black form in the pale moonlight. Opening her pale blue eyes, she approached the three others waiting in the darkness.
Her cold, calculating gaze scanned the three creatures now staring up at her: “Ah…so we have the Changeling queen, the wielder of fear, and…” her gaze shifted to Spike sitting on his leaf pile and she stifled a laugh. “Is that…Twilight Sparkle’s pet dragon? You're kidding. You’re kidding, right?”
Spike growled at her, extending his claws threateningly and breathing out a wisp of green fire.
Nightmare Moon smacked her face with her hoof. “Will somepony please tell me how this thing could possibly stand up to any of the Elements of Harmony?”
In response, the Shadow shot a dark burst of energy into the pile Spike was sitting on. Leaves and stones flew everywhere, and the half-matured dragon fell flat on his face.
YOU DARE-
A fiery anger consumed Spike’s mind. His feet were already twice their previous size by the time he stood up, and his snout lengthened into a ferocious, toothy muzzle. Glaring down at the Shadow, he opened his wide mouth and shot down a beam of hot emerald fire upon him.
The Shadow, not quite anticipating this part of the plan, dodged to the side. The green grass where he was just standing was vaporized and became a bare, ashy gray.
Nightmare Moon nodded approvingly: “Impressive. But can it be controlled?”
Whirling towards her, Spike stomped his foot on her in a move that would normally crush the black alicorn.
From beneath the giant’s foot whirled a mist of indigo smoke, which floated up and re-formed into the now mildly annoyed goddess of the Night. Her starry mane rose high up into the night and swirled like a hurricane, forming a dark cloud of energy. A single lightning bolt struck down from its center, colliding with the irate dragon.
For the second time that night, an intense fiery pain seized Spike. Roaring, he looked down and saw a black spot on his arm where several of his scales had been seared off by the pure concentrated heat. Spike reached up into the sky and swiped at the mare with his sharp claws. Unprepared for this new assault, Nightmare Moon came crashing to the ground; her dark cloud faded away without its master’s power.
“ENOUGH.”
With a bright flash of light, a new figure entered the clearing. Golden stars shot into the sky, exploding like multicolored fireworks across the cloudy sky. The ground lit up with brilliant yellow flames in a perfect circle around the audacious speaker, and a pale fog cleared to reveal her form to the others.
The one who had dared intrude was an average-sized unicorn mare, who concealed her face and body behind an elaborate black-and-yellow bodysuit. Her mask was pitch black, only broken by two bright white orbs through which she could see. These circles concealed her true eyes. A black cape hung loosely on her black, decorated with golden stars, images of crystals that echoed the one crowning the final Element of Disharmony. An air of superiority followed her as she trotted calmly towards the feuding Element-bearers.
She re-formed Spike’s pile of leaves with her magic, and the dragon shrank back to his normal size. The Shadow, who had been seated next to Chrysalis as she watched the fight with an expression of amusement, cleared his throat and spoke with his deep gravelly voice: “Everypony, I would like you to meet our wielder of the Element of Power. As soon as we free Discord from stone, she will take possession of the Element that will form itself from the spark of our Elements’ dark magic. She will also be taking over as the team’s leader as soon as she has her Element.”
Again with her commanding and slightly nasally tone the costumed mare spoke up: “So, can we now move on to actually freeing Discord? Where is his statue, anyway?”
Nightmare Moon, who had landed beside the others, shifted uncomfortably. “The chaos demon is in on this as well? Shadow, Chrysalis, you did not tell me that he was a part of this plan.”
“You did not need to know.” replied the Changeling queen with a grin.
“Fine. As long as he focuses his destruction upon our enemies. Still, he is not to be trusted.”
“Obviously. Now, let’s go before the Elements of Harmony show up and ruin our entire plan.” spoke up the soon-to-be wielder of Power.
The five most dangerous creatures in Equestria calmly trotted over to the base of the imprisoned spirit of Chaos. As each closed their eyes, a light glowed bright upon their chests, radiating across the dark statue garden. A fifth Element was levitated onto the neck of the stone statue, and it immediately snapped around his neck with a mechanical click.
The penultimate Element shone a harsh red as small pieces of stone began to flake off of the crumbling statue.
Discord had returned.
