//------------------------------//
// Monsters 
// Story: Reaper: Requiem's Reflection 
// by Ise no Kami 
//------------------------------//

	Luna slowly and painfully made her way through one of the many dark hallways of the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters-what was left of it, anyway-supporting her older sister through the darkness. They'd been there a while now; whatever Celestia thought they'd find here, Luna was beginning to doubt they would. Dread filled her more and more with each slow step. Her sister had managed to remain conscious this whole time, but she was clearly getting weaker and weaker. Whatever fight her other self was in, it was clear she was losing. And if she died...
Suddenly, a burst of searing pain hit Luna out of nowhere, slamming her against the wall. The pain proved to be too much for her, and she blacked out. Though Celestia, having fallen to the ground without her sister's support, panicked on the inside, she was far too weak to show it. As she began to lose consciousness herself, she saw the vague form of a pony approach them from the darkness, heavily limping along. It got closer and closer, eventually revealing itself to be...her other self. Her helm was barely recognizable, and magic power seemed to flake off of her. She stopped in front of her twin...and fell to the ground beside her.
She was dying.
Panic filled Celestia's eyes, realizing that she might actually die, that there may be no hope of saving the two of them. Her other self put a hoof to her face with purpose, her eyes showing the sorrow that accompanies one's last requests.
"I'm sorry," the other Celestia apologized. "You shouldn't have to die...because I was too weak...."
The other Celestia glowed with magic power...and then dissolved into white petals of that power. Yet...the power didn't dissipate and dissolve, like the magic that broke apart when Lucifer's minions died. Rather, they flocked to the Celestia that remained, covering her now unconscious body, and letting themselves be absorbed into it. As the last petal submerged itself in Celestia's white coat, she opened her eyes once again. Her physical pain was gone, but a deep hole was left in her heart. Her other self had fused with her, sacrificing her already doomed life to make sure they didn't both die. With full awareness, she turned to her sister, and her similar fate.
No.... Whatever had happened to the other Luna was worse. Her Luna still lay unconscious on the cold stone floor, motionless...lifeless. True panic finally set in as Celestia rushed to her sister.
"NO, LUNA! STAY WITH ME! DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!" she screamed hysterically, hoping beyond hope for the princess of the night to open her eyes.





"H...........y...u.........rig.......? Sp..........t......me......!"
A very muffled voice woke Daniel from his slumber. He opened his eyes to a deep haze, with a large blotch of red in the middle. At first, he believed the Alicorn Amulet was still messing with his vision. However, the image soon cleared, revealing the splotch to be the bloodstained Twilight, standing over him with a glowing horn. He looked at his injuries, only to find that the hole in his chest had completely healed, minus the gaping hole in his shirt rimmed with bloodstains.
"Thank Celestia you're alright," Twilight noted, relieved. "I thought you were dead for sure."
"Almost was," Daniel replied. "Your Amulet thief just had to be Mr. Sadism Incarnate." Twilight's eyes widened at Daniel's implication while he got to his feet. "I can see why you didn't destroy it now. I tried. Saved my life, but otherwise, didn't go so well."
"You need to rest," Twilight advised. "I helped your wounds heal, but you're still in no shape to keep going."
"So you don't feel that?" Daniel asked in reply, staring the alicorn down. Her confused stare back gave him his answer, and he sighed before elaborating. "There's a sense of...dread in the air. Like, if I don't hurry and do whatever it is I need to do, something terrible will happen."
"Well, yeah," Twilight replied snarkily. "Have you seen the sky? That other world's kind of coming down on our heads."
"Not what I meant." Not willing to waste any more time, Daniel rushed on ahead into the foreboding ruins where he had first emerged in Equestria.
He didn't go to far in before stopping. He had only been in this place once, twice if its well-maintained counterpart counted...which it didn't. He had very little idea of the castle's layout, and even less of an idea of what he was supposed to do here. So rather than race through the ruin blindly, he closed his eyes, and focused on the first goal to enter his mind: find Luna. Concentrating, he used his power to extend his consciousness throughout the castle, looking for the unique signature of Luna's...soul, he thought. This was the first time he'd used the ability, after all. After a while, he found Luna's presence, in the room where he first awoke. He sensed another presence there: not Celestia's, but still very familiar.
"Oh no," Daniel said to himself in response to this presence. "You touch her, you die."
He raced through the dark stone halls of the ruined castle with an increased sense of urgency. Now that he knew exactly what clock he was trying to beat, he was determined to make sure he did. Before long, he came across a set of large wooden doors. With a sense of purpose, he passed through the doors, into the exact scene he was expecting: Sombra holding his scythe to Luna's neck. The dark king turned as he noticed the door open, and smiled darkly at the sight of Daniel.
"You couldn't have picked a better time," he greeted, his voice dripping with malice.
"Hello, Father," Daniel shot back, his eyes filled with cold hatred.
"I really have to thank you, you know," Sombra-no, Lucifer mentioned, his voice filling with smugness. "Not only did you lead us to this peaceful world, you did all the work destroying it for us!"
"Wait, what?" Daniel asked, confused. "I get that I screwed up...but how did I 'lead you here'?"
"Oh, you couldn't feel it?" Lucifer asked back mockingly. "Did you ever wonder why you ended up here? You may have ruined my plans on our own world, and destroyed my body...but I wasn't going to let myself die so easily. So I latched onto you as you were floating in the abyss between worlds, having left yourself there to die after destroying the Tower of Babel, and the artificial dimension it generated. I used your thoughts to travel through the abyss...and your thoughts brought us here."
With a sharp realization, Daniel's confusion turned to feelings of rage and violation. "I thought I was dead. I thought I was going to Paradise.... You sick, demented-" Rather than finish his sentence, he summoned his scythe, planning to let that do the talking.
"You know what? Go ahead," Lucifer shot back. "It'll take a couple centuries or so to reform my physical body, but this...pony is making an excellent host at the moment. Go ahead. Kill him. Makes no difference to me. I'll find someone else to possess." He pushed his blade into Luna's neck, though not with murderous intent. No, it was more like he was caressing her. "Perhaps I'll take this lovely lady's body for a spin." Luna's eyes were wide with panic and violation.
"Every time you touch her makes your death more painful," Daniel warned.
"You know, I could just threaten this poor pony's life," Lucifer mentioned, "but I really don't have to." His horn flashed, and Daniel started to glow red. Before he could question anything, an all-too-familiar sensation of searing pain shot through him, forcing him to the ground. Immobile, he was left to question what the hell just happened.
"It appears Faris had a little backup plan," Lucifer explained. "Left a charge of the Alicorn Amulet's dark power within you, waiting to be set off at any moment. Rather shameful of you to not even notice it. No matter. I can shape you into a much better warrior once I kill you and claim your soul."
He removed his scythe from Luna's neck, and gathered dark power in its crooked blade. Not good. Immobilized by pain as he was, Daniel could do nothing to stop the incoming attack, or even to just get out of the way. Pitifully, he turned his eyes to Luna. It didn't take long for him to realize why she just stood there; even with his attention diverted, Lucifer would gladly kill her if she moved an inch. Dreading his final moments, Daniel looked straight into Luna's eyes, sharing his fear and his sorrow in a single glance. Luna took it all in, and closed her eyes somberly. Lucifer's attack finished charging, and he swung the scythe, sending a powerful arc of dark energy straight toward Daniel....
The attack never connected. In the split second Lucifer brought the scythe down, when his attention was fully diverted, Luna jumped in front of him, taking the full force of the blow. Her broken body was blown toward Daniel, who was finally able to recover slightly from the pain. Moving into a crouching position, he held Luna in his arms, noticing petals of blue magic rising from her body. He had seen this enough times to know what it meant, and this time, the evil mastermind wasn't bringing her back. She turned weakly to him, sorrow and regret filling her eyes.
"I'm...sorry I cannot...stay with you," she apologized weakly. "No matter what...you must live...."
"No, you have to live, too!" Daniel exclaimed, tears filling his eyes. "I have a place here, right? I can save you!"
"I fear...your powers will not...work on me..." Luna replied, steadily getting weaker. Daniel watched in horror as she closed her eyes, channeled magic through her horn...and made a small yellow sphere emerge from her chest. It was the first time he'd seen something like this, but Daniel knew exactly what it was. "I will always...be with you. So long as you have this...you will never be alone...." She pushed her soul into Daniel's chest, fusing it with his being. Upon doing so, the petals of blue magic congregated at the point where her soul had entered, following it into Daniel's body. Luna made one final bittersweet smile, before her body burst into magic petals and merged into Daniel's. The grim reaper was left holding empty air, tears flowing down his face.
"Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic," Lucifer responded. "I'm not sure what's worse: that she let herself care so much for some kid she just met that she'd trust him with her soul...or that you cared for her just as much, if not more. You've gone soft. But don't worry. I'll make sure you never care again."
As Lucifer talked on, practically spitting on Luna's corpse, Daniel's sorrow turned to anger, and he began to convulse with rage. Lucifer finally stopped himself, as he noticed black wisps of magic swirling around Daniel, accompanied by blood red magic petals. Twilight entered the room just then, and was immediately horrified by the spectacle. It felt different to what she remembered, but she had definitely seen this. Sure enough, the dark aura became more opaque, and the red petals multiplied into another layer of magic. Finally, Daniel opened his eyes, their blood red irises replaced by the lime green eyes of a serpent-no, of a Nightmare. The aura fell away to reveal armor similar to the set worn by Nightmare Moon; the same set, in fact, that Rainbow described from her nightmare. He bared a new set of fangs as he let out the intense fury behind his serpentine eyes:
"YOU SOULLESS LITTLE B!@#$#@$!!!!!!!!"
The enraged Nightmare knight lunged at Lucifer in fury. The twisted devil casually held up his blade to deflect the attack...but the scene changed the moment it connected. The ruined castle fell away, replaced with a silent lake as far as the eye could see. No...the surface underneath them looked like clear water, but it was in fact solid. Aside from a few ruined structures scattered around in the distance, nothing could be seen but a psychedelic sky of dark red and somber light blue, setting a disturbing tone for the place as a whole. Instead, Lucifer looked to himself. The pony host he had been inhabiting was gone, to be replaced with a human body. Long green hair flowed from his head, the ends just touching the suit of intimidating purple armor he wore. His scythe had been replaced with a bright orange katana, which he now physically held instead of levitating it with magic. In his left hand, he held a similar katana of a cold bright blue. This was the body of his first host, a body he had taken quite a liking to...and had assumed as his true form.
Panic shot through his mind for the first time ever, as he realized what had happened. He had heard that this land's "princess of the night" had the power to enter people's dreams. On pure instinct alone, Daniel had used and expanded that power, walking straight into the head of his host, and fighting him on a plane where he was actually vulnerable. As this sickening realization dawned on him, Daniel moved in for another attack, his scythe seemingly teleporting with the speed of his swing. Lucifer barely avoided the blow, and quickly raised a shield of darkness. If damage he took here actually mattered, then he couldn't take any chances. Almost immediately after the shield was raised, Daniel rushed it, hacking away with lightning speed and burning rage. Thinking he was safe, Lucifer prepared to counterattack...only to feel a sharp pain through his abdomen. Looking down, he saw that large energy spikes had risen up from the ground to skewer him. What looked like a starry night sky flowed through the spikes, reminiscent of the ethereal mane of that pony he killed.
Just a few minutes in, and Lucifer had already had enough. He jumped back, dislodging himself from the spikes, and filled his katanas with magic energy. The orange katana was set ablaze, while the blue one chilled the air around it. He swung at his son, but every blow simply bounced off one of Daniel's own lightning quick attacks. He hadn't even stopped his original assault; he just hacked away at his opponent like an animal. As his rage built up, more and more astral spikes formed to skewer Lucifer. The Devil had the bright idea to swat one aside. His blade simply went through the ethereal spike, and it reformed immediately, gouging his arm as it passed by.
It didn't take long for Lucifer to realize that nothing he was doing was working. He couldn't seem to get off the defensive against his Nightmare son, who was practically frothing at the mouth as he relentlessly threw himself at his father and the pathetic dark shield. That little spell was the only thing keeping him alive at this point. He needed to end things now...and thus resorted to his ultimate attack. He teleported a small ways away, and put his charged blades together. Without cover, it didn't take long for Daniel to find and rush him again. Meanwhile, the opposing forces of fire and ice were forming an odd dissonance between Lucifer's swords, amassing huge dark power as they grew more violent. As Daniel began hacking away again, the dark energy reached its limit.
"I can't allow this to go on any longer," Lucifer told Daniel, though it was unlikely the Nightmare knight could even here him. "Farewell!"
Lucifer pulled the blades apart, sending a massive dark shockwave outward. In the real world, this attack would have shook the earth. In the real world, everyone unlucky enough to cross its path would have died, and their corpses would have been blasted into the stratosphere.
In the real world, the shockwave wouldn't have stopped dead in its tracks and disappeared for a puny barrier of astral energy.
That was the last straw. All of Lucifer's feelings throughout the encounter, from malice to surprise to desperation, turned to wide-eyed horror as he looked upon his son. This power...it was unlike anything he'd ever seen. Was this the power that his pathetic pony friend had granted him? No, that was part of it, but it didn't explain what was happening. No, this power was fueled by Daniel's feral rage. His mind had gone blank, his sole thoughts had turned to killing him...and in response, Luna's magic had twisted, and granted him this extraordinary power. What stood before him now almost didn't deserve to be called human. It was an animal, a feral beast consumed by rage.
A monster, by every sense of the word.
A sharp pain shot through his being. In his intense fear, he had lost his concentration and let his shield down...and now a large scythe was lodged in his chest, where a normal human's heart would be. He looked into Daniel's lime green eyes, and stared into a bottomless pit of hatred and fury. Daniel let out a howl of rage as he wrenched at the scythe, violently pulling to the side. The pain in Lucifer's chest became greater and greater, until Daniel ripped his arm off. The arm dissolved into shadow as it fell, which in turn faded into nothingness. Lucifer's eyes widened with pain as he, too, dissolved into shadow.
Once Lucifer was gone, the rage disappeared from Daniel's eyes. He stood up straight, and took a deep breath. The Nightmare armor burst of of him into magic shreds, its power gone for now...but hidden deep within him, ready to be called upon again. Having calmed himself, he left Sombra's mind, returning to his body to find himself still holding his scythe over Sombra. He quickly put his scythe away and relaxed.
Only now did he notice Twilight, frozen in fear at the sight she just beheld. Behind her, Princess Celestia had also joined them at some point. Her face displayed her worry, but also a strong sense of sorrow. Finally, he looked back at Sombra, who was just regaining consciousness. This wasn't quite the Sombra he'd met, though. His blood red eyes were now a deep blue, with whites that were actually white. With just a look, Daniel could tell that the tyrant he'd met was gone, replaced with someone honorable, and rather dashing.
"It's over," Daniel noted, "but...I couldn't stop him in time." His expression turned sorrowful as he recalled the price of his new power.
"So Luna, the other Luna...she's..." Celestia started, though she couldn't bring herself to say it.
"Yeah. Is your Luna okay?" Daniel asked, trying to find an upside.
"About that...look outside," Celestia replied evasively, looking down in sorrow. Daniel moved to the large window in the back of the room, and looked up. Through the swirling green storm, he could just make out the moon...and a pattern resembling a unicorn's head upon it.
"Uh, was that there when I got here?" Daniel asked, confused.
"That...is Luna," Celestia explained, though it pained her to do so. "My sister and I had become linked to our other selves, suffering any damage inflicted upon them. If they were to die, so would we. So when Lucifer attacked them, the other me called out, hoping to find some way to save us. She managed to merge with me, and make sure I survived. Luna...wasn't so lucky."
"So you banished her to the moon again?" Twilight asked, confused.
Celestia nodded. "Within the moon, she is sealed as magic energy. In that form, she will remain dormant, but very much alive, until her sentence runs out. A thousand years.... We have a thousand years to find a way to save her."
"Hate to break it to you," Daniel started, "but I'm not sure if this world's gonna last another week."
"Indeed."
Everyone turned in horror to Sombra, and Sombra himself grew wide-eyed, at the sound of that sinister voice. Sombra's shadow grew slightly, and before anyone could react, or even process what was going on, the shadow jumped toward Celestia. It forced her to her knees, struggling to win a fight for her own mind. Sadly, it wasn't to be. Her cutie mark, a picture of the orange warm sun, turned blood red, and the colors of her mane and tail grew subtly darker. As a maniacal smile spread across the white alicorn's face, she opened her eyes, which had turned blood red.
"I told you before," Lucifer chided, disturbing everyone by projecting his own voice through Celestia's mouth. "I won't let myself die so easily."
"You little-" Daniel retorted, enraged. He didn't completely go Nightmare, but his eyes flashed that lime green serpentine. "There won't be anything left to send to Hell when I'm done with you!"
"Yeah, no. We're not doing this again," Lucifer refused flatly, taking to the sky. "Better luck next time." With that, he teleported away.





Danie looked out upon the Everfree Forest from one of the castle's high balconies, contemplating the events of the day. There was no victory here, only defeat. His father had continued to use him as a tool, he had brought ruin upon Equestria without meaning to, and the only pony with whom he felt he belonged just died in his arms. Even his victory against his father, the one good thing that had happened, had been twisted into a failure. Part of him just wanted to drown in his own darkness, disappear from the world. But he couldn't if he wanted to. The ponies of Equestria deserved far better. He turned to find that Sombra had joined him on the balcony. In response, he just turned back to the horizon, and reflected on his sorrows once more.
"You have your work cut out for you, Grim Reaper," Sombra mentioned.
Daniel sighed in reply. "You could say that again. My dad just psyched me out to possess the ruler of the world. ...I heard you two had a thing or something?"
"Yes," Sombra replied somberly. "We loved each other dearly, but fate wouldn't allow us to be together. We had to sacrifice our love to prevent it from tearing the boundary between our worlds apart."
"Like right now?"
"Indeed. And looking at things now, I wish our love had stayed dead. I still love her dearly, but no one is worth all of this."
"You can say that again," Daniel replied emptily. "You know, even if I defeat Lucifer, it won't solve the dimension problem. It's a very long shot, but didn't you absorb some evil energy or some crap like that to fix things last time?"
"Lucifer absorbed it."
Those three words brought the full reality of the situation down on Daniel's head. To be honest, that evil energy probably wouldn't have fixed things a second time, but Lucifer got rid of it anyway. He wouldn't allow the smallest glimmer of hope, even false hope, to persist in this despairing catastrophe. If there had actually been a way to stop this madness, he would have made sure to destroy it. This was his victory, the end of the world. There was no way he'd leave any chance of anyone interfering with that.
"We're screwed."
With this grim fate in mind, he turned his sites to the nearest town, Ponyville. What he saw was absolute chaos. Ponies were scrambling throughout the town, trying to run from the eldritch abominations that had infested it. And Daniel knew that this wasn't just in Ponyville, that this was happening everywhere.
Equestria was burning to the ground.