Fourth month, day four 1:55 PM. Lunar Diarch Bedroom, Canterlot Castle

Yes, I remember that. I had just finished reading the poem that my only knight at the time had written to me accompanied by a glass vase with clear water filled with white lillies all laid on top of a small table near the entrance to my chambers. And yes, while I had not knighted him, I felt like he was like my old knights. It had been over a millennium at that point since any stallion––nay, anypony at all––had given me white lilies. The poem itself read:

Moonlight bright, and stars shining white.

Regrets and blights of times far from sight.

She who watches dreams at night,

and who Morpheus envies despite the changes in time.

Eyes of turquoise and stars in the mane

like the void beyond the plains.

I miss thee like the tides miss thee

and I feel as though I am at bliss with thee.

Like the lilies at night reflecting the moonlight,

thy beauty is as radiant as it is sublime.

Thy sword once wrought against giants and gods,

whose blood thee spilled purpose in thought.

I ask of thee if you can forgive the devil that brought the tears and broke thy heart?

-Yours, Arcanum Folklore

I honestly felt that he meant what he wrote; it was written hastily with horn writing, meaning that not much time was taken to think it up. And I was ready to to forgive him. After I had gotten at least a few hours of sleep. I had been awake for ten days straight at that time. Had I been anything less than an Alicorn demigoddess, I would have perished from exhaustion. So I closed the doors to my chambers and I went to lay on the bed that Sister had the servants bring to me. It is funny in a way how beds had become so much more comfortable since a millennium prior, how food had become larger and more delicious, how there is now the myriad of machines that was created and is depended upon now, and the increase in the amount of ponies involved in ruling the kingdom as well. In a way to me it was all so exciting; I wanted to see and learn of the new world I had awoken to.

Many of my subjects fear me; others, specifically from noble lineages, outright have the arrogance to single me out and demand that I be imprisoned again! Had I not paid my dues? But at the same time, fools sought to bring Nightmare Moon back into the world to use as their personal weapon. The Nightmare did not submit and happily slaughtered those there that hadn’t been sacrificed to form her new body. Exempting one: a sorcerer by the name of Arpeggio Philharmonic, once a great maker of music.

But once the Nightmare had lost that sorcerer, one stepped forward to oppose her. Arcanum Folklore, he lured her into a trap, had tried various methods of killing the Nightmare and perhaps, by extension, me, only to be quickly impaled on a wall once those options had ran out. He was a skilled magus, definitely knowledgeable, especially quite clever in combat. But his raw power was at best a tenth of Twilight Sparkle’s, yet he, without question, without the Elements of Harmony, as a mere mortal sorcerer, he demonstrated bravery and resourcefulness that I hadn’t seen in centuries.

It was his apparent death––or near death, as he revealed to me later. He allowed me to struggle against the Nightmare within my own mind. To change some of her thoughts in certain actions in such a way that she would not kill any innocents. Twilight Sparkle and her friends might have freed me, but he gave me the will to give the Elements of Harmony a chance at defeating the Nightmare.

That stallion felt like his soul came from a time where gods and monsters roamed the earth. From his reaction and from what I read, he knows what is like to bear an unforgivable sin. Much like the times me and Sister lived in. And in many ways that feeling swayed my mind into favoring him.

That, and he had a sort of rugged handsomeness to him.

As I finished those thoughts, I slumbered and I did so peacefully.

Up until something in my mind told me to wake up, a profound sense of dread had befallen me.

I opened my eyes and I felt seven unicorn stallions had entered the room. I decided not to move until I had them where I wanted. As they got closer, I saw them through the corners of my eyes.

They were all wearing black cloth and simplistic steel chest armor. They had glowing lightning-spouting flat cylinders on their backs and were wearing what looked to me like plague doctor masks. And they were all wielding these rune-encrusted lightning-spouting spears. The design of the spears almost looked ancient Germanian in appearance.

They got in position and got ready to strike.

Warning, the following maybe the most brutal thing involving Princess Luna you have read so far. Enjoy.

I summoned primordial lightning and reduced one to burned flesh, blood, and entrails in the blink of an eye. They panicked like young virginal maidens facing their first stallion’s girth. I quickly flew above the fools and summoned lightning for three more, reducing them to the appearance of dragon vomit. The three remaining tried to shoot lightning at me with little effect. I took it in like ale in a summers night! I teleported between them, took the spear of one with my magic, broke the hard oaken pole in half as if were a twig, and I magically pushed the other two to the other side of my chambers near the balcony. The one I had taken the spear from had used a hoofheld weapon against me, a small crossbow like mechanism that he shot. The pain in my leg, where I had been hit, was excruciating, greater than any arrow I had taken before, but I held fast and my blood boiled. I ripped his head from his body, spilling blood all over my chambers. Threw his severed head to the side as his body stumbled and fell, moving it's legs haphazardly, not knowing that the head had been long gone.

I then teleported to the area near the balcony and I used my right forehoof to smash one of the two fools heads I had thrown here like a rotting watermelon.

I was about to break the neck of the last one when he whimpered pathetically for his life.

“Please, I surrender! I-I beg you! Do not kill m-”

I cut his pathetic begs for mercy as I used my magic to hold him by the throat. I had taken a bath before deciding to take a nap that day so I was not wearing my regalia. My body was bare and naked to the world, mostly covered with the blood of my slain foes, and my chambers were ruined, along with my bed, as they were covered with the blood and entrails of the fools that dared try to assassinate me. The first attempt on my life in a thousand years.

I threw the last fool on the bed and broke both of his lower legs. He screamed in blood curling agony.

I got close to his face, my eyes glowing with my wrathful intent. Then I yelled at him a command that he could not refuse.

“SPEAK TO US ALL THAT THOU KNOWEST THY BASTARD OFFSPRING OF A BEATEN WHORE!”

At that moment the dual doors to my chambers were hastily opened. Three pegasus Royal Guards looked upon my chambers, and looked upon me with absolute fear in their eyes, completely breaking the Royal Guards’ tradition of controlling one's facial features. One of them even trotted out of the room and emptied his bowels.

I looked to the table with the white lilies and I calmed down a bit. At least the lilies where intact. And at that moment I knew that I needed to fetch Folklore as soon as I was done dealing with the fool before me.