//------------------------------//
// Chapter Seven 
// Story: The Brightest Star in Her Sky 
// by Muddy Waters 
//------------------------------//

The moment Celestia’s chariot was spotted on the horizon Luna ordered every pony out of the courtyard so she alone could greet her sister. Smoky watched with Wisp Light from atop a wall as the royal sisters greeted each other from across the invisible gulf between them. Although Smoky couldn’t hear what they were saying she guessed from their postures that they were being perfectly polite, just as royals should be, right up until the moment the pegasus ponies trotted out of the courtyard with the chariot.
Suddenly finding themselves alone together, the sisters dropped their acts. Celestia beseeched her sister with words and body while Luna remained unmoved. Seeing the desperation in Celestia’s face, Smoky felt suddenly as if she were intruding on something extremely private. She backed away from the edge, pulling Wisp with her by the fringe on his helmet.
“We shouldn’t be spying like this,” she whispered.
After a moment of thought he nodded in agreement, reluctantly. “So, back to the entrance hall?”
Side by side they crept along the wall until they were out of sight of the courtyard. From there they had only to trot down a flight of stairs, cross a herb garden, and slip through a side door in order to reach the entrance hall where every other pony in the palace was waiting for their next orders from the princesses. Only a few of the guards noticed Smoky and Wisp’s return. One of them alerted the captain to the fact and Wisp was soon summoned to his side. Smoky didn’t follow. Instead she walked around the tense crowd of ponies and stood near the door, ready for whatever Luna might need of her.
She didn’t have to wait long.
The doors swung open just a few minutes later, silencing the crowd. Princess Celestia stepped across the threshold alone, her head high and her expression set. There was no sign of her sister on the steps behind her. Smoky took a step forward, looking worriedly out at the courtyard.
“Hearth Stone?” Celestia called out.
The captain separated himself from his guards and marched forward to salute. “Princess?”
Celestia stared down at him, momentarily confused. She was quick to brush away her concerns over the new armour, however. There was work to be done. “I need you to organise a search of the palace. You will need all your guards and the staff.”
Hearth Stone nodded as if the request was perfectly normal. “Is there a creature on the loose?”
“There is a book here somewhere, likely in the lower floors, by Star Swirl the Bearded. It is quite large and bears the title ‘In Darkest Night’. I feel I will need it in the coming days, but I have not seen it in many years.”
“We’ll find it for you, princess.” The captain turned to issue his commands to the crowd. “Guards, break into groups of three, select three of the staff each, and then come to me for your assignment.”
Smoky could see Wisp coming toward her, and she would have joined him if Celestia hadn’t touched her shoulder with her outspread wing.
“Not you, Smoky Nights,” the princess said gently, “we need to talk.”
Celestia strode through the crowd without looking back. Smoky only had time to wave at Wisp before trotting after the princess. Celestia paused when she reached the top of the stairs and the start of the hallway leading to each of the sisters’ studies. She waited until Smoky was beside her before closing the doors behind them and starting off slowly down the hall.
“Luna informed me of her nightmares,” Celestia began stiffly, her expression troubled and unhappy, “I can understand why she would keep it from me, but I thought you would know better.”
Smoky hung her head. “Luna was so sure she didn’t need anyone’s help. I’m sure she was suffering long before she told me. I couldn’t bear to break her trust.”
“How much worse did the problem have to become before you would ask for my help?”
She had no answer, only a growing guilt that she had failed in more than just her quest for the Crystal Empire. “Is she going to be alright?”
Celestia walked on for a time in silence. “I don’t know. I fear Luna’s nightmares and my vision are no coincidence. I only hope my errand will keep the ponies busy long enough for me to find some way to help her.”
Smoky felt the blood drain out of her in a chilling rush. “So there is no book…”
“There is, and I did lose it a long time ago, but Star Swirl never encountered a situation like this and I doubt his writings could assist us.”
“Princess, where did Luna go?”
Celestia didn’t answer at first. Smoky’s fears only grew larger and more solid as the silence stretched on.
“When I saw the darkness cover Equestria,” Celestia finally began, “Luna was at the heart of it.”
“But, she wouldn’t…”
Smoky’s mind filled with the echo of Luna’s voice. Complaints muttered under the breath, contemptuous glances, frustrated pacing, an undertone of hatred in every other word… Smoky had been listening to it for so long she had barely noticed the increasing frequency with which it occurred. Even endless nightmares could explain only so much. And yet she had refused to see it.
“I’ve been so blind,” Smoky moaned, putting her face in her hooves.
Celestia put a wing gently across her shoulders. “We both have.”
The pegasus raised her face to look up at the princess, in spite of the sun that glared through a window nearby and seared her sensitive eyes. “What are we going to do?”
“We are going to wait for Luna to return, and then we are going to prove to her that all of Equestria loves her as much as they love me.”
“How?”
Celestia opened the door of her study with a casual spell and took a step inside, saying, “I thought we could arrange to-”
A chill breeze sliced across her words and stole her breath. Smoky had to step to the side to see past her into the dark chaos of the study. She had rarely seen inside this room, but she knew it had never before been in such a state and the sight froze her in place. The gorgeous golden curtains were in shreds. Shards of glass cast harsh reflections of the sun from the floor. The creamy white rug was in ragged piles alongside the splinters that had once been finely crafted furniture. Even the roof hadn’t gone unscathed. Chunks of stone and mortar had been carved out of the palace and thrown amongst the rest of the carnage. It was impossible to take more than two steps into the room without crushing something that had once been beautiful, but Celestia went in regardless.
The princess tiptoed with divine care across the glass and rubble to where the largest piece of her desk lay. With a trembling hoof she pushed a cracked door out of the way and then used her magic to lift out what had been hidden inside. Smoky caught only a glimpse of something pink and blue and floppy before it was hidden by Celestia’s bowed head and flowing mane.
“Smoky,”
The voice that spoke was small and broken and Smoky almost didn’t recognise it as belonging to the princess.
“Please find my sister,”
Smoky wavered, unsure if it was a request or a command. Surely there was no point to her leaving when they had no plan? Either way she didn’t want to obey. Even such ferocious and sudden destruction shouldn’t dissuade their cause. The room could be cleaned, the furniture replaced, the window-
“Just go. Please,”
Smoky took a breath to disagree, and then the door closed in her face. Not suddenly or loudly, but firmly. She was left staring at the tiny carvings in the wood panelling in the still and silent hallway. Through the wood she heard a single muffled sob. Her hoof steps covered any other sound that might have escaped the study as she walked away.
Without the guards and staff going about their work the palace was eerie. Smoky was glad to slip out a side door and into the clear air. Under the gentle warmth of the sun it was difficult to believe Celestia’s study had been so cold. Smoky shook her fringe into her eyes and squinted through it as she spread her wings. The sky above was as clear and perfect as ever, and Smoky dreaded it.
Before taking off she scouted the area around her carefully to make sure she had all the room she needed for a crash landing, just in case. Then she turned her back on the sun and took a few running strides before leaping skywards and trusting her life to her wings. She kept close to the palace, even though she collided with it several times, until she found the conservatory tower and fell onto the balcony. There was no one inside to pick her up.
Smoky investigated the corners and under the tables just in case, but Luna wasn’t there. She had no choice but to return to the open air and begin the long and difficult task of checking each of the princess’s hidden places. After one last look around the conservatory she jumped from the balcony and turned toward the one of the closest, a cave further up the river. The Ursa Major that lived there was fond of Luna, though Smoky had yet to win its favour.
She followed the river northeast mostly by the sound of it grinding against the canyon walls. The rustle of leaves kept her away from the banks and errant branches, though not always. More than once she heard the startled caw of birds as they swerved out of her way at the last second. She tried to apologise each time, though she doubted they understood her. Under the circumstances, she wasn’t surprised to realise she had flown past the cave.
The cool, musky darkness was a welcome relief when she flew into it. The stalagmite that appeared suddenly out of the shadows was not. Her best attempt to avoid it saved her from breaking her neck, but not from smashing her shoulder against the rock. The impact sent her tumbling against the dusty floor before abruptly coming to rest against the wet wall.
For several long minutes Smoky lay where she had fallen, weeping and gasping.
When the pain finally faded and the tears dried up and nothing had come to investigate the noise Smoky knew she had to move on. She picked herself up out of the mud and limped back toward the entrance, holding her front left leg close to her chest. She kept her head and her bloodshot eyes down, ready for the glare of the sun, and stepped straight off the edge of the canyon.
The river rushed toward her from all directions. Pure instinct thrust her wings out and lifted her out of its reach, just barely.
The moment she was high enough to reach firm ground she landed, hard, and stared slack jawed up at the dark sky. The moon hung full and bright directly overhead, exactly where the sun should have been. Surely she hadn’t been in the cave half the day?
As the weight of the moon’s appearance settled on her Smoky stumbled to her hooves and threw herself back into the rushing air currents over the river. Fear gripped her tight enough to push her pain almost entirely out of conscious reach. Something had to be dreadfully wrong. It was the only explanation that made sense. The rest of her thoughts were a chaos of imaginings of what could possibly have happened.
When the palace came into sight it looked just the same as it ever did, though darker. No one had lit the lamps for the night, so it couldn’t be true night, right? Smoky’s thoughts whipped around her mind like a hurricane, flinging debris in all directions. But what if the staff and guards hadn’t finished with their search yet? What if the ceiling had collapsed and trapped them all in the endless maze of the basements?
As if the horrible question had summoned a disaster, the roof of the throne room exploded in a blast of blue light. Without thinking twice Smoky charged toward hole left behind. Gory images of the danger her friends could be in filled her mind. She was just about to throw herself down into the smoke and dust below the hole when a beam of blue light tore open the sky, barely missing her.
Celestia flew past her only a second later, without even glancing at her.
Smoky called after the princess, but she didn’t seem to hear.
A second blast of blue light lit up the night, very clearly aimed at Celestia. When Smoky turned and saw its source, she almost fell out of the sky.
Luna flew hard on her sister’s hooves, radiating fury and hatred that was almost tangible. Her entire body was wreathed in a thick, shadowy aura that lashed out at Smoky as she passed. Luna’s eyes were wide and burning and blind to her student. Smoky tried to chase her, to help her, but her injuries finally began to tell. She fell behind. The princesses vanished around a corner of the palace, with Luna continuing to fire ugly beams of light at her sister, and Smoky couldn’t believe it. What in Equestria could have happened during the short time she was gone?
And what was that flicker that flew ahead of her?
Smoky shook herself. One problem at a time.
Celestia soared back into view, shouting over her shoulder.
“Stop this, Luna!”
But the princess of the night didn’t back down. She fired one beam after another, unrelenting. Smoky tried to call to her, to distract her at least, but nothing got through. The shadowy magic that surrounded Luna only got thicker and darker. Each spell she fired was a dense concentration of that magic. Smoky could see it surge and bunch around Luna’s horn in waves as the princess fired again, and again, and again, until she finally scored a hit.
The spell that finally found Celestia struck her with a painfully bright explosion, tearing a tortured scream from her. Smoky watched with horror as the princess of the sun fell limply through the same hole in the throne room roof that she had escaped from. The night screamed with her.
Luna only laughed.
Smoky followed Celestia’s path down into the throne room and landed hard amongst the rubble. The flicker in the air landed with her, as if the ghost of a pony flew with her. She pushed it from her mind as soon as she saw it and rushed to the princess lying limp on the floor.
“Celestia?”
The princess didn’t stir. She barely seemed to breathe.
Smoky heard the crunch of rubble under a hoof and spun around, expecting to face the stranger that had possessed Luna. Instead she saw only familiar faces and could have wept from relief. The guards spotted her in turn and came running. Wisp Light reached her first.
“Is she…?”
He couldn’t finish the question. Hearth Stone pushed past him and knelt down beside the princess to find out the answer for himself. The other guards surrounded them at a respectful distance, each with one eye on their princess and the other on the hole in the roof.
“What happened, Smoky?” Hearth Stone asked.
Smoky shook her head numbly. “I only arrived in time to see Luna attacking Celestia and then-”
“What?”
More than one pony asked. There was no chance to answer them before a crackle of laughter broke through the night and caught everyone’s attention. Standing at the edge of the shattered roof far above them was the princess of the night herself, still wrapped in anger and shadows, and grinning at the sight of her sister.
Smoky couldn’t stand it. She stood on trembling legs and shouted up at the alicorn.
“How could you, Luna? What happened to you?”
The stranger that occupied her mentor’s shape sneered down at her. It was too much for Smoky. She jumped skyward despite Wisp’s cries and flew straight at the stranger, tears standing in her bloodshot eyes.
The thing that should have been Luna glared at her.
“You dare to question your princess?” it snarled, stamping a hoof against the roof.
Smoky paused, stared, and whispered. “You’re not my princess,”
The strange alicorn tossed its head. Smoky saw the shadows around it surge toward its horn. She felt the air burn in the instant before the spell struck her. She heard two voices call out to her. But there was no pain to feel, not from the spell. Not even from the fall.
Nothing could touch the pain of a broken heart.