The radio crackled to life, waking me from my doze. I groaned, untucking a hoof from my blankets to turn down the volume. A thunk announced that I’d only succeeded in knocking it off my desk, and I groaned again, louder this time, in the hopes that it’d get the message and shut up already. It blared up at me from somewhere halfway beneath my cot, crooning a love song as I attempted to detangle myself from the wad of cotton sheets I’d managed to wrap myself in.
Gracelessly slouching to a sitting position, I stretched one forehoof, then its twin. I glanced towards my window, wincing as my horn sparked to life to open the blinds. A hazy orange glow greeted me, making me squint. A lovely deep hue of … wait, crap, the sun was setting already? I managed a glare towards the radio as I hastily stepped over it. Must have mistimed the alarm, it’d let me sleep later than I’d expected. I reached for the brush as the song wound to an end.
“And that was Sapphire Shores with ‘Goodnight, Sweet Summertime.’ You’re listening to the voice of Canterlot, Vinyl Scratch. Good evening, second-shifters! Got a bit of an update for those of you lucky enough to sleep for the full day.
“The weather’s going to be cool and comfortable tonight. We’ve got a bit of a storm situation to the East, but it looks like it’ll pass on by without impacting Canterlot, so no need to worry about shielding your home for rust. Going to be a full moon tonight, so if you see it between the cloud cover, make a wish for the Princess!”
I perked an ear towards the radio as I tried to detangle the worst of the knots out of my hair. I looked in the mirror and nodded to myself. It’d have to do. I was running late as it was. Scooping up my worn saddlebag, I pressed the panel next to my door. It opened with a creaking hiss as I stepped into the fiery light of early evening. From the speakers wired beneath the eaves of the roofs, I could just barely make out the voice of Vinyl Scratch.
“A few new artifacts were recovered from Old Equestria. Our scouts and scientists are working to make these pieces ready to view. Dear listeners,” said Vinyl, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial purr. “I’ve been told one of them is none other than a dragon skull! It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see one whole before they send it to the labs for study.”
I hummed in thought as I trotted faster through the winding streets. The dragons had risen against the Princess long ago, so the stories said. The Princess responded with what some would call a heroic action.
“Genocide,” she had confided to me one sleepless night. “It was genocide, and nothing I do will ever convince anypony it was an accident.”
Accident or not, it was done. They’d probably seen Equestria’s borders as “up for negotiation,” and personally, I couldn’t blame them. Much. It wasn’t like there were ponies living there to defend them. Canterlot was all we had left.
When Celestia had risen against her tyrant sister nearly a thousand years ago, the Elements had echoed her terrible wrath. The citizens of Canterlot had watched in horror and awe as the rest of Equestria was filled with a terrible, blinding light. The bravest among my ancestors had ventured out to look for survivors once the dust had settled, but there were none to be found. There weren’t even any corpses to weep over. Just empty, still lands that grew dense with weeds and wildlife as Celestia mourned.
There were hardly enough ponies to keep things running the way we were used to, until one night, the Princess had a vision. She’d build technology, create an empire that was strong enough to defend the last of Ponykind through artificial means. Not everypony was on board, but those who’d protested had mysteriously been silenced, nameless save a footnote in the annals of history.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out not to disagree with the Princess, especially when she was in one of her moods.
“The Museum’s also hosting a few new art pieces from local artists. Feel free to stop by and give them a look! My personal favorite’s this one based off of the ruins of Ponyville, and the trees grown around and through it. Wish I could’ve seen it in its heyday.”
In a way, my city was as beautiful as what Old Equestria was said to be. Colors danced through the gutters, oily rainbows reflecting the dormant hues of painted-over homes. Cobblestone gave way to copper plating in places near enough to public thoroughfares to be considered worth the cost. It gleamed in the evening light as I meandered through the emptying streets.
To be worth the cost, I thought as I wandered, trying to look purposeful enough that salesponies wouldn’t badger me with the last of their day’s wares, is quite subjective. Not even the sales pitches could quite drown out my uneven hooffalls.
Clop-CLANG, clop-CLANG, clop-CLANG
The cost had been war. The cost had been extermination of an entire species, a victory which one of my ancestors had been instrumental in securing. The bucking cost had been my foolish younger self deciding to reclaim that glory in a few griffon skirmishes, and coming back sans two legs and part of my horn. And I’d been one of the lucky few to return back with a face, or a still-beating heart. There was only so much technology could replace.
At least nopony gave mechanical limbs much of a second glance anymore. Not since General Cadenza had come back missing an eye and a wing. Someponies say that she’d lost even more, but nopony was going to walk up to the General herself and ask.
“Looks like that’s it for now. Listen, I’ll keep ya informed, if you keep on chugging along, alright, Canterlot? Next up, we have a personal favorite of mine, ‘Coppertune Blues’ by the Pony Three.” The speakers faded to a pleasant background noise, a soulful tune echoing along the metallic alleyways. I saluted a guard as I trotted past the outer walls of Canterlot Castle.
Dusk was creeping across the sky, washing the castle stone in a brilliant blood-red. It was mostly cloudless above the city, letting me just barely see the shadows of the pegasi lamplighters as they turned on the hovering lanterns. A few ponies were leaving their homes, taking to the streets for the start of their secondary jobs, mostly in manufacturing and training. There was still much to be done, even after the sun set.
I was lucky, in that my second shift took me to the castle. The Royal Engineer. It was less of a formal duty than the title lent itself to suggest, but I did what the Princess commanded, be it brainstorming new solutions to millenia-old problems or simply listening to one of the Royal Rants, as I liked to think of them.
Honestly, when I was offered the job, I thought General Cadenza was acting out of pity. But no, the General had insisted I take the position. A diamond in the rough, Cadenza had called me. Perhaps hard to get used to at first, but rare enough to be worth the polishing. Cadenza had given me one of her uncommon smiles when she’d said that, her crystal eye glimmering a deep, soothing blue. I thought it sounded like utter hogwash, but at the time I’d been too polite to say so.
I sighed as I leaned against one of the few remaining trees on the palace grounds, waiting for the inner-wall gate to open with a hiss. Cadenza was one of the few ponies who actually knew how close I truly was with the Princess. It wasn’t quite a forbidden love, but it was one that would raise quite a few more eyebrows in my direction than either of us desired.
The General didn’t necessarily approve of it, and made that perfectly clear, but she’d also said that our relationship was “sort-of mutual attraction, if one weren’t looking too closely at it,” and that was the closest thing to a compliment I was likely to hear from her, so I left it at that.
Back then, I would have called her a rather bitter soul, but these days, I felt “hard-ass” was far more appropriate. I trotted through the open gate, trying to keep the smirk off my face. Who’d Cadenza even think she was? Perhaps she was just jealous that I, lowly Rarity, got to spend time with the Princess while Cadenza had her nights full of training guards and entertaining royalty.
When I said it like that, I could almost convince myself that I’d gotten the better end of the deal. The Princess had been rather moody as of late, and as I passed into the inner sanctum of the castle, alight with balls of flame flickering in all hues, I wasn’t quite sure what I’d be getting into.
Nervously, I knocked on the throne room door, my brass hoof ringing against the steel. It had been years, years since I’d accepted this position, but the feeling of entertaining royalty still made my heart leap in my chest. I was lifting my hoof to knock again when the door lit with a gentle blue glow. The magic lept out to zap my hoof before I could pull it away.
“You’re late,” purred Cadenza, holding the door open just wide enough to parade out. Her eye glowed a burning orange, which as far as I could figure was a sign that Cadenza was mentally laughing at me. I scooted out of the way, muzzle scrunching when my stinging hoof hit the floor with a burst of static.
Cadenza blinked, her gaze shifting to a neutral white. “Oh, sorry, did I get you with the door earlier? Metal and magic, they don’t mix.” She gave a sympathetic glance towards my horn before stepping to the side, opening the door a little wider. “Go ahead, Engineer, she’s expecting you.”
I bit my lip and rushed past Cadenza, almost tripping over the uneven plating in the doorway. Laughing at me or not, it wouldn’t do to upset the Princess. I kept my eyes on the ground as I made my way to the center of the throne room, my steady hooffalls punctuated by the door slamming behind me. The floor was sprinkled with dots of light, reflecting from some of the many stained-glass windows depicting glory and the means we’d used to survive. They shimmered against the steel floor in fiery hues cast from the setting sun as I came to a halt.
My crystal-powered joints whispered as I lowered myself into a bow before the throne. A soft chuckle greeted me, then delicate clinking of hoofsteps, before a pair of crystalline shoes came to a stop a few feet from my muzzle.
“You’re late,” whispered a gentle voice as an ebony wingtip lifted my chin from the ground. My heart pounded in my chest as I gave a hesitant smile to my Princess, the one who’d kept Equestria together as best as she could when the Elements misfired.
Nightmare Moon smiled back, her helmet tucked under one wing as she bent down to give me a kiss, one I happily reciprocated. At least Celestia wasn’t here to witness this. She was probably sitting vigil in her room, still mourning over a nation killed by her temper. Most days it was wisest just to let her mourn. I nuzzled against my Princess’s armor as she tenderly wrapped a wing around me.
“I’m so sorry, darling,” I said, pressing against the cool armored alicorn. “I’m afraid I overslept a bit. Did I miss anything important?”
Nightmare Moon chuckled, her fangs glinting in the dimming light of the room. “You missed me, did you not?” Her smile dimmed into an all-too-familiar scowl. “You missed Celestia refusing to leave her bed today. I was sorely tempted to dump her out of it, just to see if she’d bother to move from the floor to the bed again.”
I gave a noncommittal hum, not sure what to say in response. Agreeing seemed smarter, but it still felt wrong to talk negatively about Celestia.
“Walk with me,” murmured Nightmare Moon, pulling away from my embrace. “There's something you need to know.”
My Princess turned, graceful as a stalking cat, and gestured towards the main hall. I meekly nodded in reply, stumbling forward to open the doors.
My magic sparked painfully around the metal plate wrapped around the lower grooves of my horn. Metal and magic don’t mix, indeed, I thought, scowling at what General Cadenza had said. She was right, of course, but that didn’t make it sting any less, physically or mentally. My front hoof, the one that was flesh and blood, rubbed against my brass one self-consciously as the doors silently swung open on their well-oiled hinges.
“I’ve told you most of what happened, when my sister and I last fought, but the memory still brings me no joy.” Nightmare Moon said, not breaking her stride as she exited the throne room. “The Elements, for lack of a better word, murdered all of Equestria, save Canterlot. There were no survivors, no corpses, no noise, nothing, just a blinding flash and then empty lands.”
The Princess sighed, pausing as I caught up with her. “When the dust settled in the castle that had become our battlegrounds, the Elements lay scattered around my sister. She looked up at me, tears glinting in her owlish gaze. She’d somehow missed, and at that moment I was certain that she wouldn’t miss again.”
Nightmare Moon’s shoes made a subtle, crystalline clinking as she led me towards the stairs leading down into the Royal Workshops. Already, the air tasted of sawdust, copper, and magical residue. I cleared my throat quietly, and Nightmare Moon tilted her head. As much permission to interrupt as could be expected. “Again?” I whispered, the word catching in my throat. “You hadn’t said she’d tried again.”
“Can you not blame me for not talking about that day?” Nightmare Moon hissed, irritation without direction. “She’d tried again, but it hadn’t worked. That piece of the past hardly matters, at least, not anymore. The important thing was that it couldn’t have worked.”
“What?” I stopped, then started again, having to half-trot to keep up. “Why?”
The Princess paused at the top of the stairs, one wing brushing against the railing and the other wrapping around my side for support as we began to descend. “Because the very act of attempting to use the Elements against a wielder themselves destroyed one.”
I stumbled, my Princess’s wing barely keeping me on my hooves. “Destroyed an Element of Harmony?” Nightmare Moon’s brow creased, but I continued, albeit quieter. “Which one?”
Nightmare Moon’s gaze turned steely as she stared forward. “It matters not. What’s important is that it vanished completely, like the citizens she killed.”
But it does matter, I wanted to say, but held my tongue. There was a time and a place to push matters, and when the alicorn looked as though she wanted to tear something—or someone—apart was probably not it. “Was this the thing you wanted me to know?” I said instead, hooves clanking against ancient stone as we reached the door to the Workshop.
“No.” Nightmare Moon grimaced, unwrapping her wing from my side before shaking out her stiff feathers. “What I’d like you to see is a bit past your usual station. This way,” she said, her horn lighting in a spell very few knew, opening the door to the closest-guarded secret in Equestria.
After all, the griffon army would kill to know what technologies the few surviving ponies had up their sleeves. They’d been able to survive against impossible odds with enough numbers to create a functioning and far more advanced civilization. They’d expect weapons in development, technological manufacturing, perhaps even the beginnings of genetic manipulation studies.
What they wouldn’t expect was a space program.
A fledgeling one, of course, but it was Nightmare Moon’s true pet project. “For morale,” she’d insisted, and despite Celestia’s protests, it somehow worked. Maybe not to an impossible degree; ponies were still depressed and life was still difficult, but for those who knew about it, it gave them hope.
I knew, of course, that “morale” was a flimsy excuse at best for an entire enterprise we could barely afford. It wasn’t, in my opinion, worth the cost of a species’ extinction, and a species fighting extinction, and the materials and time and lives of those who chose to bite the cyanide capsules to protect it. But my queries had been met with silence, and my prying had only led to dead ends. If Nightmare Moon had secrets, she kept them far better hidden than the Workshops themselves.
The walls rose high above us, spiralling far past the reaches of the enchanted lanterns’ glow. Long, winding mechanical arms and cables cast ominous shadows on the wall, the machines hard at work at assembling pieces and parts out of sheets of scrap materials. They moved in unison, almost silent save for the occasional hiss of sparks.
A few pegasi flitted about, making sure everything ran smoothly. Some of their feathers, I noted, had been replaced with carbon and spidersilk prosthetics. The pegasi were brave to risk flights amidst mechanical razors, welders, and saws, but their primaries often paid the price.
Unicorns and earth ponies worked side by side on the ground floor and the many catwalks and balconies above. Earth ponies helped assemble the parts in the center, each one falling into step with the others, habits borne out of years of practice. The unicorns sat at desks, their horns flickering with prismatic light as they tinkered with electronics and crystal magic, weaving matrices far more delicate than any machine could process.
Not one pony looked up as we passed by. Some were too focused to even notice, and knew that Nightmare Moon and I would catch their attention if needed. It was often my duty to check up on those whose eyes had glassed over too much, lost in a muddle of facts and formulas. Yet, as proud as I was for their unwavering attention, that didn’t come close to my favorite part of the Workshops.
No, what made my heart lift the most was the singing.
Nightmare Moon once said it reminded her of the shanties of sailors, back when the seas were considered worth conquesting, before the crystal-powered engine had made sails and crew mostly obsolete. It was a sort of call and response that echoed throughout the workshops, up and down the steel catwalks, through the gears and steam and sparks. Their voices rose and fell as one, every pony a part of the whole, and everypony with one goal in mind.
There were four sections of the Workshop, each spaced evenly apart, and each with their own slight variations on design. When many ideas were presented, Nightmare Moon had selected the four most promising designs and set me in charge of keeping each team collaborating as they worked on their projects. It was difficult at times, making sure they worked together, but my Princess was counting on me. I couldn’t let Nightmare Moon down.
I’d asked why they were building four separate rockets at once, a long time ago. It’d seemed like a waste, I said, using up so many resources at the same time. My Princess’s answer chilled me to the bone. “We’ll only get one shot at this,” purred Nightmare Moon, her slitted eyes watching the blueprints slowly come to life. “Once the other nations hear about it, they’ll either presume us weak for attempting such a feat, or they’ll try to copy our technology for weaponry.”
I shuddered at the memory. Our attempts to make use of their shuttles’ technology for weapons had proved less than satisfactory. It wasn’t that the results were ineffective, per se, but the energy was better spent elsewhere. There were better ways to strike fear into the hearts of the griffons than simply propelling metal at them.
“Come,” my Princess said, waiting patiently, her gaze never leaving mine. “The observatory awaits.”
The observatory was attached to the Workshop via a small, unassuming door. It did not have a lock, but it did not need one, for nopony would dare enter without the express permission of the Princess. Even I felt strange being in there.
The instruments were delicate and technical to the point that I was certain I’d cause irreparable harm if I fidgeted with one, but intriguing enough that I had to consciously keep my hooves from straying towards the tempting buttons and dials.
Towards the top of the tower that housed the sensors and screens were magnificent lenses. A series of spells and illusions made the tower look like one of the many castle turrets from the outside, keeping it safe from any potential scouts from other species. The telescope itself spiralled down the wall of the observatory, providing a crystal-clear look into the heavens up above. I knew Nightmare Moon spent a lot of time in here, but I hadn’t set hoof inside in months, when the last of the preliminary atmospheric calculations had been completed.
“That day,” murmured Nightmare Moon, adjusting the telescope’s many dials without sparing them an extra glance. “When the Element disappeared, my sister and I soon sensed something had gone gravely wrong. She abandoned me, leaping from the rubble, our battle all but forgotten. We both could feel it. Something was missing. Everypony was missing, and she had to confirm it for herself.”
My Princess paused, and after a respectful moment I nodded my understanding. “That makes sense,” I said, mostly to fill the silence she created.
“It does,” she agreed. “But I stayed where I was. For a moment, I thought I’d felt something. It was sharp, a piercing pain in my head, as though the Elements had pricked my mind with a needle, but it soon dulled. Whatever my sister had intended with the Elements, it did not entirely miss me.”
Nightmare Moon’s expression was an unreadable mask, one I’d only seen her wear during the most disturbing war meetings. “At least, that was what I thought at the time. The truth, I’ve found, is far worse.”
“Worse?” I asked, my voice quivering. I swallowed heavily as she held out a hoof to help me up a stack of books, a makeshift stepstool. I climbed up, standing uncomfortably at nearly the same height as her as she swiveled the telescope’s eyepiece towards herself.
“I need you to trust me,” she said softly, adjusting a tiny gear at the edge of it. “I need you to trust that I’ve done what is right, and I need you to trust me enough to keep what I’m about to show you a secret from everypony that I do not give you explicit permission to discuss this with—” Her other eye opened and flicked back at me. “—including my sister. You must trust me, Rarity, just as I trust you with the truth.”
My mouth felt dry. Whatever she wanted to show me sounded far beyond what I’d signed up for, but there was no way to back down. I couldn’t. This was Nightmare Moon, my Princess, slayer of dragons… and the mare that I loved. The mare who said she loved me. How could I say no? “Of course, darling.”
“Swear it.”
It felt easier to say formally than informally, somehow. “Your secrets will remain mine, your Highness, I swear.” What I was swearing by, I had no idea. I’d normally swear by her name, but I couldn’t very well do that in front of her, could I?
She almost smiled at that, and her gaze softened for just a moment before she focused on whatever was through the lens. “Very well. You are aware that my sister and I have unique connections to the celestial bodies in the Heavens, correct? We move them across the star-speckled void far above our heads, propelling them—or, in my sister’s case, Equestria itself—across unimaginable spaces, spanning distances we’ve barely gained the ability to measure.”
I could do nothing but nod, remembering the vast emptiness of the charts that all of us working on the project had studied. The memory alone threatened to give me a headache.
“A part of that,” she said quietly, intimately, “was lost that day. We can no longer completely control the Sun and Moon.”
I choked back a gasp. “What? No, I’ve seen you raise the moon every evening, I’ve—”
“You’ve seen nothing but childish manipulation and illusions at work,” said Nightmare Moon with abrupt firmness. “We used to be able to make the skies dance, but now we are—or, rather, I am barely able to adjust the timing of the sunrise or sunset by a few minutes. Something is stopping me, and it holds sway over my sister as well. Not that she cares, of course. She’s too busy being lost in the past to see the future we could still save—”
“Save?” I echoed in a hushed whisper. “We’re losing, dearest. I understand why you’ve kept losing your strongest magic a secret, but we’ve clung onto so much empty territory for so long without the resources to spare.” I paused to take a deep, shuddering breath, and my beloved did not interrupt. Instead she watched, no disdain or anger etched into her brow, simply… patient. The Nightmare I loved.
“It doesn’t make any sense, and I know we’ve had this discussion before, but if you think there’s something still left to save after all this time, then how is that different than how Celestia is—” Too far, I realized, and cut myself off. I didn’t dare to look up after that, not until a cold armored hoof gently lifted my chin. My Princess’s eyes weren’t filled with the anger I must have deserved, but instead with understanding, a wisdom that only the alicorns had ever seemed to possess, and a tinge of exhaustion I hoped I didn’t contribute too much towards.
“The secret I’m asking you to keep,” Nightmare Moon said after a second’s hesitation. “Is not that my sister and I are not as powerful as we’ve claimed. Rather, the secret is the little connection we’ve managed to maintain.”
“I… I don’t understand,” I murmured, and she swung the eyepiece of the telescope’s winding arm towards me. I squinted through it, and the bright dot inside resolved itself to be the surface of the moon itself.
“After a few hundred years, the migraines repeated,” my Princess said, and I felt the weight of her wing on my back, keeping me steady against the telescope as I scanned the surface. “I felt I could almost see things and hear things when they occurred. Strange symptoms are common for magically-induced sicknesses, and at first I admit I thought nothing of them, but after a while the patterns resolved themselves. My thoughts, in those painful moments, became clearer. The sensations I felt in return changed over time, in response to what I’d thought. I was getting through to something, somewhere, but to what?”
She held me still, her wing a comfort as much as a shackle, and I searched the tiny patch of rock she’d so carefully adjusted the telescope towards, trying to find what it was she so desperately wanted me to see.
Nightmare Moon was silent for another moment, perhaps to give me time to reach the same conclusion as she had, but then continued, voice raw. “I’ve never asked Celestia what she’d intended to do to me. I’m not certain she herself knew. She most likely acted upon instinct with the Elements, and they focused her emotions into tangible spellwork.
“What I have been able to figure out for certain thus far is twofold. Firstly, the minds I have connected to are that of ponies, no different than the few ponies that remain here today, but entirely different from those of the current population.”
“And…” I had to know. “And second?”
I could have been imagining it, but I could’ve sworn her wing trembled against my back. “The second, Rarity, is that the Elements of Harmony did not fire a spell with the power to kill. I’ve studied every record of their magic I could find, searched with the brightest remaining ponies of a generation to no effect, but for the apparent murder of so many souls to leave behind nothing in their wake… it is simply not possible. Thus, the spell did not kill.”
Her voice lacked the conviction of the obsessed and the undertones of the unwell. She was, I realized, stating the only truth she had left, and that frightened me. “What, do you suppose, could have possibly happened to them?”
It was then that I saw it. Just barely, for even with the greatest magnification the telescope could afford, it was barely a glimmer, but there, a glint of faint color shone where there should be none. It was tiny, and I knew it was too large to be a pony, but even if it wasn’t…
“They were banished.” It came out as a whisper, but after I gulped noisily my voice grew louder, forceful. “The Elements of Harmony banished all of Equestria to the moon.”
I couldn’t believe it. That couldn’t be true… but as much as I distrusted my own logic, I trusted Nightmare Moon. I had to. What else was there to trust in? I wrenched myself away from the eyepiece to find she wasn’t holding me to it any longer and nearly toppled off of the books I’d been perched upon. My Princess barely caught me, and her great turquoise eyes looked almost… sad?
“They’re all on the moon,” I repeated, horrified and haunted by the sound of my own voice saying the impossible reality. Nightmare Moon nodded, turning to wrap her other wing around my shoulders, pulling me closer to her armored chest.
“Oh, stars save us, darling,” I managed after a few moments of heavy breathing. “Celestia doesn’t know, you’ve been building us up to build rockets to save them and nopony knows why, and you’ve been trying to guard all this land, and…”
I suddenly felt very, very dizzy. “Whatever are we going to do?”
