> Left Behind: Sunny Disposition
>  by The Psychopath
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Meetings
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nightmare Moon looked on from the top of the keep, taking in the construction and restoration of her new castle. Three extra walls were being built around her castle, and each would be thicker and better defended than the last, but only the first would be partially hollow, allowing siege defense weaponry to be installed. Much to the alicorn's disappointment, none had been made yet.  

"They can make steam pipes but can't carve wood and tie some strings," she grumbled to herself.

The alicorn was haunted by the battle eight months ago against the one that sought to erase her and all of Equestria's past. Her body tensed at the memories. He couldn't hold the magic in his body but he could wield it, and his declarations were cryptic at best. He was just a scapegoat for whatever group existed at the time, so they did something to the other immortals. She contemplated the information and groaned. While the current queen of changelings was receptive to Nightmare Moon's demands, she had no knowledge of the queens of the past beyond two generations. That broken pony couldn't have gone throughout the whole of Equestria on his own despite his immortality. His broken body wouldn't have allowed it, and others would have been quick to catch onto his actions.

"Some are missing a piece to a puzzle they can't solve..." Moon muttered to herself. She grit her teeth. "I'm playing with a ten thousand-piece board and only have seven pieces in the box," she growled angrily.

"Queen Nightmare Moon," a pegasus guard called out.

The alicorn turned to face the armored pony bowing before her and rolled her eyes. "I told you to continue calling me 'princess' when you're in disguise. I need to be rid of the king and queen first before retaking the throne of Equestria and proclaiming my title. I thought I explained it all to you bugs."

The 'guard' bowed their head. "Apologies, Princess. It was my own assumption that--"

"Don't assume," Moon chastised firmly. "Until I say you can change your approach, you keep to the standard." She walked towards the edge of the keep and watched the masons arguing about a blueprint. "What do you want?"

"I am just giving you a weekly report. Queen Hepetia wishes to inform you of the activities of the Equestrian Royal...Of the false royal family."

"Hmmm...What is it? I have things to mull over."

The changeling pulled out a scroll from its saddlebag and unfurled it. "It seems that he and the queen have divided themselves into two. Their campaign to disprove your existence continues, although we learned that they hadn't initiated it." Moon raised a brow and looked at the bug, intrigued. The changeling shrunk under her gaze. "We...We haven't been able to find who suggested it or if even any...pony suggested it at all. The king and queen stay in their chambers for a while then come back out with several sheets of paper. They let no one look at them."

"And the queen is deaf, so there's no point in trying to hear what she has to say," Moon mused.  

"We also haven't found any traces of this so-called 'Solar Tyrant' or any other alicorns being born."

Moon nodded. "Thank you, for this information. Now leave."

The changeling nodded. "The queen will be meeting with you this afternoon," it said before leaving.

The alicorn groaned and sat down, taking in her surroundings a little more. The outer two walls had yet to be fully built. The gatehouses covering the new bridges had been finished, sure, but only a few, very small sections were built up. The rest were just the foundations that had been dug out or built with extra stones to even them out with the trenches. Moon contemplated the broken pony again. For some reason that eluded her, even after all this time, he haunted her. His face, his behavior, his past. He was incompetent all the way through, and yet his life felt...familiar. A broken relic of a time long passed. It was worth a ballad of irony.

Moon shook her head. She needed to focus. Now she had the king and queen to contend with, having dared to oppose her vassalization of their family and reclaiming of their kingdom. Perhaps the queen had more news regarding that and her unsavory allies with the griffins. The weird parrot creature that reeked of chaos and the minotaur. The alicorn felt a shock in her brain. 'Neutrality'. Whatever that meant. She mulled over the idea many times, but only after being reminded of the bird did she realize that the magics of Discord and Accord hadn't been destroyed, only the ones that wielded them.  The bird was touched by chaos, but she wasn't completely saturated in it.

"I'll have to take some notes..." Moon pondered aloud.

Another guard came by, saluting the mare. "Your highness, Sunny is here. Should I bring him to you or will you join him within the throne room?"

Moon hummed to herself before answering. "I will have him join me in the throne room."

The guard nodded and jumped off the roof to glide down softly. Moon went down the steps leading to the roof and opened up into a small corridor meant to separate her room from the outside. Her room was currently filled with unfinished, wooden furniture. Woodworkers, sculptors, and seamstresses were deciding which wood to use, the color, the type of tissue to employ, and so forth. As long as they adhered to what the alicorn wanted, she didn't care what they did.

The throne room, however, was a different story. It had been fully decorated. While no guards were guarding it yet, not that they had a reason to, everything Moon had wanted was installed. Well, all but the stained glass windows. A long, night blue carpet led all the way from the entrance to her new throne. Its sides were trimmed with silver, and the pathway itself had been decorated with sewn-in scenes of Nightmare Moon's exploits since she had returned, from the day of her awakening to her fight against the 'imposter'. She would commission a new carpet once there was more, and then she would have to think of an alternate way of surrounding herself with her successes. The ceiling was permanently enchanted by the alicorn's magic to always resemble the night sky and display the various moons she was now linked to. They would fade in and out of view as the magic changed itself and would reappear in different places in different positions.

Immense banners had been hung to cover the long windows. Each displayed a single crescent moon on a night-blue background with silver-colored trim. It was simple, and Nightmare Moon wanted to change it, although she wasn't sure to what, yet. They had been woven with glow worm silk that helped illuminate the throne room in a silvery light. The natural glow of the silk plus the spell on the ceiling caused little white sprites to populate all the empty space they could reach, though they could not be interacted with. It was like hundreds of little fireflies chose the keep as their hive. Ironic, considering Moon's new allies.

Nightmare Moon flew towards her throne and admired it briefly before sitting in it. The seat was elongated to allow her to lie down upon it if she so chose, but a backrest was still present to display her flying high and being surrounded by a vortex. It imitated her so-called 'rebirth' into the new era. As with the rest of the motif, the main stones of the throne had been painted a night blue. Several sparkling white dots made from gems were encrusted into the backrest, the sides, and the edges of the throne were made from silver molded into flowing, cloud-shaped patterns.

The alicorn sat upon the blue cushion of her seat and snuggled herself in while sporting a silly smile. Had anyone but Sunny been present she would have executed them for having seen such an expression of joy and serenity.

Moon raised a brow. "Graduated yet?" she asked Sunny.

The unicorn chuckled nervously. "No. I just passed to the next year of my studies. Because of everything I learned from you they gave me bonus credits for next year. I'll only have to do half a year of work now," he said proudly. "A lot of the judges came from outside Snowfege so they didn't believe a lot of my thesis."

Sunny Dimples was met with a confused head shake. "What are these 'credits'? Is it yet another currency I'm unaware of?"

The unicorn was taken aback. "Wh...Didn't you have universities?"

"We had theaters where the philosophers would take their students and whine about life," she said dismissively. "I can accelerate your graduation fr--"

"No!" Sunny shouted. He noticed the alicorn's surprise and cleared his throat. "I would rather do the hard work myself for a sense of accomplishment."

Moon grumbled in response. "Very well. That is a laudable goal. I would rather have one smart pony by my side than a dozen loyal imbeciles." She leaned to the side and trailed one of the floating lights with her eyes. "Your parents should be able to come here in a few months' time. The guest quarters are almost finished," she said. "Being partially responsible for mining operations in that area could prove valuable since everypony knows them already," she thought aloud. The unicorn's nervous fidgeting became annoying. "What is it? Do you need to go to the bathroom? Should I 'give you permission' like you're some kind of foal?" the alicorn bellowed angrily.

"That's not it!" Sunny defended quickly. "I just feel nervous being at your castle again and being surrounded by all this weird magic." He glanced around his shoulders and cleared his throat. "I'm scared the king and queen are going to try and kill us again," the unicorn whispered to the alicorn.

Moon sat upright and laughed. "They have already tried, Sunny!"

Moon's nephew paled. "What? But I never...How? When?"

"When my drones spotted the would-be assassins," a deep and feminine voice explained.

Sunny turned to see giant green eyes looking straight at him. He screamed and rolled away inadvertently from the surprise, leaving the changeling queen to laugh heartily from the unexpected reaction. Nightmare Moon was less impressed and pressed her head against her hoof.

"This is the one you wanted me to help defend?" She puffed at him, doing her best to hold back another laughing fit. "I have no idea what you see in him."

"What is she?!" Sunny spouted.

"She is Queen Hepetia of the changelings. Her hive is in the former castle of the Solar Tyrant," Moon presented. "I suggest you be on your best behavior around my guest and ally."

"I'd rather not learn that he's another evil alicorn come to fight you and kill thousands of my drones in the crossfire because they couldn't escape to the lowest levels in time," the queen mused.

Moon's eyes glowed fiercely. "You know I had no say in the matter."

"What?" Sunny muttered with confusion.

Moon grit her teeth. "I had a fight with a false alicorn next to their hive." She rubbed her forehead. "It got out of hoof and some...destruction followed suit. Landscapes destroyed, mountains melted, and so on."

Sunny blinked several times and narrowed his gaze. "I think you're...I'm missing a lot of context here. Could you explain further?"

The queen cracked her joints in response. "A big fight we weren't expecting, everything warped around us, we fled to the deepest levels of the castle. Many didn't survive and were caught in the crossfire. The end," she stated with contempt towards the young unicorn." She sat down and stared absent-mindedly at the orbs floating around. "We're still trying to fix what's left of the hive. Amusingly, its twisted layout has made it a better place to hide away in." Hepetia waved the anger away. "Water under the bridge. We have already recovered the losses, and then some." The queen paused and began sniffing the air. "It smells...like pine cones and cinnamon?"

Annoyed groans reached the queen's ears. "I was hoping you wouldn't smell anything. The guards thought this place needed a new smell and burned something called 'incense' that comes from the east beyond the sea. I told them not to do it but they had to."

"It's very hard not to notice it," Hepetia mocked. "It stings the nostrils."

Sunny shrugged. "I still think it smells better than the dank, humid stench of rot and mushrooms this place had before."

He shrunk away when the two giants looked at him.

"I am just here to make sure my changelings are performing their tasks of subterfuge correctly," Hepetia explained.

"They have been working efficiently, but some are disrespectful," she growled.

Hepetia shrugged using her wings. "Not every creature is perfect, and I have hundreds of thousands of drones in my hive. I can't know how all of them will behave in any given situation."

Moon exhaled loudly but relented. Even she couldn't argue with that. "As for the reward, it is still as promised, although I could have your kind officially revealed and instead into pony society instead. You wouldn't need to hide anymore and solutions could be found to feed you better."

Sunny was shocked. The terrifying goddess of the moon was actually acting considerate towards somepony else, and they weren't even a pony!

"Thank you but I would rather you refrain from doing that. We could no longer be efficient at our infiltration, and the chances we could properly acquire love is...well, it wouldn't be of the same quality, now would it?" She smiled. "And then individual bugs would become fat, complacent, and selfish, like ponies."

"I would have said griffins," Moon said.

The changeling gestured in agreement. "Although it's not great, sugar is a good substitute."

Moon scratched her chin. "I looked into that. There seem to be several sugar farms south of here in the sea. If I retake and rejoin Equestria, we could do business in that regard." The queen glared at Moon and retook her stoic and proud stance. "I cannot, in good conscience, take the sugar from the hooves of my subjects for some unknowable goal. They would run out of business and you would no longer get any sugar to sustain your hive."

Sunny grimaced. Moon was feigning sympathy just to irritate the changeling. It was strange to see two rulers being passive-aggressive towards each other while still being helpful towards their shared goals. Was this politics? Politics were stupid if this was all it was about. The unicorn sighed internally and wished the mayor were here.

"Then I'll explore your h...city." The Queen was quick to correct herself. "Oh, and do come back to the hive. Your fight broke something beneath the castle. We have no idea what it is or means. Just a bunch of weird shapes melted into the walls and several red symbols scrawled all over." Moon raised a brow. "Then maybe your little friend there would be able to see the aftermath of a fight of a tall pony." She looked at the pony with a disturbing smile. "You can help us find victims. The rotting stench will clue you in," she mused.

The white unicorn nodded nervously. He frowned when she turned to leave. "Hey wait," Sunny realized. "How did you get in here when there's a ton of guards and workers outside? I had to go through five different checkpoints just to get in."

The queen faced Sunny and stared him down without blinking. "Look me in the eyes. No blinking," she said.

"Okay?"

Sunny struggled to keep his eyes open while the changeling stared at him, unflinching, like she was a statue.

"Struggling, pony?" she asked him.

"N-no." He eventually gave up and blinked, making his eyes burn in the process. Unfortunately for him, the changeling queen had vanished. The pony spun around, trying to find a trace of her, but she left nothing behind. "Where did she go?! How did she do that?!" Sunny worried.

Nightmare Moon shrugged. "Now that that is out of the way, what should I start with?" she mused to herself. "Attacking anypony now would be pointless." She grimaced. "I'll annex the forest of the thestrals since they're loyal to me, and get my chef in the process. Hmm...preferably without poison in the food this time."

"But...there's their hive and that strange thing hidden underneath it," Sunny said. "The thestrals aren't going anywhere."

Moon gave Sunny a glance. "You're just saying that because you want to see their hive."

"...Maybe, but I want to help them too."

The two exchanged looks for a moment before Nightmare Moon gave in. "Fine!" she complained. "The portal is deep in the dungeons below, so nopony but I and the changelings can use it. We'll go now, so hurry up."

Nightmare Moon grumbled as she moved the stones to the dungeon away, revealing a hole in the floor.

"There's no stairs?" Sunny asked.

"There are. This is just quicker."

The dungeon had been mostly cleaned compared to when Sunny had first seen it when Nightmare Moon imprisoned that loud noble. There was no longer algae and slime sloughing off the walls. The metal bars of the prisons were no longer rusted. They were now brand new bars of black metal that stank of paint and heat for some odd reason.

"It should be over here," Moon said.

The two went down another set of stairs and past a metal door that Moon opened with her magic. It was still empty, telling Sunny that nothing was even remotely ready at the castle yet. The alicorn repeated the same action with the stones of her throne room's floor with one of the walls and revealed the gray portal made by the changelings.

"That's the portal?" Sunny asked. He leaned forward from behind the alicorn. "Is it safe? It doesn't look...right."

"You chose to postpone my annexation of the thestrals, you don't get to question anything. In you go," she ordered.

The mare booted Sunny into the portal and followed in after the screaming unicorn.
> More Doors
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I can't see!" Sunny complained. "Where are we?" Doing his best to try and see through the blinding light, he could just barely make out a mountain. "I heard...what is that, clicking?" he wondered aloud. "Can you see anything?" he asked. He received no answer, however. "P-princess? Princess?!" he called out in panic.

"I'm here, stop yelling." Moon puffed. "Looks like they were about to eat you," she mused.

"Wh-who was what?"

"Here."

The light gradually faded to a more tolerable -albeit still bright- level. Letting his eyes adjust, the stallion jumped back when he saw the thousands of black, insect-like equines bordering the platform the portal was situated. More could be seen staring at him from the surface of the mountain and the inside of the castle itself. Sunny gulped nervously and felt his legs give way under the fear.

"There...there were so many already waiting..." Sunny trembled in fear. "I...uh...d-do we have to go there?" he asked nervously.

"Yes," Moon said with annoyance.

Sunny took a deep breath and forced himself up. He thought that he would be used to this sort of thing by now, but every time he went anywhere with the alicorn, weird things that he never expected always ended up occurring. Things that make him terrified. Things that could kill him in seconds if he wasn't vigilant.

"Through...the changelings?"

"Yes!" Moon shouted angrily. "Now stop your whinging and hurry up."

The bugs moved away when Nightmare Moon strut forward, although some still hissed and snapped at her and Sunny. One jumped out from the now-crooked mountain to the duo and bowed their head.

"What do we owe the honor of this visit?" the changeling asked.

"Your queen mentioned something you discovered beneath your hive during my...confrontation with the false alicorn."

The bug pondered a moment then raised their wings in realization. "Oh, of course! That thing..." It cleared its throat and gestured to the ponies to follow it.  "Strangest thing I have ever seen, and I have infiltrated minotaur lands far to the east. Obsessed with weaponry, those ones. Kept in check by the griffins. Kinda fun to pit them against each other when we're bored."

Sunny was not doing well at the sight of this massive construct. The doorway had been snapped in several places and held together by a strange, sticky green goop that looked very organic. The interior wasn't faring much better and was filled with webbing and goop all over the place. The only locations he couldn't spot any were on the floor.

"I see you haven't had time to fix any of this," Moon commented.

The changeling heaved a tired sigh. "The damage was quite extensive, Princess. Not to mention that the work put into all of this is beyond any kind of masonry work we know. Techniques were used that have been lost to time."

"No doubt a result of those imbeciles the broken pony was part of," Moon complained.

The young unicorn found himself spinning around as he tried to take in the architecture around him and the few statues left that hadn't been torn apart. "So you made your hive in an old castle?" he asked. "Must be very old if you don't know the architecture."

"It's the castle of your many times great grandmother," Moon explained. She looked at Sunny. "Congratulations. By right this belongs to you and your family. You have your own castle."

"Y-you mean the Solar Tyrant?" Sunny stammered.

The alicorn bobbed her head left and right. "It's fifty-fifty whether it was the Solar Tyrant or my sister." She thought back to the charred diary she recovered from Canterlot's buried remains and frowned. "Although I have a pretty good idea of who had it made." She dragged a hoof across the weakened stone and checked the dust left on her. "It is an old place, but far younger than Canterlot."

"Belongs to him by right?!" the changeling shouted. Their outburst brought the attention of other drones working about the castle ruins. "You can't do that! We found this place first! You can't just st--"

Moon blocked their mouth with a hoof. "Relax. I have no intention of taking your home. I'm only interested in seeing what was buried beneath that you had yet to notice during the...many...long time you were," she muttered.

"O-oh. Okay." The changeling cleared their throat and ruffled their wings. "I see. I'm sorry. We just..."

"It's fine. I don't need your life story." She pointed beyond it. "Just lead me to the 'secret chamber'."

"Right. Let's continue."

Sunny cringed when his ears became filled with loud buzzing all around him. He had been so engrossed in nearly dying and being witness to an old castle he had never seen nor heard about that his brain had completely tuned out the noise.

The trio continued deep into the castle and passed over some debris that changelings were busy clearing out. The unicorn put a hoof to his mouth when he saw them dragging out their own from beneath the debris. The sight was too gruesome for the young pony to handle, so he quickly turned away and followed after the alicorn and changeling. They went through an open doorway to stairs leading down, deep within the castle grounds. The air became more humid, more rank. Everything seemed to become hotter. The ponies soon learned why: Breeding grounds. The walls had been dug out out by the changelings to incorporate many hatching chambers where several hundreds of grubs were waddling about, fighting with each other and being tended to by the larger changelings.

The guide looked over their shoulder. "Stay close to me, ponies. The grubs may look cute, but they're vicious at that age," they warned the two.

The bug stopped, annoying Nightmare Moon. "Why are we stopping?" she asked with her fangs bared.

The bug didn't answer, preferring to simply stare behind her. Moon's angry face quickly disappeared when she saw what had been so 'interesting' to her guide. Sunny became engrossed in one of the chubby grubs waddling about. Its gross body was pockmarked with specks of black and white, and it had very tiny forelegs. Several of the large changelings could be seen watching through an entryway to see what might happen.

"Princess, look! They're adorable! They're cute, small, and squishy!" Sunny said while gently squeezing the one he held. "It likes it!"

The grub he was holding was giggling with every squeeze, making the stallion love it more. He lost any adoration when it bared many rows of sharp teeth at him and hissed loudly. Sunny screamed and threw the grub over his shoulder and started running around in a panic while Moon and the guide watched with bored expressions. The white unicorn used his magic to encase it in a cube prison and hide behind Nightmare Moon.  

"Look at that slavering beast!" the unicorn shouted. "It's licking the spell!"

"If you could just remove the spell, then the caretakers can grab it and calm it down," the guide requested patiently.

Sunny glared at him. "Fine," he agreed reluctantly.  

The moment he let the spell dissipate, the grub immediately started crawling back at him furiously.  

"Oh no, not this time!" the unicorn declared. "This time I'm prepared!"

"Punt," Moon spurted.

She casually kicked the grub away, sending it flying through the air in a fit of terrified squeaks and growls. The caretakers panicked and jumped to grab it. Two accidentally collided in the air, but the third was successful in the endeavor.

"Stop patronizing the infants of our allies, Sunny," Moon sighed.

"Well, at least now he'll know better next time," the Guide added.

The annoyed stallion followed the two deeper into the hatching grounds, and Sunny noticed that there were a few chambers that had caved in from the fight before. Everything had become uneven and misshapen the further in they went. Several teams of changelings were trying to dig out a chamber that had apparently almost folded in on itself at several angles. A few grubs had been saved, but it confused Sunny as to how they managed to survive several months without food or water. He got his answer further in past a chamber made for the caretakers to rest. A few of them were perched atop giant stones and mounds of dirt still attached to the ceiling and...puking a pink liquid into the cracks and crevices leading into what he assumed to be pockets of still-living grubs. They were being aided by some of the caretakers holding up extra bright, luminescent mushrooms they had plucked from the walls to shine directly into the gaps.

There were worker drones discussing with the caretakers on how best to proceed. When one of the drones tried to remove a large stone, several of the ones surrounding it as well as the ceiling started trembling, prompting the others to screech in a panic. Sunny found it fascinating that these insects communicated through screeches and chittering noises. He would have to catalog the changeling language if they allowed him to.

"It's here," the guide announced.

They went into a hatchling cave where eggs and newborn grubs were being evacuated by the caretakers, although a few of the small creatures were still waddling about. Several tried to garner Moon's attention, but when they realized she didn't even acknowledge their existence, they puffed up their faces angrily and moved away towards the next pony they noticed was present. Sunny glared at them, surprising the grubs. They bared their fangs at him, hissed, and quickly turned away.

"Stupid worms..." the pony muttered under his breath.

"What a bizarre creation," Moon noted.

Although it had been slightly bent in the middle from the land shifting, the door was still holding. It was a massive, black door made from what Moon assumed to be steel. Several metal torsion bars and clamps crossed the frame and buried themselves beyond the rock where they couldn't be seen or reached.

The guide made several noises of discomfort and started looking greatly worried. "We have tried to enter it, but after a few attempts we felt there was a toxic miasma exuding from whatever was on the other side," they explained.

Moon dragged her hoof across the door and quickly retracted it when a tiny red spark shocked her. "I don't know this kind of magic," she noted with surprise. "This...doesn't feel like something my..." Moon took an audible gulp to wash away the sickness rising up. "sister would do," she wheezed. "This is something else entirely." She shot a small spark of her own magic at the door and noticed that nothing had occurred. "If I knew what kind of magic this was then I would have an easier time identifying it."

"So...you can't get through?" Sunny asked.

Nightmare laughed. "I said I can't identify it. I didn't say I had no way to get through it." She dragged her hoof across the door once and frowned. "This is an extremely powerful spell. One that seems to have been reinforced many, many times in the past, but it feels like each one was different. A different type of reinforcement, incompatible with whatever magic this is."

Sunny hummed and thought back to his lessons at his university. "The more you reheat a metal to repair it, the frailer it becomes. You can only reheat it so many times before it either becomes useless or you have to melt it," he thought aloud.  

"You can only repair something for so long," Moon agreed. "While I can't undo the magic, I can force it apart," she added.

The mare gathered magic in her horn, and it seemed like a corona of darkness pulled in all the light from the surroundings into the alicorn. She pointed her horn at the door and dozens of red marks appeared on its surface. Most were circular in shape with symbols written into the rings they formed. They were sharp and jagged and perplexed even Nightmare Moon. She grunted in pain as she continued to try forcing her way through.

"Princess, maybe you should refrain from pushing," the changeling suggested with genuine worry. "We were about twenty trying to force through it, and we--"

"You weren't an alicorn!" the alicorn grunted through clenched teeth.

Sunny stepped forward, his eyes darting between Moon's horn and the door. "But princess, he's right! If you keep trying you're going to hurt yourself!"

"Grrrrraaaa-I've had worse to deal with!"

"But--"

The two onlookers became silent when they heard the definite sound of metal crying under pressure. a recognizable 'crrrk' noise! The interwoven spells on the door were starting to tremble, and as time went on the symbols started dissipating and cracks grew along the many interweaving half-rings and circles. It took an hour to get through all the decayed magic, and the shattering of the spells caused an explosion that threw everyone and the grubs back against the opposite wall.

"There!" Moon groaned. "It's broken," she strained.

Her horn sputtered with magic and light returned to the chamber. She ignored Sunny and the guide's attempts to get her to rest, but Moon pressed on. She wanted to know what exactly was beyond a door that not only sported such physical strength but also needed magic spells of such a caliber. And unknown magic, on top of that.

With another bit of effort, she drunkenly tore the door out of the wall and stumbled forward into the room to a strange sight resplendent with sickness and magic.
> Deep, Deep within the Red Land
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moon leaned against the open door, causing it to creak under her added weight. Being inside of this room made her feel...disgusting, like something was slathering her soul in toxic substances. Anyone entering the newly-opened chamber felt the same, like they were being dragged down into a morass of remorse and fury. Of decay and longevity.

The stale air that had been stuck within was finally free to mingle with the outside and refresh itself among the plant life lurking beyond the stone. Moon peered at the contents of the room through lidded, tired eyes and felt discomfort.

The room was far from being small. It was large enough to be considered a living room or a workshop of some sort. There were several old, wooden desks that had collapsed from age. Some still hung on as tightly as possible despite their age, but it was obvious from a glance that just a slight gust of wind would make them collapse into mulch and take everything with them. Books and parchments were strewn about like someone was digging frantically through the contents, and many of them there were. Moon counted at least twenty bookshelves with six levels. The books and parchments were shoved aggressively atop each other and several were just inches away from falling down. Candles that had long since burned out had their solidified wax pooled on the floors or partially dripping off the still-solid tables. Ink wells had been shattered against the walls and floor while hundreds more lay strewn about in piles where dried ink had gathered. Several had tipped over the tables or just sat in place with feathers still resting in them.

The guide and Sunny decided to explore silently whilst watching their steps, as everything felt...wrong in this place. Sunny carefully wiped away some debris that had fallen from the low ceiling and looked at the parchments, books, and free pieces of cloth that had been used to write on.

"I don't understand. What is this place?" He grabbed a parchment in his magic and unfurled it as carefully as he could manage. "Nothing written here makes any sense. It's just random words and letters..." he frowned. "This looks like a lot of different versions of ponyish crammed together angrily."

"You say that, but the amount of magic coming off of them is insane," the guide said. "My wings are fluttering from the power."

Moon forced herself off of the door and wandered in, taking in everything around her. "Hmmm..." she growled.

"Something wrong, Princess?" the young unicorn asked.

"There's something hiding here," she said whilst looking around.

The guide followed her gaze and dropped a book that disintegrated when it touched the ground, much to Sunny's horror. "Oops," he muttered. "I'm not sure how anything could be hiding in here. It's still in pretty good shape after your fight, and nothing could have gone through that seal."

"I agree," Moon said. "The seal spreads throughout this whole chamber, but there's more. Layer on top of layer of different spells, like some cursing, muttering to itself and trying to decipher its own words without it making sense."

"A riddle?" Sunny asked.

"No no," Moon disagreed. "Like they're asking themselves a multitude of questions and getting answers that are both wrong and right."

"That's what I said: A riddle."

Moon cast a despondent glare at the stallion who smiled and turned back around to tend to the discovery.

"I can't break it or do anything about it," the alicorn grunted. "But I can at least reveal it."

Nightmare Moon focused her magic through her hooves, causing them to glow white. With a single stomp of her fore hooves her magic pulsed across the surface of the room before terminating directly above her on the ceiling. After several seconds, symbols almost identical to the ones on the door appeared all over the room, all of them a vibrant red.

"What the..."

"My sister's magic reeks in here," Moon grumbled. "Was another fragment of hers in this room?" she wondered. "Or is it just leftover magic?"

"W-well, considering it's her castle, and this is where the Solar Tyrant supposedly was defeated, one can assume this is all hers?" Sunny supposed.

"I'll have to report this to the queen as soon as possible," the guide said.

Moon grimaced. She wanted to keep all of this for her own studying, but the changelings inhabited this place, and there was no way to keep it a secret even if she killed him. The alicorn would have to accept that it was something the changelings would be able to look deeper into, and that worried her.

"This...looks like protective and summoning patterns," Sunny noted. "I saw this during our history lessons. I don't recognize the entirety of the patterns nor the symbols, but the general shape of this one looks like what I just mentioned." He sat and tapped his chin pensively. "But what were they for?"

Moon sighed internally. Leave it to Sunny to blurt out what she didn't want spoken, but she would be delaying the inevitable, so best to remove the poultice quickly.  

"How are you sure that they're for that if you recognize nearly nothing?" she asked him.

He pointed to sharp corners shared between the two spells painted on the wall. "Summoning circles are sharp, while protection spells tend to be rounder."

Moon nodded in agreement. "There are circles with sharp corners but they're harder to make, and thus stronger," she muttered to herself.

"Then what kind of spell would this be?" the guide asked them.

Painted on the floor and broken by a disintegrated pile of furniture was a spell comprised of interweaving loops and words strung between each inner-most bend like rope holding them together. Sunny bounced in place, trying to dig through his knowledge of what the spell could be but started grunting in frustration.

"I have no idea! We would need to find an expert on magic!"

"I am an expert," Moon said. "And I can assure you that there are no spells like this, at least not in Equestrian magic."

"Then what?" the changeling asked. "These are fake spells?"

Moon shook her head. "They're too potent for that..." She frowned. "And they feel vaguely like the magic the false alicorn was using," she thought to herself.  

He knew how to reach the castle. He had magic that could reach into a creature's mind and take it over. Moon could not trace his magic at all. She furrowed her brows, deep in thought.

"What have you figured out?" Sunny asked.

"The spells were last tended to at least six thousand years ago," Moon noted. "Meaning that there was more than enough time to study what was within."

"And you said that the spells that came after were just pale imitations, right?" Sunny asked.

Moon nodded. "The thestrals never mentioned when my sister was cast down, only that she was a long time ago."

The pair was distracted by the changeling trying to scrape away the glowing runes and bearing his teeth in frustration when he failed. "So they came across this after killing the 'Solar Tyrant' or whatever that is."

Moon snickered. "I thought the changelings would know about the stories the thestrals mention."

She was met with a hurt ego. "Not all changelings are infiltrators, and not all of us go to the same places. I wasn't assigned to the thestrals so I don't know anything about them," he explained. The guide huffed at Moon.

Regardless, there wasn't much that could be deciphered on the runes, only speculated.  

"The ones responsible for destroying Equestria's past likely tried learning this magic, but without my sister they couldn't learn what they wanted," the alicorn said.

"So they just tried copying what they saw drawn all over the place?" Sunny realized. "Huh. I wouldn't try that at all. That's stupid!"

"Put yourself in the place of these foals with self-esteem issues: They take down an alicorn at the height of her rage-induced power and go to loot all her magic artifacts -artifacts which I still need to find- and discover this chamber. Why wouldn't they try to copy it and become powerful like alicorns?"

Her pupils shrunk in horrified realization. The broken pony was a false alicorn and, in his delirium mentioned being chosen as the 'hero'. She started to pace about the room, looking at all the interwoven and likely incomplete spells. He didn't mention how he became an alicorn. Moon almost felt stress encompass her but deflated quickly. They had no reason in making more alicorns outside of a pretty, living statue to bring the others towards and to worship for guidance. The alicorn took another glance at the spells and followed them to the ceiling. Somewhere in here was a way to make an alicorn, but the result meant that it was either an incomplete spell or the idiots only managed to decipher a portion of it.

"I can see you wracking your brain, princess," the guide said. "Did you decipher something?"

Moon looked around once again and started to notice patterns the harder she looked. It was obvious that there were thousands of incomplete spells scrawled in different sizes and patterns. She took one of the books and slowly turned the pages as carefully as she could before it crumbled. Every page was scrawled on with the red symbols and ink. She set it down then grabbed another. Several notes in a language she did not understand, and then blank pages, but the next book was filled with red symbols.

"The books are filled with these on a much smaller degree, and there are several journals as well, some incomplete," she noted.

She sat on her haunch and covered her muzzle with a foreleg while she turned the gears in her mind. Once more she had to look around and found herself growing annoyed at the time this was taking and the repetition she needed to do to solve the mystery. Her leg and jaw dropped when she finally saw it: There were thousands of tinier looking runes that had been angrily rubbed out or drawn over with several lines to 'erase' them. More of them seemed to bend and twist then stop immediately. Others were not even filled out yet, remaining as hollow traces or simple rings.

"She was experimenting," Moon realized. "She was trying to make some kind of new magic."

"But the chamber was sealed with increasingly worse copies of whatever could be understood and then buried entirely," Sunny added. He scratched his head, ruffling his mane. "I don't get it."

"Much to my annoyance, I don't either. Something must have happened with the magic they were using that made them want to seal it away," Moon said. She groaned loudly. "With them having destroyed Equestria's history, there's nothing else we can pull from this except for mere speculation, and I hate speculating on important matters."

"I can't find anything else of importance," the changeling said. "Nothing aside from what you mentioned already." He wiped the dust off of his chitin as he walked towards the two ponies. "Couldn't find any hidden secret passages or anything of the like, either," he added.

"Then there is not much else we can do here," Moon lamented. "I still have a chef to recruit for my castle's kitchen."

"Nothing else?" the changeling asked.

"No. We are at an impasse and must convene on the matter. I will have you inform your queen if I find anything." She stepped forward and jabbed the bug in the chest with her hoof, baring her fangs and glowing, white eyes. "And I would like the same done for me," she said through clenched teeth.

"Of course! Of course," the changeling nodded frantically.

"Good."

Moon kept quiet on the return trip and suggested Sunny do the same. Beyond a few greetings by the bugs, Sunny remained mostly silent. Back in the dungeons, Moon sealed the door behind them and exhaled loudly through her nostrils now that they were free of prying ears.

"I'm starting to wonder if they didn't seal it away because the magic they were using started to decay their false alicorn," Moon said.

"What?" Sunny said.

"He...fell apart before my eyes. He was incomplete, broken, in more ways than one, and he was filled with so much magic that it accelerated the process." She looked Sunny in the eyes. "What if that started happening in front of every pony and they partially sealed him away in the panic?"

"I mean...I guess that makes sense?"

Moon became despondent. "They resealed the room my sister was experimenting in with terrible versions of those spells, so they must have tried using it in public, and everything started to fail at the same time..." She scoffed. "Instability is fun with magic," she mused.
> Another Morning...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A loud bell rang outside. The king's eyes shot open. He felt like he hadn't slept at all for so long...ever since that alicorn had arrived. That accursed goddess of the night. A groan escaped him when he dragged his hooves across his face. He couldn't remember his dreams, but he had the distinct impression that she regularly visited him just to harass him and taunt him nonstop, knowing full well he couldn't do anything about it.

He rolled his head to the side to see his queen sharing the same expression of fatigue. They both whinnied and rolled out of their immense bed and fell limply onto the floor, alerting their guards who burst through the wooden door to check in on them in a panic.

"Your highnesses, are you okay?!" one of them shouted.

"Bppth...Yes, guard. We just slid out of bed. Go away," the king grumbled.

"A-are you sure? Should I get the physician? Y-you don't look so--"

"Yes!" the king interrupted angrily. "Just get out!" The guards obeyed with the same hurry as they did when entering. "I can't take this anymore. How does a single pony ruin everything in just a few months?!"

Majesty pulled the immense purple curtains apart exposing their tremendous room to the light outside. The king stomped over the tiled floor towards a mirror to check himself and frowned further from seeing the bags under his eyes. Annoyed, he turned to his wife drinking water from an imported amphora sitting on one of their many hand-carved, gold-trimmed, minotaur dressers.

"What is it?" Majesty asked with her wings.

The king groaned and let his head drop. "I don't feel like wearing any 'royal outfits' today.

"Me neither. Let us simply wear our crowns and be done with it. A...light day?" she asked.

The king nodded. "Yes. A light day. That would be significantly better, and the peasants never know the difference when we pull something out like that just to make our days more convenient," he strained as he stretched.

Annoyed and with heads held low, the two rulers trotted out of their room, narrowly missing the guards when the doors swung open. A proud and haughty butler rushed over to them with several documents. They were held by a wooden board held in front of the earth pony by a telescopic arm coming from the left of their vest.

"What is it today?" the king sighed.

"Well, all your assassins were countered, our spies were flushed out, and there's no mangoes this year thanks to a disease ravaging the farmlands."

The king screamed in despair. "On top of all that I can't even have a mango-raspberry slurry!"

Giving him time to recover himself, the guards eventually let in the first few groups for their audience with the royal family and explain their woes or try and barter their way into the king's good graces. Too upset to continue past a dozen such sessions, the king stopped 'out of nowhere' to the visitors and left in a huff amidst the uproar of complaining. 

"What am I meant to do at this point?" he muttered to himself through the halls. "I've tried everything..."

"Perhaps I could help?" one of the maids suggested.

The king raised a brow to her. There was a strange color coming from her eyes. "What, am I meant to believe you are some kind of 'super spy' meant to watch me and somesuch trash?" he mocked derisively.

The maid produced a throaty chuckle. "No. Nothing so extravagant."

Then king raised a brow and leaned in closer. "And what is wrong with your eyes?"

The maid cleared her throat. "I am using her body temporarily because I have a proposal for you." Gallant slow-blinked. "Is there any way for me to prove my words?"

The king sighed. He preferred to have his wife present to argue these sorts of things with, but he was having a really crummy few weeks. "I don't know," he forced out.

The maid looked at herself and grimaced at the outfit she was wearing. "At least Celestia and Luna let their servants wear proper clothing. Hideous frills..." The king's brow furrowed. "Regardless, I fought the alicorn that escaped the moon."

Gallant let out a single 'ha'. "Of course you did. I believe you. that's why you're here now!"

The maid groaned. "To think I would have to use the old magic again." She took a deep breath and straightened herself up. "Then I'll show you the past and let you know why her arrival and our fight will spell doom for the world."

The king suddenly found himself floating high above the world, witnessing Equestria as it was so long ago, in a time erased from history. Hundreds of thousands of different ponies dotted the landscape in immense cities that had long since vanished. Cities he didn't even know existed. One such city was growing out of the mountain like a white flower filled with an uncountable amount of ponies, all attending a castle draped in the purest white he had ever seen. The images zoomed in, scaring him. Bracing for impact, the king realized that he had phased through the wall and was now in the unmistakable presence of a throne room...and the same, terrifying sensation he had when Nightmare Moon revealed herself.

The ponies here looked...odd. Angular and...childish? It was almost like somepony was drawing everyone and redefining reality with flat figures baring innocent smiles and wide eyes.

"What is this?! What's going on?!" Gallant cried out. "What have you done to me?!"

A serpent of black storm clouds emerged from the ceiling and twirled around the king. They coalesced into the vague shape of a pony with the same child-friendly depiction of a smile as the rest of the figures below.

I'm just revealing the history of Equestria
It's a lovely tale of highs and lows
With nopony here to tell of the horrible blows
Brought about by the magic of fell and the cultish Alicorns

"Now you're signing?! That didn't even rhyme!"

The smile never changed, giving the king a sense of comfort...which brought unease.

Not all tales rhyme. Songs are strung and woven like silk
But in this tale you'll see the alicorn's ilk
And why you must destroy Nightmare Moon as fast as possible
Behold below the alicorn of the sun, sister of the one you fear

The king looked below to see a supposedly generous pony mumbling some sort of gibberish and transforming the drawings' faces from frowns, anger, and despair, into smiles of varying levels.

She intended good upon the ponies
A lovely sentiment, it is true
But she was cruel and vindictive
To those who strayed from the path with which they were presented

She herself cursed her sister to become one with the moon
And she waited a thousand years for her return
Feigning pain and strife behind closed doors
But when the Moon did not return, her sorrow was great

The scene changed to a dark room with a pony whose luster had vanished. Her mane and coat were unkempt messes, and dark bags hung below her eyes. Whatever used to be her room was now a decrepit pile of destroyed furniture and furnishings. The king noticed a tiny figure hiding in the corner, peeking at the disheveled goddess from a barely open door, and grimaced.

Her sister would destroy the world
But we prevented her return
When she learned of our actions, rage engulfed her mind and magic
So we went to war

A war most foul
A war just dire
Filled with the blood-drenched tears of a sibling in ire
For a sister she banished to return to her side was her only desire

So her truth was revealed
Not just as something she would require
Since reality would fend and snap
At every bit of magic she cast out

Gallant bore witness to scene swap after scene swap of the world gradually going from a lush green to a charred black. The sun began to snap and twist at everything below it, zapping away at the tremendous armies charging towards a very changed alicorn. He had seen something like it before. In the very, very old archives his grandfather had shown him before age destroyed them. A pony flying up into the sky, with only its underside revealed and wings spread out within a circle of white light. Here, the light was a furious group of rings that went from white, to yellow, to orange, then red.

The king found himself growing annoyed at this...thing's lack of rhyming skill, but even he had to admit to finding something fascinating about learning of the world-that-was, even if he felt there was bias in the story.

The tyrant was cast down and banished
And the ponies who witnessed our deeds cherished
That they would live another day and fix all they had lost
For the sun was now furious but left adrift
To turn around the world as the curse of a 'daily' shift

The entity snickered.

But I was cursed as well
With the form and magic of an alicorn
Left with nary a memory of my prior form
But the others found it to be swell
And to no other the truth would they tell

And so time passed
Equestria healed and not much occurred
Until one day a cry was heard
And a mare was born with wings and horn
Much to an adoration that should have instead been scorn

A house flipped open to reveal a mare holding a child whose back was turned to the viewers. The king leaned in to get a better look. The pony's feathers and horn were black with strange, glowing blue patterns.

"A pony of the night?"

Of the moon, that's right!
And she was endowed with tremendous might! 
In the night sky came a new body bright and low
To the peace and autonomy we created, this was a mighty blow

We let her be, just to see
What she would make in this new reality
But we were wrong, just like a repeated song
With tricks and verses most foul, 
She began destroying all

A gigantic moon in the sky falling to Equestria immediately assailed the king's senses. He had never borne witness to such an immense body before, and it horrified him. The lands below were engulfed in living shadows rising to the skies with looks and cries of misery and pain. 

Every time an alicorn was born
We were tasked with taking them away
All their being and magic from them were torn
And so inside of me they would stay

No more alicorns
No more catastrophes
No more repetitive plays
Of ponies being swayed, tricked, and dismayed.

Gallant saw Equestria being flipped and spun around like it was a picture book with protruding figures and grimaced again. He wasn't a foal anymore. This entity was mocking him...Or was it? He raised a brow at the strange cloud and pondered in-between its verses. Was the water mill equipped with paddles or was the water just going through an empty frame?

And now we arrive at the present
Where the moon freed its prisoner
And I attempted to stop her
For nothing, I'm afraid to say

"Are you done?" the king lambasted. "I've had enough of your 'singing'."

The serpent harumphed in response. "I haven't heard song in millennia. I'm rusty."

"More like you've been eaten clean through."

"Regardless, let us stop this since it's not mixing with your 'palate', philistine."

The castle hallway came back into view and the king sighed in relief when he saw his hooves touching solid ground again. He flinched in horror when he saw the state the maid was in. It looked like she was melting away.

"What have you done?!" the king cried out.

The maid looked at her fur sloughing off and shrugged. "Sacrifices of the few to serve the many," she lamented. "But now you know what will happen if you leave her out there." She leaned forward. "And I trust you know now that I'm no liar."

"Fine!" the king shouted. "Then what do you want with me?!"

The maid smiled, shaking her flesh free and revealing her gums and jaw bones. "In the last battle my cursed body couldn't hold out, and my physical body was destroyed."

"So you're a ghost now?"

The maid shook her head. "No. This has happened before, but under such...extraneous circumstances. I've lost my grip on the magic I was meant to hold onto."

Gallant looked around vaguely and shrugged. "So?"

"I need your help to stop that alicorn before her own magic causes the free alicorn magic that was lost to coalesce because of her and cause a few, if not maybe a dozen or more, new alicorns to pop up." She looked outside the frame window to see several more sections of the king's castle and frowned. "Bluh. Terrible view."

"If you were defeated by her once, why should I believe you're capable of stopping her now?" the king asked.

The maid didn't take her eyes away from the window and looked up at the sun. "Because I have been defeated in the past, but I had aid with me those times. Now I'm all alone in here. Gather information on her and I'll help you by teaching you all I know on the old magics. Together, we'll be able to stop the alicorn threat."

"Fine," the king agreed reluctantly. "Not like I have any other options at the moment, now return the maid to normal."

His demand was met with raucous laughter. "If my body turned alicorn can't handle such magic, how would a regular pony?"

The lights faded from her eyes, and the mare collapsed onto the floor, trembling. Gallant dove down to hold her head up, his face wracked with guilt and sadness. 

"M-my king...what...I wasn't...It hurts! It hurts so much!"

"Guards!" the king bellowed. "Guaaards! Bring me the unicorns and the infirmaries! Guaaaaaards!"
> You are being vassilized. Rejoice!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Under the guidance of Sunny, the two ponies found themselves approaching the forest of the thestrals once again, and once more Moon could see the immense tree bigger than any castle she ever saw stretching high above the treeline. It almost seemed like it was holding onto the stars in the night sky or that its branches were stretching so far up that they had turned into stars. Moon thought back to the day she had. Strange runes left behind by her sister and what was unmistakably Celestia's presence. She let the day go by, waiting for night to fall, letting her look around the castle and see the progress of its defensive capabilities against both air and ground. She mused that, even if an air force came to attack her castle from above, that they would have no way to get any needed resources in place. They would have to fight a protracted battle, and that would never work. The mare had learned her lesson from her first attempt at having a fort built.

During the trip, she reminisced of when Mond and another ghost came to visit her right before her departure.





She had received a visit in her room by Mond, her unofficial successor, followed by some kind of behemoth of a pony that stood two heads taller than the Mare-in-the-Moon and was built like a fortress. It didn't help that it looked like whatever armor she wore had melted into her body and most of her lips were missing, exposing oddly shaped teeth that curved inwards like scimitars.

"You brought a guest, Mond?" Moon noted.

The first successor looked to the giant and nodded. "Yes. Mellow was able to manifest since her moon was the first you managed to link with consciously."

Moon rubbed her chin, intrigued. "Yet you were the first to come to me."

Mond shrugged. "We honestly don't know how it works. We already barely knew how our own powers worked. There's not supposed to be more than one alicorn of a specific thing, after all." She looked towards the giant who reciprocated the action. "Maybe the other alicorns would have known what to do?" she wondered.

"So what you said was a lie," Moon stated.

Mond shrugged. "I was just trying to be helpful."

Moon shook her head and groaned in disappointment. "Don't make assumptions about how our magic works if you have no idea what is happening with it."

"Well, sorry. It's not like you've been trapped in the moon for ten millennia." Mond glanced at Mellow a moment. "How did you wrangle the shades that you summon from her moon?"

"How do I what?" Moon asked.

The giant looked stunned. "You have to beat them into submission before you can unsummon them," Mellow explained as she took a step forward. Her voice was oddly loud but passive. "That's how I became as I did," she stated whilst flexing a foreleg.

"I haven't needed to do anything," Moon rebutted. "I simply felt a pull, and then the power came." She ran a hoof through her flowing mane and grunted. "Although every moon seems to drain me every time I use their powers."

Mellow stomped around, but being a ghost meant she couldn't damage anything, much to Moon's delight. "That isn't fair! They just obey you?! I had to fight them back every time I summoned them!" She slammed her hooves against the ground harmlessly and dragged them across her own face afterward. "This isn't fair! I want to be alive again to destroy things, but I'm stuck here!" Her eyes widened and she bolted in front of Moon, disgusting the living mare. 

"Instead of lamenting your current situation, perhaps your coming is more fortuitous for the both of us." The mare pulled several parchment dregs she hid above her room and showed them to the ghosts. "I tried to redraw them from memory, but my...artistic talents are lacking."

The two leaned forward to have a better look. Moon noticed their expressions turning dour.

"This looks like what those tiny idiots used against my shades," Mellow stated. "That magic was dangerous."

"But it never worked right," Mond added. "There was always something going wrong with it. The user collapsing, the magic blowing back and sparking their horn."

"The caster imploding, them and everything around them being turned into fragile, black ash," Mellow counted. "So many things always went wrong, even when the casting was successful."

"So it's as I expected," Moon realized. "What in Equestria was my sister up to?" The two visitors shrugged, leading Moon to roll her eyes. "You just came here to tell me that another one has been able to manifest?" she asked Mond.

The aforementioned looked at Mellow and cleared her throat. "Uuuh...Yes? You're trying to find answers to the past so I thought it would be a good idea."

Nightmare sighed but nodded slowly. "True. Thhhhank you," she forced out. The pony shivered. "That doesn't feel right to say that."

Mellow laughed loudly. "I never had to say thank you either! It's an awful sensation!" her voice boomed.

As loud as she was abnormally huge.





"Woah!" Sunny blurted.

He was getting used to Moon dropping him like a rock after their flights, but she never did it from the same height and still didn't warn him when she was going to do it. At least she didn't drop him so high that he would get hurt. As he nursed his aching limbs, a thestral jumped out of the trees and bowed to Nightmare Moon.

"Princess!" he chirped eagerly. "We never expected another visit!"

"Take me back to your village. I have something to announce a pony to recruit."

The thestral tilted his head, perplexed. "Recruit? For what?"

"I need a chef for my royal kitchens when they have been completed."

The bat pony scratched his head. "...And you came all the way here for that? Couldn't you have just sent a missive?"

Moon shot him a dark look. "I don't know the precise location of your village yet, and ponies don't exactly know where you live precisely. When I asked my guards they said that you don't have addresses or any real landmarks." She pointed towards the immense tree. "Aside from that."

"Well, I'll take you to our village. Maybe you will be able to remember it this time." He scratched the side of his neck. "And those three will probably stop bragging about having met you first."

"Those three?" Moon repeated quizzically.

"You don't remember the thestrals that found you in that mountain city and brought you back?!"

Moon tried remembering as best as she could. Only the vaguest memory reached through of annoying, young thestrals that were singing her praises nonstop.

"I have a vague idea of who you might be talking about," she noted with a hint of disgust.

"Follow me, your highness," the thestral said.

Moon barely took a step that she collapsed to the ground, her horn aflame. She clenched her teeth and tried her best to formulate a spell to relieve her of the crushing sensation around her horn. The thestral and Sunny had both become fluid like everything around the alicorn.  

Scritching.

Scratching.

Something was digging at the recesses of the mare's mind. Something disturbing. Revolting. It felt familiar, but she wasn't sure what it was. Within all the noise, there was a whisper, but Nightmare Moon could not make out the words.

Then nothing.

She stood up with her eyes wide and shook her head. "It's alright," she reassured the ponies. "A brief lapse. I will figure it out."

Her words only served to worry the ponies more, but they knew better than to argue with the future Queen of Equestria. The village was there to greet her once again, excited to meet their alicorn of the night and Sunny. Before the ponies could even approach her and shower her with praises or propose a celebration, Moon elevated the ground beneath her with her magic, creating a small podium of dirt that tore away the roots of the plants around it.

"Thestrals of Equestria!" Moon bellowed. She hadn't used the Royal Voice in so long for a proper decree. It tickled her vocal cords to not use it to yell as loudly as possible for intimidation. "I was planning to wait for the other tribes to arrive, but I believe the announcement should come to those who were the first to meet me and accept me with open minds! I am vassalizing the thestralian territories! You will become the first part of restoring Equestria to its former glory! Rejoice!"

Nightmare's only response was silence. The ponies weren't sure how to react.  

"Are you sure about this?" one of the thestrals asked her. "We're more than happy to have you return to us, but going so far? The king won't let it slide, and, with all due respect, you don't have an army."

Moon's eyes started glowing with rage. "I have an army."

"You have guards, your highness," Sunny corrected. He tapped the ground nervously. "You only have the guards you recruited from the base next to Snowfege. That isn't enough for a proper army."

The alicorn reluctantly agreed. She didn't want to deal with such a hassle, but the coming of the other thestral tribes could prove beneficial.

"Then would instilling military training help?" She faced the bat ponies. "Would anypony be willing to undergo training to become a soldier?" Most hesitated and shifted nervously in place, giving in to tics like clearing their throats or rubbing their leg.  

"The thing is," the same thestral responded. "We have lived mostly peacefully this whole time, even if we refuse to acknowledge the will of the king and queen."

"Mostly?!" one of the younger thestrals shouted. It was the younger mare with the cut ear that lauded Moon's return at the city. "We're forced to pay exorbitant tributes to the royal family so they ignore our rightful stance!" she said angrily. The fury she held was palpable, and Moon grinned internally.

"Those tributes stock up the emergency stores of Equestria!" the older thestrals rebutted. "Without those, what would we have to eat during poor harvests?!"

"They never gave us any food! My brother almost died if braver thestrals hadn't gone out to steal from the storage!"

"They were fools! They almost brought the wrath of the royal army upon us!"

Moon watched as the village visibly started to divide itself slowly, but silently. The bickering between the two started getting on her nerves, so she decided to step in by stomping so powerfully that even the squishy ground of the forest couldn't help but cave in.

"Enough!" she bellowed. The two bickering thestrals fell onto their backs and shrunk away. "Military training is not mandatory, and with the coming of the other villages, we will know who will be willing to join my forces. Know this first: I am attempting to gather as many territories to my banner through diplomacy as I can." She ground her teeth in irritation. "Despite simply wanting to take back what was rightfully mine from my sister, I find myself forced to do this instead."

"Perhaps you could have them train in secret?" Sunny suggested. "Like the two we met in the griffin city were doing?"

Moon pondered the concept. Training them with wooden and stone weaponry was all they would be able to do at the moment. Those resources were obviously plentiful in a forest, but she had no smithy outside of the small, private one for her personal guards. the further along she went with her plan, the more complicated things became. She would need to ask the thestrals and the acting mayor twins about any mines. If there were any orichalcum or, preferable, calchinium mines, then even she would be able to contribute to the production of equipment. Preferably high quality, finely crafted armors and swords she would reserve as rewards for her hardest working troops, and even some sort of...elite royal guard? She salivated internally at the thought. Her own army and kingdom, both inspiring fear in her enemies.

"We can discuss that with the other tribes when they arrive." She looked around grimaced. "Where's the chef that aided me when I was poisoned?!" she bellowed in the royal voice.

"Here I am!" a large thestral shouted from above. He was positively gleaming in delight. "You want another feast, your highness?"

"No," Moon blurted immediately.

The light faded almost instantly from the thestral. "Wh-what? B-but...I...I don't understand, then."

She pointed her hoof at him. "You...will be serving me and my guests in my castle at Snowfege."

The chef gasped deeply. "A royal chef?!" He couldn't muster the words to express his joy and bounced about randomly. "A dream come true!"

"I'll have some of my guards come by and escort you to Snowfege," Moon explained. "Gather whatever you believe is necessary for the cooking." She leaned towards him, her eyes glowing and fangs gleaming in the light filtering through the leaves. "The kitchen is ill-equipped, so you won't be making master level dishes. You'll be responsible with choosing and ordering everything needed to make it worthy of me and my home." She stood back up, looming over the thestral. "Am I understood?"

"Absolutely!" the chef bellowed.

"They're coming!" a voice announced from the trees.

"I still have those ghosts to speak to after all this," Moon thought to herself.

The alicorn winced in pain for just the briefest moment. The scratching came back, and it was a searing sensation etching itself onto her skull, trying to burrow through. Moon looked around to find the source, but there was nothing. Even the sunlight still seemed as peaceful as the day she killed that false alicorn. Odd and uncomfortably familiar. She felt a knot form in her stomach from worry.
> My Fortress
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moon ran the scenario of her meeting with the other tribes through her head, doing her best to try and remember every minute detail and uniqueness of each thestral group. While they were all still physically identical, only the one the alicorn knew directly was mostly aloof to the goings on with the world. They were also the more passive of them all, but they weren't disrespected, as she had expected. In remembrance of her, they kept close ties with each other and shared what knowledge they had either discovered or rediscovered. Only the one Moon knew directly had developed their culinary skills, but the detoxification through food came from another. Her fat chef simply experimented with the concept. 

The alicorn was briefly torn from her thoughts when Sunny yawned loudly. He had become too comfortable riding with Nightmare Moon carrying him, but it made the trips easier since he wasn't fighting her through fear, not that he did beforehoof. The mare grit her teeth. There were only five that had presented themselves, but there were at least twenty-six different tribes. Some felt threatened by neighbors and preferred to stand guard, implying that there were some militaristic thestrals still around. She'd have to see if they were modernized, per her understanding of her current guards.

Moon had trouble containing the excitement every time she saw her budding castle. When everything was finished, she would be able to use it as a foundation to make a truly glorious castle over the practical design it currently had. Something caught her attention, however. There seemed to be a small cohort of griffin soldiers standing on the drawbridge, unable to pass the gatehouse leading to the larger yard Nightmare Moon extended with magic. She snickered to herself at the sight. A small town could be built in there now, although it required the reconstruction of the walls facing away from the city. Material wasn't in short supply nearby at the very least.

But...that feeling couldn't get rid of the bitterness she felt with the thestrals. She expected loud cheering and another of their strange celebrations for being invited under her wing as the first ponies to be part of her soon-to-be queendom. That they were so apprehensive ripped the air out of her lungs, so to speak.

Approaching the walls, the alicorn noticed that one of the griffins was wearing an ornate robe and standing in front of what she could now only assume to be an escort. His robe was a mixture of red, white, and gold trimmings. Said trimmings line the edges of the cloth and created no real pattern. The designer just wanted to make a bunch of criss-crossing lines and curves. The red and white were divided into top and bottom respectively, but what Nightmare Moon couldn't figure out was how the colors were meshing together. Starting from the back and stopping at the middle were divided waves that grew increasingly tall until it looked like the 'string' separating the colors snapped and just mixed together wildly into a mess of paint dropped into water. The golden trims followed suite and gradually 'dissolved' the closer it got to the griffin's torso. 

Moon landed onto the walls with a thud, startling the guards focused on the soldiers at the gate. Sunny landed with a loud thump and grumbled at himself for still being unable to handle that kind of landing yet. Moon ignored the guards and leaned over the walls. The battlements had not yet been fully implemented, and while the alicorn would normally curse at such a defensive position being forgotten, she found herself being thankful this time, but only this time.

The eccentric griffin wore a silver crown with three horns curving and wrapping over their red and white head feathers. It seemed that the feathers they bore matched their outfit superficially.  The alicorn could already hear the murmurs of the soldiers upon seeing her and felt pride well up within her. The enemy feared her. Good. 

Nightmare Moon stood tall, letting the magic swirling around her swell in size to almost engulf everything around her. Only her eyes and fangs were fully visible through the miasma. "Who are you who would stand so brazenly at the gates of my fortress?" she declared.

"I am Prince Melcluf Rorkfeather, seventh of the Rorkfeather lineage. Who is it I am speaking to?" he asked loudly.

"A prince?" the alicorn scoffed quietly to herself. "I am Nightmare Moon, alicorn of the Eternal Night," she declared once more. "Did your father send a prince here expecting some sort of 'arranged marriage' with what he thinks is some princess having a temper tantrum?"

"Wh-what?! No!"

Moon smirked. "Why have you come here with a contingent of troops, then?"

Melcluf took a moment to recompose himself before resuming talks. He looked behind and shrugged his wings. "I came because, a few months ago, there was word that an 'army' of ponies attacked one of our cities." The griffin huffed. "From my own agents, I learned that it was just two, and one was a giant pony, and you're the only one who fit that description."

"So?"

"To be honest, I thought that the tales of an 'alicorn' were just that. Consider my surprise when I learned that the stories my subjects shared of one wandering about in Snowfege during one of its festivals turned out to not be a costume!"

The miasma receded all at once when Moon dragged a hoof across her face and groaned. "And what do I have to do with this story?" she asked.

Melcluf seemed stunned. "Wh-Reparations! Do you know how much damage you caused to my people's city?! And you come here brazenly, to a former nest of my people, and take it for yourself?"

Moon had tuned out the prince and his screeching. One of the guards noticed the visible anguish she was feeling and decided to step up.

"I can tell him off, if you so choose, your highness," he proposed.

"Hm? Really? And why would you do that?"

"Because I'm bored and I already hate that colorful chicken."

Moon slowly rolled her eyes to the side and shrugged. "Fine. I need some distractions for not getting the outcome I wanted with the thestrals."

Sunny couldn't form proper words and kept sputtering when he tried to stop them. "Are you crazy?" he finally managed to get out. "That could start a war!"

Moon waved him off. "Oh, a good war wouldn't hurt anypony, and besides." She leaned forward. "They aren't in any position to conduct another full war yet."

The guard cleared his throat and leaned over the wall. "Stop your whinging!" he shouted. "What do you want?!"

"Wh-e-ghgdd-Who is this?!" the prince bellowed.

"He's my..." Moon turned around briefly. "Diplomatic Associate. He is very fair and fluent in his words," the alicorn stated with a straight face.

Sunny noticed the guards around stifling their laughter as best they could. Many dropped the visors of their helmets.

"I'm not interested in talking to a peasant!" the prince bellowed.

"You probably need to if you wear clothing like that! I thought a foal dropped their water colors all over some kind of giant chicken!"

"Wh-Giant chicken?!"

"You can't fly over the walls so I'd say it fits!" the guard continued.

"We didn't fly over them as a courtesy! It's a case of diplomatic nicet--"

The guard lied down back first on the wall and let his forelegs and head dangle over the edge. "Dem's too many wurdz fer us simple peasant-folk, yer fowlness." He noticed the prince starting to turn red through his feathers. "Oh hey, he's turning red. Camouflage, perhaps?" he whispered to Moon. He made sure it was just loud enough for the prince to hear. "Hey! Don't turn red! You won't blend into the environment any better that way!"

"That's it!" Melcluf gestured to the soldiers. "We're flying over the walls!"

"Try it," Moon said calmly.

The griffin gulped at the sight of the alicorn's glowing eyes looking down at him from what felt like a mountain peak. He gestured at the others behind him with a claw and took to the skies. However, as soon as they reached the same height as the wall peaks, every griffin suddenly found themselves swatted back down onto the ground.

"What...is this magic?" Prince Melcluf stood back up and looked at Moon, shocked. "Our armor is supposed to be antimagic!"

"Aaaah, we already tried that!" the mocking guard said. "Doesn't work with her." He trotted up to the alicorn and patted her left shoulder, causing the other guards around to go pale. "Too much magic. It's like trying to soak up the ocean with a single sponge." He smiled. "So, yeaaaah, sorryyyyyy, but noooooo. Yeaaaaah. Nooooo. Doesn't work like thaaaaaaaaaat."

At this point, Moon decided to completely ignore the griffin yelling at her while his soldiers recovered from their sudden cranial trauma and made it as visible as possible that she wasn't paying any attention to him.

"Hey!" Melcluf shouted. His voice was starting to pitch higher the more frustrated he got. "I'm talking to you!"

At least he was able to notice quite quickly when he was being ignored.

"I am Prince Melcluf of the griffins and I will be heard!"

"You are being heard," Moon corrected. "Just not listened to." The alicorn watched the prince start to puff up. "You come to my castle, in my territory, and expect me to listen to you when you come to my door with soldiers and no appointment? You didn't even try to contact anypony here. That is incredibly disrespectful to my authority," the mare growled. "If you want to have a proper meeting and discussion, then submit your request to the mayor of Snowfege who will transfer it to me." She waved a hoof. "Now leave."

"You...You can't do this! My father will hear about this! You have insulted my people not once, but twice!" Melcluf bellowed.

Nightmare Moon caught him off. "And what, I'll rue this day? I'll regret my actions?" She pursed her lips and looked up, thinking hard on the outcomes. "Something something destroy everything I hold dear, yadda yadda?"

"You'll be less antagonizing when war comes to your city, duchess," the griffin said stiffly.

He and the other griffins left quietly, letting their feathers chase away the freezing mountain air surrounding them. Sunny stared at Nightmare Moon, a look of pure and utter shock taking over his features.

"You have a talent in taunting others," Moon told the guard while following the griffins with her eyes.

Said guard snorted and started smiling with too much pride. He leaned against the queen, his grin still present. "Yeah, well, when you grow up where I did, you don't have the luxury of politeness, you know?"

"Hmmm."

The guard Moon was praising let out a blood-curdling scream that continued unabated while the alicorn of the night loomed over him. She was twisting and bending his limbs in unnatural directions. "I let you put a hoof on me during your little show because it was amusing to see the reactions of the griffins and would have ruined the illusion, but that time is over. Your play has ended. Never touch me so casually in the future, understood?!" she bellowed.

"Y-yes! I! I won't again! Your highness!" the guard forced out between screams of pain.

"Good." Moon pointed to a horrified guard. "You. Get a doctor to treat this pony. Now. I won't have a corpse rotting away the new walls of my fortress."

"Medic!" the appointed guard managed to get out. 

Nightmare Moon huffed and sat down while staring at the increasingly smaller forms of the griffins in the distance. "Sunny, do you know if there are other villages like this where those new pony tribes are located?" The unicorn shook his head. He couldn't help but gulp and look at the ponies putting the agonizing guard onto a stretcher. "Focus, Sunny," Moon said.

"I-No. I just knew where the thestrals lived, but I didn't know where their villages were." He rubbed the back of his neck, brushing his mane back and forth with a hoof. "We would need to find ponies of those tribes and ask them to see if any know."

Moon nodded. "Then I suppose we'll have to go back to Snowden and look around."

The alicorn would have her army and her Equestria. She didn't care who got in her way. Even the griffins were just an inconvenience to her. At least she felt some amusement today, and still managed to contact and unofficially vassalize the thestrals. It was a start, and she would have to continue slowly building herself up. Being trapped for ten thousand years let her think and experiment in her own mind, after all. She could easily conquer what was left of her homeland, but what would be left afterwards? One cannot be a sovereign of dust and ash.

Nightmare Moon looked towards the sun and squinted. Everything was progressing, at the very least, so why did it feel like she was forgetting something important? Or, rather, why did it feel like she hadn't finished a battle?
> Unfinished Consequences
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eckret looked over the documents of the newest ruling from the royal family that affected his town. The dullahan was visibly disgusted as he looked over the documents in his office. Like most gan ceann he preferred to work in the dark and had his windows boarded up and used glowing crystals to light up his workspace. Purple crystals. They always made the old tribes uneasy.

"Sir!" a voice called out from behind the door. Grunting following as whomever was on the other side struggled to push said door open. "Ugh! I thought you were going to get rid of all the boxes of files."

It was Jellybean, the pegasus. Her coat and feathers were a hot pink whilst the tips of her wing feathers, mane, and tail all sported a bombastic yellow that blinded any who stared at it too long. She thought getting an orange streak through her mane would help, but Eckret still found himself squinting at her from the side even in this lighting. The only thing about her that didn't blind an onlooker was her cutie mark, that looked like some kind of hellish town seal. None of the shapes were recognizable nor were the letters on the trim readable. Just random assortments of bronze, green, yellow, and red. No pony could figure out what it was and Jellybean refused to compound upon it.

"How the Hades am I supposed to store them elsewhere?" Eckret bellowed angrily as he slammed his hooves on the marble table. He noticed Jellybean reflexively pull away from the sight of his limbs floating about in the dim, purple light. "We almost lost all of this when the store building caught fire!" The stallion passed a hoof through his mane. "How does a brick building catch fire? I thought it was designed without any flammable substances in it!" He slammed his head onto the table, making Jellybean squeak in horror. "The council is expecting everypony to find a solution to this decree that the king and queen sent out, but it doesn't even make sense!"

He pushed himself away from the table and angrily kicked away boxes in his way, stopping at a wall with a map of Equestria.

"That's...what I was here to talk to you about. The council needs you with them to resume the debate. Apparently, the decree is more important than we thought. It might be a solution to the sun, too."

The dullahan looked at her, his eyes wide with pleasant and hopeful surprise. He felt a warmth well up within him but was quick to douse it. Hope had no place in the real world. "The royal family have been hiding strange events happening around old Equestria and suddenly they have a solution for the sun?! I'm not buying it." Eckret looked back to the flag and focused his attention. "Wine made from the rumor vine says that everything has been going belly-up since some event up north."  

Jellybean witnessed the mayor's body slowly stretch apart from itself before snapping back into place. She knew it was just the ambient magic around them causing it, but she still couldn't get over it. A dissociation of body and mind. Didn't matter how long she trained her mind to get used to that.

"So, what now?" she asked him.

Eckret groaned and turned to the mare. "I'll get the paperwork and the decree," he groaned. "Tell them I'll be there in a few minutes."

The stallion gathered his wits about him and stepped outside of his office, taking the door that led directly outside. The town had grown exponentially in the last decade. What were once just a few houses and a plethora of trees became several multi-purpose buildings...and a plethora of trees. Had he not been there, Eckret would have believed the town to have grown. A hundred and twenty-five inhabitants explodes into well over ten thousand. Oddly enough, only pony tribes had decided to come live here, causing a variety of architectural types to come about. The old tribes still worked with wood and stone, but the 'newer' ones had more extravagant material. The dullahan worked with rough stone material and crystals, producing rough stone shapes that could very well have just been made from a bored-through boulder that they brought. That, or they made their homes underground, something they shared with the Eckhan Crue and Crancan. The crancan preferred to decorate their homes to remind them of the sea, replete with fake sea foliage, shells, and coral. It caused a major disconnect to any observer when seen next to the half of forest that the city was built next to and the various giant trees growing around the streets.

It was a weird, disjointed little village where anypony could live in the calmest way possible with little-to-no stress.  

"SO WHY IS THE SUN ATTACKING US NONSTOP?!" Eckret shouted in his mind.

Over the past few weeks the sun had started seething with a fury no pony had witnessed before and was attacking the buildings and trees. The ground was scorched and a lot of the trees had been turned into burnt matchsticks. Most of the wooden homes had been burned away, and the underwater tunnels the Crancan had dug for themselves had all but dried up. Hundreds were in hospitals and makeshift homes in underground homes to protect the victims from the sun. The dullahan wasn't one to cower before a bit of light. That wasn't the nature of his tribe. He calmly walked over to the stone trap door where the council was currently residing and went down the steps to an open, semi-circular chamber where eight other ponies were waiting for Eckret.

Torches were held upon sconces all around the room. It was hard not to trip on the uneven rock floor, but that could be dealt with using simple chiseling tools. The dullahan saluted his fellows and sat in the middle of the crescent moon 'table' made from hastily chiseled stone.

"Now what?" Eckret asked as he dropped the documents on the table. "We ask the king for help weeks ago, and now he answers with this." He held up a bunch of paper. "I trust you all received your own copies."

The unicorn furthest to the left nodded. "I can't believe it, either. He ignores us unless it's to gather royal taxes, but when we need help it's too much?"

"He wants us to send our youngest to the capital to train to become soldiers!" the eckan crue to Eckret's left stated. "Why? Because some 'war' is about to happen? Against who?" She groaned and slumped in her chair.

To Eckret's right was another dullahan and shared in the stallion's temperament. "I'd tell him to piss off, really.   supposedly he's too busy dealing with something at home to care about the 'little ponies'."

"Alright, enough with the debating about the king's personal life!" Eckret interjected. "Can we focus on the decree? Wanting us to prepare for war, gather stockpiles of wood for the reserves...We can't do any of this, not with the sun the way it is."

The whole chamber shook violently, and screaming followed soon after.

"What is it now? Did the sun come down to punch somepony in the face repeatedly?" the other dullahan said with exasperation. "Can't even have a discussion anymore."

The nine went to see the commotion, expecting another building to have collapsed, but the reality was much worse. The sky was engulfed in a golden light coming from the sun that had somehow bloated to five times its size and looked like a furious ball of fire ready to consume everything below it. Strange white flames were igniting all over the place and setting fire to what normally couldn't be set alight. To the council's horror, they could see ponies screaming and galloping around as their bodies were consumed by flames of various colors. The council ducked reflexively when a beam of light shot out of the sun and created a streak along the ground, destroying the taller buildings and melting the smaller ones outright. Another shot through the remains of the archival building, tearing the five-story building in half.

"We have to split up and find survivors," Eckret announced. "Go! I'll look around here."

The other eight nodded and split apart into the flaming mass of the town. Eckret hurried over to what used to be a group of stores and a wagon maker. He called out to any survivors, but the structures had already collapsed on themselves and fire blocked any path inside. In a way, he felt a twinge of regret at seeing all the tools and merchandise consumed by the gluttonous white flames. The childish expectation of survivors having nothing left after the fires went out took over his rational mind briefly. The Dullahan hurried along the line of burning buildings and charred ground and continued calling out for survivors when he noticed a group of ponies were trying to push away collapsed wooden debris with a plank of wood.

"What's going on?" he was quick to ask.  

A mare rushed to him. "It's my husband and children. They got trapped in our house!" she shouted.

The dullahan cursed under his breath. That was right. Even children could suffer tragedies like this. Why wasn't he able to think straight? He looked at the five stallions and mares pushing down on a large plank of wood to clear the rubble that was once the doorway. Eckret jumped on the plank, pushing it high enough to destabilize the flaming rubble and allow the others to rescue the father and two foals. They were suffering from smoke inhalation and severe burns.  

"You need to take them to one of the underground hospitals or simply flee deeper into the forest," the dullahan said. "This isn't a time to fumble about, so get going! The rest of you who aren't wounded are with me. We need to save as many ponies as we can."

Eckret quickly met up with the second dullahan council member after what felt like hours of work in a clearing far from the burning buildings.

"I'm exhausted," Eckret complained. "What about you? How have you fared?"

The other dullahan coughed. "I've been at this for as long as you have. It never ends."

The two looked at the exhausted ponies around them, all of them suffering from varying degrees of burn wounds. Many were slumped, taking the brief moment to rest as much as they could.

"We've rescued hundreds," Eckret said. "How about you?"

The dullahan rubbed his forehead. "Probably the same as you." He looked around and his brown furrowed further. "We can't keep doing this. We have nothing to stop the flames and no pony trained in this kind of event..."

Eckret cursed under his breath. "You're right, but leaving the others behind? It doesn't sit right with me."

The dullahan put a foreleg on his fellow's shoulder. "You must be able to help yourself before you can help others. You'll be another part of the casualties if you stay behind."

Despite the internal struggle to accept what dullahan had said, Eckret resigned. He looked up to see the sky consumed with embers and smoke, and the sun in it shone brightly through the wall of black and gray. It was like a snowstorm from the underworld shaded by the light of the burning town.

"Fine. We must flee to the forest. We'll come back when the flames have settled," Eckret lamented. "I...I don't know if I can live with myself afterwards."

"It's okay. It's something we will all share, now we must leave and think of that another day as living ponies."

The two were blinded by a bright flash of light that tore the smoke away. Something was coming from the sun and flying towards them.

"What is that?" one of the ponies wondered aloud.

"Did the king send help?"

"That's just a pegasus!"

"Then how did the smoke clear?"

Another galloped forward and waved her tired forelegs. "Over here! Hey!"

"Something isn't right," Eckret said. When he noticed a white light forming at the head of the pegasus, his eyes widened. "Get away from there!" he called to the mare.

It was too late. She was engulfed in white fire. Eckret deafened himself to the screams as best he could. The incoming figure slammed so hard into the ground that it cracked and caused the already weak buildings around to collapse. It didn't matter who was in or around them. The ponies themselves had fallen to the ground and panicked when they saw the cracks fill with a burning, orange light.

"What is this?! Who are you?" Eckret bellowed.

"No pony leaves!" The figure shouted so powerfully that the smoke was blown away and the fires around were extinguished instantly. "You all stay!"

"What?!" the other dullahan shouted. "You think you can terrorize us and--"

He, too, was consumed by fires, but these were yellow in color, and he simply fell silently onto the ground as the fires raged on. Eckret could only stare weakly in horror as his fellow fell in an instant. The stallion looked back to the intruder.

They were enormous! He had never seen a pony that big before. They were easily three ponies high! Or at least, that's how he measured it. The stallion could see a horn and wings beyond the glaring white light engulfing their body and nothing more.

"Can't see me?!" the figure taunted.

The light vanished, leaving the pony for all to see. Many gasped, whether from horror, amazement, or some other emotion was outside Eckret's reach. Their body looked like it was made of molten lava. A blackened coat that turned white under various angles, orange veins running along their flesh that leaked magma around them but solidified around their body and regressed it. Small bouts of fire erupted from the cracks at irregular intervals. They were simple sparks compared to the veritable storms of fire serving as the pony's mane and tail. They engulfed the air above and behind them by several feet each and continued to spiral around wildly, lashing out at everything around them randomly, as fire was wont to do.  

"I'm finally freed from the horrors I was subjected to, and I see everything gone! All that hard work! They did! They took her from me and now this is what I get to return to?!"

She leaned in closer to the dullahan, letting him better see her face. Her eyes looked like a six-armed sun on a dark-red background. Eckret could barely make out the veins of lava going through them. He also noticed several purple gems covering her immense horn.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked her.

"Because you're all traitors and you'll help me to get her back!"

The pony's horn swelled with magic as fires sparked along its surface. The tips of their mane and tail changed colors when they licked at the air when magic surged throughout the newcomer's body.

"I am Solar Flare, and I will have what's most precious to me returned!" she bellowed as she pointed her horn at Eckret.
> Next Steps
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Several ponies were in the keep, demonstrating a large assortment of different colored tissues in the hopes that the alicorn might adopt one for her castle. As she had no true funds yet, everything came from the fear the ponies had for the mare and the increased tourism brought on by the moon pony's appearance in Snowfege. 

"I think a silver double trim for the banners would be splendid," one suggested as he passed a night blue cloth along his forelegs. "A thinner line would run parallel of the thicker outer lining."

"No, no! That's cliché!" another seamstress complained. She pushed the pony aside and brought out some yellow ribbons from her box. "Let us go with yellow instead! The moon and night are always black and silver, or at least a very dark blue."

"I agree!" a third chimed in. "You need bombastic colors to tell the world that you are here!" The mare's bravado quickly extinguished when she remembered whom she was speaking to. She quickly shrunk away. "Y-your majesty."

Moon grumbled. They had been at this for half an hour now, and even she was nowhere close to a final decision on anything. "I need something to stick by. I'm tempted to use my old colors, but this is a new era. One in which I am not welcome, but shall impose myself within all the same."

One of the many designers clapped his hooves, bringing the attention of the others toward him. "How inspiring!" he cheered. He hopped forward, through the crowd. 

"A dullahan?" Moon noted. "Is that the name of your tribe?" the mare asked.

The pony nodded enthusiastically, causing his limbs to wobble like a sail in a storm. His black coat shimmered in the light coming from outside. Had it not been for a large gash on the right side of his torso and the vibrant, neon green pupils, Nightmare Moon believed that it would become incredibly difficult to discern these creatures from one another. A thought crossed her mind at that moment: How did animals differentiate from each other?

"Yes, your highness!"

The alicorn was briefly disturbed by the strange enthusiasm demonstrated by this designer. Was this what Celestia had to deal with on a regular basis?

"I thought your kind didn't like coming to immense cities like this one," Moon noted.

The pony waved a hoof. "Oh it isn't that big," he said dismissively.

"And you're here to offer your services to me, but you stand out with your...volume," Moon said.

Chuckles escaped the dullahan. "Yes. I was told to be as loud as possible when coming here. Apparently, royalty likes to be loud so you have to be louder?"

Moon jerked her jaw left and right. "I suppose that's the case for other...ponies beneath me."

"Your highness," a guard called out.

He was met with a tired glare by the alicorn. "What is it now? I'm busy."

The guard looked behind himself briefly. "Well, there's a group of thestrals that just appeared outside the castle walls."

"And they aren't flying inside?" The guard shook his head. "Hmmm. I will resume our talks later. Come up with concrete plans on my return," she ordered the artisans.

Following the guard, the alicorn flew atop the wall and looked down on a respectable contingent of black ponies. The mare noted that each of them were wearing an assortment of ragged armor. Poorly sewn together leather that was cracked and rough, unpolished and poorly tempered steel plates, and some gambeson with multi-colored patches. Their 'weapons', to Nightmare Moon's judgmental gaze, were in just as shabby a state. Swords, spears, pitchforks, hoes, shovels, and two scythes. Only the farming tools were in any acceptable state. Behind the group were five open, wooden wagons carrying an odd assortment of unknown items. Everything had been wrapped in clothing.

One of the thestrals stepped forward when she saw Moon arrive. "Your highness, we heard that you came to our forest in search of an army! We aren't much of an army, but you can be assured of our loyalty and eagerness to learn!"

"Uh huh..." Moon mumbled. "How many are you?"

The pony turned to her fellows and started talking to each other. "We are fifty-three strong!" she shouted proudly. The others imitated her.

"It's better than nothing," one of the guards said to the alicorn.

She was loathe to admit it and fought against every fiber of her being demanding she intimidate the pony down a peg, but it was true. He stated what she refused to admit to herself. Moon wanted an immense thestral army to cement her rule in the territories she would recover, and then integrate the others. It was a constant repetition to herself that never really led anywhere.

"Fine. Open the gates. Let them into the courtyard," Moon ordered as she flew down.

The thestrals looked in awe at the black, polished stone comprising the castle and chatted with each other casually, commenting on what they were seeing. Masons occupied with measuring and calculating the size of the stones needed to continue expanding and repairing the castle grumbled when they saw the ponies arrive. The thestrals' eyes widened when they saw the alicorn of the night towering before them and quickly went silent. However, the moment the gates closed behind them, they all shrank in fear.

"You aren't here as tourists or visitors!" she bellowed at the top of her lungs. She stomped around the group as they gradually backed into each other. "You came here to act as the first of my soldiers! Your training will be far different than what you learn at your homes, and what my personal guards here around have learned as well!" The alicorn's eyes started to grow and the sky above started flickering between day and night, with the many moons appearing separately from each other. "There's no more easy life for you." The magic lessened and she raised a brow. "However," she started with a calmer voice. "My main concern is where you are going to live." Moon looked around the castle to see its many future extensions being built and designed. "The barracks are occupied. There is no room for the rest of you."

One of the thestrals wearily stepped forward and raised a wing. "We thought you wouldn't let us live in the castle so we had brought tents and wood to make fire."

Surprised, Moon nodded. "Planning in advance?" She rubbed her chin. "Yes. That could work. I think you just created a new tradition for my future troops," she stated gleefully. "Pegasus!" she bellowed. One of the pegasi halted above her.

"Yes, your highness?"

"Find a suitable location for my new recruits to set up camp. Return to me when it is done and I will go and check upon them." The guard nodded and flew to the thestrals, ordering them to follow him. Their wagons were left behind in the castle grounds for the time being. "If they can return to the villages after becoming proper soldiers, then they can sway the ponies there to follow me. Conscription never works..." She looked around with a narrowed gaze. "Although it's not completely off the table," she muttered slyly to herself.

The alicorn returned to the decorators in the keep and was pleased to find them arguing about colors, albeit constructively bouncing upon one another. She approached the excitable dullahan and asked for his name. He was named Caerlmàn, and he was there to bring great praise to his family at the same time as following his dream. Moon took note of his behavior for the future. Whether he would be an asset or not was left to be seen. If he proved himself he might become her 'royal decorator' or whatever title she felt like making up on the spot.

No progress had been made by the time night was starting to fall, and the ponies left with many plans and designs ready for their next visit. The alicorn pondered the best places to start her expansion to eventually corner the king and make him pay for killing her first vassal when she was so agreeable to leave him everything but his title.

"Y-your highness?" a familiar and sheepish voice called out.

"Ah, Sunny. Come in. You just missed the decorators," the alicorn said.

The nervous stallion was carrying saddle bags again and dropped them on the floor with a click. He removed the latches with his teeth and shook out several scrolls and parchments. 

Moon watched over him with curiosity. "What is this?"

Sunny cursed to himself when he dropped a parchment and it rolled open. "I-it's all the nearby duchies, baronies, and so on that would be loyal to you just by you appearing. Then I found a list of regions where you would likely have to negotiate their loyalties, places that might try to remain neutral, and the ones that you would be forced to..." Sunny gulped and felt his blood ice over. "Go to war against."

The alicorn raised the many, many parchments and maps and looked them over. Sunny had circled many locations and added a plethora of notes to everything.

"Impressive, Sunny." Moon looked more closely at some of the maps. "A few of the loyals are close to this city, but a lot are scattered about Equestria." She hummed pensively to herself. "And what are these regions you colored black? The ones I must conquer?" 

Sunny did his best to gather himself before responding. "N-no. They're areas that are ruled by non-ponies, like that region we went to with the griffins and that weird, two-legged bird lady."

Moon nodded. "Right. Calostell. The one that reeks of chaos magic." A frown grew across the pony's face. "I still cannot understand how the literal embodiments of chaos and order were taken out by those fanatics." She unfurled a few more maps before resuming. "And what of those idiots who claimed they were related to me?"

"They're part of these territories, but many lost their lands to the hippogriffs and griffins in wars not too long ago." He passed a hoof through his mane. "They're considered lost, like how Snowfege is pony territory that the griffins lost a century ago."

The alicorn grit her teeth. "Will the idiot night nobles offer resources to me immediately?" Moon asked.

"Well, you saw how they acted when you showed yourself to them. Most likely they will if it means getting more clout in their horrific and disgusting world."

Sunny was met with a chuckle by his great aunt. "It's a world that ponies like me can manipulate with ease, especially considering their blind adoration of me." Moon laid the parchments and maps down and looked at her nephew directly in his eyes. "Whom do you recommend we send a message of a future visit to first?" She looked briefly at the exit of her keep and the carpenters taking measurements of the entryway. "I have future soldiers to train myself."



Calostell had her legs propped up against a riggedy, slapped-together table in the underground city she ruled over. An oil lamp hung precariously above her on a rusty hook that looked like it would give way at any moment. She looked on at the activity of her home and the lives being made there. She smiled when she heard someone falling in through one of the many trap doors, accompanied by the loud jingling of loot. The bird shivered with excitement. Loot was the best thing the strange creature adored more than anything.

Normally, she would be theorizing what the loot was before going to greet the ne'er-do-wells just to see for curiosity's sake, but lately, she had been feeling...lax? Tired? Bored? There wasn't really a logical term for what she felt. She grabbed a beat-up, metallic mug sitting next to her clawed toes and rotated it around. Nothing was in it, its content having been drunk a while back, but it didn't hurt to just do that movement.

That is, until it filled up with a murky red-purple gooey substance that rose up to look at the anthropomorphic bird and reveal a gloopy, hollow mouth.

Calostell screamed in shock and threw the mug away while falling on the rotted wood floor of the house she rested in front of. The mug had become empty when she let go of it. She peered at her hands and at the empty vessel, trying her best to calm her panicked heart. Clenched fists were the only thing that came to fruition. Weird occurrences around her had been becoming more and more frequent, like a flood of pink cockroaches made of bubblegum coming out of the stone and mud walls or orange juice replacing the trickling water. Luckily it wasn't drunk since it reminded the people of the underground city of tainted water. The less 'fun' ones were literal bodies growing from the walls with their ribcages jutting outwards and the bones sharpened to a fine point. The victim reached out towards the bird with sharpened talons and hollow eyes decorated by a tiny, almost imperceptible white dot.

Without Bombastic's interventions, these more horrific apparitions would have likely become far worse. Calostell didn't want to remember them. She was taken out of what was to be a panic attack by something grabbing the mug and looking inside it. It was a pony covered in a black cloak.

"I see you have powers you can't control," they commented.

"What?" Calostell responded aggressively.

"I can help you learn how to use them." They shook a covered hoof. "But not control them. That part is up to you."

"And who are you that comes out of nowhere into my h...How did you get here? Who invited you?"

The pony shrugged. The jostling of their cloak momentarily revealed a white body underneath, but it seemed too uneven and pale, even for a white-coated pony.

"A purveyor of unique talents in need of work and training. Your unique magic called me here," they mused. The mug refilled with the living slime, stunning Calostell. "I can show you what these powers of yours can do, if you let me.

The bird looked to the mug, then the pony, then back, several times over. "I could...give it a shot, I suppose, but not alone."

"Just trying is more than enough."

Calostell noticed a strange shadow under the cloak, like an immense, toothless smile had just formed, and beady white dots were peering at her. She would need everyone to watch her back and that of this creature, too. Just having the horrific events stop was more than enough to give it a chance.
> Only One Immortal is Present
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The buildings continued to burn despite nothing being left to catch fire. The ponies engulfed in the flames had emerged, infused with fire that cracked skin and bone. Their very beings had been consumed by the burning light that shone intensely above, turning them into little more than snarling beasts that burned everything they touched. 

Solar Flare looked at her work with satisfaction and gazed upon the survivors of her wrath that consumed her very body. Her body pulsed as the magma within her flew through the exposed veins of her flesh. The survivors trembled in her presence while the sun in the sky expanded throughout its entirety as if celebrating the return of its master.

Solar Flare grinned, exposing the sharpened obsidian dripping with magma serving as teeth. "Oh yes, I missed you, too. Did you miss me during these few years that I was away?" she coo'd at the celestial body. She pointed a hoof at the terrified mayor. "Where are the 'heroes' that imprisoned me? I would have their heads and those of their family and hometowns." The veins along her body glowed intensely when she noticed the mayor staring at her blankly. "I asked you a question!" Her hoof started to glow white and a heat haze formed around it from the heat.

"I don't understand a thing you're saying!" the mayor stammered.

The alicorn raised a brow and looked at the crowd, causing them all to scream in terror. Solar Flare grit her teeth together, causing sparks to fly everywhere. "Just my luck. I reform outside of Equestria," the mare grumbled angrily as she took the surroundings in. She looked back up at the sun and smiled, letting eddies of lava spill from beneath her sharp, blackened teeth and burn the ground.



The survivors were surprised to see her lie down on the ground and close her eyes while the sun itself started to calm down and return to its smaller size and gentle white light.

"What is this thing?!" a mare screamed in horror. Her face was soaked with tears, both from the smoke irritating them and seeing her city and loved ones burn.

"This creature turned the Peanuts into burned monstrosities!" a stallion said angrily. "They're there!"

A once elderly mare and stallion stomped through the seemingly eternally burning ruins. Their eyes and mouth had been hollowed out, leaving a bright yellow light filling in the empty spaces. Their faces were trapped in a permanent rictus as the flames ravaged and charred their bodies to apparently no painful effect. Their bodies appeared similar to Solar Flare's, although most had simple, glowing red patterns along their blackened bodies. It was like they had been transformed into something else. Something Equestria was never meant to see. Several of the older pony survivors' muscles clenched upon seeing the display.

"it has...two wings...and a horn," an elderly mare with the right side of her face burned said. "Is...is she that supposing goddess from the north?"

"Goddess?" a stallion repeated quizzically.

"I heard that there was a pony with wings and a horn that suddenly appeared up north..." She patted the side of her face and flinched in pain. "I haven't heard much else than that, but I know that they're called alicorns and were considered goddesses in the past."

The mayor looked at the flaming monstrosity before him and furrowed his brow. "I would call those baseless rumors, but seeing that thing?" He grumbled. "I'm inclined to believe you."

The alicorn stomped before them. "I will return," she growled.

The ponies audibly gulped as she took off. They thought themselves safe, but flames grew around them, trapping them within the confines of a small patch of forest and the city.



"I should cover myself with a cloaking spell. I don't want to deal with those traitors and monsters," Solar Flare grumbled to herself. The sun glowed brightly, as though it had been reinvigorated by the return of its master, but that wasn't very conducive to stealth. "Calm yourself," the alicorn told it. "You risk my life."

The sun acquiesced almost instantly, returning to its calm state and left the newly reborn alicorn to gaze at the lands around her place of rebirth. A grimace burst from her charred skin, letting droplets of magma to seep through before it healed itself.

"That's...odd. I left Canterlot behind, but I should be able to see the mountain, from here," Solar mumbled to herself. "I have things to recover there. She should be more than willing to let me into my old home."

Calling upon the sun's memory, Solar Flare was guided through Equestria, although the alicorn felt great discomfort at the sights. The land was misshapen. The cities and villages she knew had vanished. There were statues of her and Luna that used to be placed everywhere, and now there was no trace of them. In fact, there was no trace of anything anywhere, really. Solar furrowed her brows, cracking the surface of her body and letting droplets of magma slip out. 

When a series of immense glass towers started coming into view, Solar Flare knew that something was very, very off. "I told you to guide me to Canterlot, not this...what even are these? They built all of this in a few years?" The alicorn looked to the sun. "Well?" She paused while the memories of her star flooded into her. The images were wild and burnt, but they got the point across. Solar Flare felt her fury starting to build up again.

Rather than wait or destroy everything, she dashed towards the closest tower and shorn clean through the glass and steel keeping it up. Pipes that had melted along with the glass and steel let out all the steam and condensation they held. Several griffins were fatally charred and the rest several burned as the sudden wave of extreme heat burned through everything in a wave. Chairs and desks had been turned to ash and slag. Was it a business? Solar Flare didn't care.

She grabbed the nearest griffin crawling away by his left wing and pulled his burnt face close to hers. "What is this place? Where is Canterlot?"

"Wha--"

The alicorn shook him violently. "The mountain! There was a mountain here!"

"Who-Wha--"

He was casually thrown aside and through a weakened wall, leaving Solar Flare to stomp towards the opposite of the building and glare downwards. Since when was there a city of griffins in Equestria? There were visitors, but they never came here of their own volition. She wiped her muzzle with the tip of a feather and peered into the distance. The ground and position of the glass buildings were odd. The alicorn was too enraged to think clearly, but if her castle was destroyed, then there was a chance that the storage below was still intact. It had been built very very deep into the mountain, after all.

The mare pressed a hoof to the windows and watched them melt instantly, leaving an immense, gaping hole that she let herself fall through. It wasn't as 'casual' for the city and its inhabitants when they witnessed a living mass of molten rock fall down vertically and both instantly melt any material it almost came into with and turn to ash any living thing that got too close.

With a loud 'thump', the pony had reached the bottom of the city and left behind a pool of boiling mud and rock behind. Solar Flare knew that her powers would destroy everything if she let them be, so she did her best to keep them under control. Her secret was wide enough and had enough residual magic coming off it that she would at least know which direction to go towards if she missed it somehow, and if she felt nothing? Her face cracked into a sinister rictus.

The wind was suddenly pushed out of the alicorn's lungs when she suddenly found herself in a small opening and hitting a sturdy object. There wasn't much space, however, so the alicorn bounced against the rocky cavern walls from the surprise impact. The light coming off of her was the only true illumination the caverns had seen in millennia.

"Too early..." Solar grumbled as she rubbed her head. "Should have at least a few..." Her eyes widened when she saw what she stumbled upon.

Silently, she climbed along the rock wall and jumped into a gaping hole leading into the castle. It was her castle. Her old castle. Solar looked around silently, ignoring the crunching her hooves produced on the dirt and parchment fragments scattered about the floor. Everything had become decrepit, but more importantly.

"Why is Canterlot underground?" she murmured. Panic started filling her. "They couldn't have. Not her. Not another!"

The alicorn bolted through the castle, noticing the deathly silence that followed her everywhere she went. She bolted towards her old room, gasping for breath. There was nothing left except a rotting bed in tatters and a vanity mirror shattered on the ground. Well, from what she could tell. The room had long since caved in from the pressure outside. The magma within Solar Flare spiked in brightness and the air around her started heating up, producing a haze.

"They take my beloved sister away from me, and my own daughter?!" the alicorn bellowed at the top of her voice.

She felt a chill along her spine from something wandering the halls. Taking her leave, she was met with a transparent mass of writhing shapes floating in front of her. She could barely make out any defining traits, but on occasion, a stretched-out face with no eyes would surface briefly and the moaning the entity produced would grow louder. 

The mare snorted. "Some kind of amalgam of treacherous souls," she mocked. "Are we meant to have some kind of battle where you torment me with my past? Am I meant to end myself?" Solar Flare cackled. She looked to her right hoof and focused. A crimson-red spark ran along it briefly. "A perfect moment to test this new magic on a subject..." She looked up at the mass and raised a brow. "Undead is still technically living."

Her whole body coursed with reddish magic, turning her magma pure red. She leaped at the mass and swiped at it with her hooves. In response, it unleashed an ear-splitting howl that almost deafened her, but now the red was spreading throughout the mass that gradually became visible whilst floating, immobile, in the dirty air.

Solar Flare looked at herself and frowned as the magic dissolved and she recovered her normal colors. "Red and black...fantastic... It's still incomplete, even after all those years of research." The alicorn hummed to herself. "I can barely channel any of it. With some luck, I'll be able to use my whole body as a channel for it." She looked over her shoulder towards the mass. It was changing thanks to the magic.

Solar Flare continued through the halls, disturbed by the state of decay. She found herself at the entrance that had caved in and stared at what was once the entrance. Everything filled with the light of her sun, the floors and walls immaculate and clean. Guards everywhere, guests commenting on the work of her gardeners. The alicorn clenched her forehead. The memories brought about a sickly pain. She fought through the feeling as best she could and sighed in relief when it finally went away. 

The mare scanned the room, lamenting the state it was in then noticed the entrance to her secret was open. Did they find it?! She hopped down and analyzed everything she could. The dust and dirt had only recently been disturbed, and there were signs of large hoof prints around it. Perhaps the culprits were still around. She dove down the abyss and slammed hard enough into the ground that the walls shook in response. Solar Flare noticed that everything here was changed as well. The entry shaft went deeper into the mountain than it used to, and the entrance to her archives was far bigger as well. Flanking the entrance were two immense statues. The mare wasn't sure what they were exactly and chose to ignore them until the heads turned instantly to look at her. Brandishing spears, they moved from their pedestals and aimed at the alicorn in an attempt to stab.

She put up a shield in front of her that did little to stem the momentum that crashed into it and launched her all the way back to the bottom of the shaft.

"I never made those!" Solar Flare shouted in surprise.

Furious, she charged at them, her wing tips dragging along the ground. A trail of widening rivers of lava followed the alicorn until she skid to a halt. With a flick of her wings, the rivers erupted forward and engulfed both statues. With Solar's magic, the lava hardened almost instantly, but the statues were trying to free themselves regardless.

"Tenacious little constructs, aren't you?" Her horn started glowing. "But not tenacious enough."

A small sun came off the tip of the alicorn's horn like a bubble. It floated gently in the air and stopped between both struggling statues. Its surfaces waved and boiled until it burst open and dozens of beams of light shot out all at once. The statues had been cut to pieces and were no longer moving.

"Bleugh." The alicorn leaned towards one of the statues and raised a brow. "Interesting. I don't recognize this magic."

The archives seemed more or less intact, but there was no light. Solar Flare remedied that with her own magic, illuminating the entirety of the chamber. It was entirely clean, much to her shock, but her magma simmered. There was a foreign magic she didn't recognize in immense quantities lingering around, and they weren't related to the statues. That said, they were old, but Solar Flare couldn't figure out how long ago. Regardless, they were still strong enough that the remnants couldn't have been more than a year old.

"Whoever was here didn't destroy anything, and I don't see anything stolen..." Solar Flare rubbed her chin with a wing. She flew up above one of the bookshelves and shoved her hooves and horn into the wall. The stones shifted around her body, locked in, then pulled away with the alicorn let out just a drop of her own magic, revealing a room hidden within an already hidden location. "Ha ha, they didn't find it," she mused.

Her magic had already illuminated this room. Glass orbs floated silently in the air, awaiting somepony to relieve them of their charge. Their occupants reflected off the uneven and somewhat sharp floor and walls made from glass. Fortunately, they couldn't harm Solar Flare, but the mare still noticed black spots of dried blood dotted sparingly around.

"Did she finish my research?" the mare wondered. 

Solar Flare used her magic to bring one of the orbs to her and went rummaging through the parchments until her hoof hit something solid. She pulled it out eagerly and smiled widely when she saw the cover. On the brown, peeling cover was written 'Monster Tracking' with a silver inlay. The alicorn pulled the book open gently with a hoof and started going through the pages until she found a footnote holding one of the pages open. With age it had flattened and broken apart, but its dregs were present enough in the pages that they garnered the readers' attention. At the top of the page were written in big letters: Locations of Vesuvius Vulcans. An asterisk next to it had been added by far worse hoof writing, and said author's name was in the middle of the page.

The alicorn dragged a hoof across the page melancholically. She turned it and the following pages until her eyes fell upon a page that had the distinctive scrunching and ink dirtying caused by tears.

"To my dear mother. I find myself wishing I could have done something for you, to alleviate your pain, but you are gone now. Even though I know your heart was consumed by grief and fury, and you harmed all those ponies because of it, I still love you. So, I decided to finish your research into finding a gigantis vesuvius vulcan, that I may cast a spell on it to make it slumber.

They're much like you: A force of nature, but they don't intend to do harm. They simply exist, and really, how could anypony truly harm either of you?"

The rest of the page was illegible save for a few letters, then a single line at the bottom that had mostly been spared was filled in by its reader.

"I wish I could have met Aunt Luna. Now I'm all alone."

Solar Flare's heart clamped in her chest, but she pushed on. Those words were going to haunt her for a long time to come, at least until she found her daughter...so why did it feel like she was gone forever. The mare pushed her paranoia away and turned the page. 

There it was. The location of a gigantis vesuvius vulcan. She would finally get her revenge on all those traitors, and all she had to do was wake it up and nothing more. Solar Flare held the book in her magic as she looked around. Her actual artifacts would serve her better in pony than if they remained here. She shrunk them down and hid them within her mane, at least until she returned to the village. Looking back at her archives, the alicorn could feel something engulfing her heart with grief, but she couldn't figure out why.

The older 'artifacts' weren't of any use to her. If somepony had taken them, it didn't matter. She didn't even notice the melted doors when she left. Instead, she returned to the amalgam of angry souls and smiled when she saw her work completed.

"It worked! Amazing!" she cheered.

"I serve the Queen of the Sun with all my souls," a voice responded.
> Progress
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moon stood before the thestrals, watching them watch her in a rocky, mostly flat area near the castle where the guards watched them watch her watch them. The alicorn grit her teeth. That was from one of her successors, no doubt. The bat ponies were standing in a square and gazing at the alicorn with reverence and awe, but they were disjointed. The ponies weren't in proper alignment, and several of them were fidgeting non-stop. Well, that's why they were here. She let her mind work while the sun began to set slowly behind her, disappearing into the sheer drop the mare was standing next to.

"You came here to seek my guidance,"  Nightmare Moon started. "To seek servitude to the alicorn of the night. The one and only, but I have no use for ponies who can't even sit still for a few minutes!" she bellowed. Her voice pushed the ponies back. "Before you can serve me, you must train! Before you can train, you must prove yourselves to me!" She continued slowly pacing back and forth. "You have lived lax and slothful lives. No more! No more will you live under a false king who claims to hold my throne. A coward who murdered my first vassal and threatened my position as the rightful ruler of Equestria. With your help, we will restore Equestria to its former glory and reassemble a fractured home into a mighty Empire that joins together all tribes." Moon stopped moving and stomped down, cracking the mountain. "We'll start with some simple physical exercises, and when necessary, I will employ the aids of my castle guards to train you." She took in a deep breath. "Now follow me for your flight training!" she bellowed before taking off.



Moon returned to the keep and stretched her wings, producing satisfying 'crunches'.

"My body is sore all over. Fantastic!" She twisted and contorted herself, stretching her muscles out further. "I haven't had a chance to properly exercise myself since being freed from my prison."

She heard Sunny forcing himself to not heave. "Those sounds are horrifying. Please don't make them again," he pleaded.

"Cease your whining," Moon berated him. "It is simply the creaking of ancient joints finally allowed to work as they were meant to.

"Messages for the new Empress!" a voice shouted.

It came from one of the thestrals Moon had just recruited. She could tell from the strained face and the limp wings that they were forcing themselves to drag a rather large, brown bag across the ground towards her. He collapsed in front of her and Sunny whilst gasping for air.

"These are for...Nightmare Moon," he wheezed. "I refused to...let anypony else...carry them..."

The alicorn snorted and craned her neck. "Your loyalty is admirable, but blind fanaticism will kill you," Moon explained. "I demand your utmost obedience and efforts, not your unhinged emotions and blind fervor." She poked him, causing the stallion to wince in pain. "Return to the camp and rest. Tomorrow will be the start of another day of training."

"R-right." The thestral struggled to stand up and limped out of the keep.

Sunny looked at Moon, rubbing his forehooves together. "I thought you were going to yell at him." The alicorn grunted in return. "You're not...going to do anything else?"

Moon grinned. "They're punished enough with the training." She raised the bag and opened it, revealing many letters addressed to her. "And I've had centuries to think about how I failed during my first attack against my stubborn and egotistical sister. Time breeds boredom breeds thoughts." She raised a brow. "Help me sift through these," she ordered Sunny as she dropped half the pile of letters at his hooves.

There were around a hundred letters. Looking at the senders, Moon realized they were from ponies and creatures in either high places, or ruling their own areas. Thanks to Sunny speeding the reading forward, the mare realized that she already had the allegiance of seventeen different sections of former Equestria. The griffons had even answered her letters...aggressively. They were threats and so forth from her claims to the griffon city. She dangled one of the letters before her and failed to stifle a chuckle. One of them was demanding that she return the section she was now inhabiting to the griffin territories or else death, fire, bla bla bla.

She put that one in her 'fun' pile. While she was enthralled by the progress she had seen, Sunny was less thrilled.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked.

Sunny grunted and lifted several letters to compare their contents. "Well...you have some territories calling their allegiance to you, but they're scattered about Equestria. The thestrals and our three neighbors swore allegiance, likely because they're next to you, but the rest?" He lowered the letters and looked at Nightmare Moon with a concerned look. "If the king declares war on you, they won't be able to participate until we move further down. If we move further down." He stifled a sickly burp and looked at the paper littering the ground. "I don't want to see a war in Equestria."

Moon raised a brow. "I proposed to the king vassalage. I wanted to do this peacefully and restore Equestria to its former glory. A war is a waste of time and hooves that could be better spent improving Equestrian infrastructure." Sunny opened his mouth but quickly closed it, which caused Moon's temper to flare and her eyes to glow white. "You think this about personal gain?"

"W-well..."

"In what state is former Equestria?" she asked calmly.

The stallion stammered and tried to come up with a proper response. "I-it..well, it..."

The mare stomped the ground hard and bellowed. "I asked you a question, Sunny Dimples!"

Sunny toppled over onto his back and looked aware, terrified. "It's fractured!"

"Exactly!" Moon relaxed her voice. "It's a fractured mess! It's all ruled by a single king, but what is this? Sections belonging to diamond dogs? Minotaurs?!" She rubbed her temples. "At least the minotaurs said they were willing to simply give up the lands they held as long as I prove myself." She snorted. "But ponies have become a fractured mess. Nothing is properly together. Technology and magic have stagnated. History is destroyed. But me? I hold knowledge from a time that has been forgotten. I hold magic that none of you could dream of." She leaned in toward Sunny and raised him back onto his hooves. "I can use my magic to restore Equestria, and if time permits..." She smiled widely, revealing her fangs, and looked to the side. "Well, that's for me to know."

"So you've said countless times," Sunny sighed. "What are you going to do about those who still hold an allegiance to the king?"

Moon tapped her chest pensively and smiled. "A lot of these are under the assumption that I am not real."

"So you're going to see them directly?" the stallion asked.

Moon nodded. "A brief visitation. A momentary convincing. Some threatening if they don't comply."

"But you just said--"

"To make a table you need to cut down trees, Sunny," the mare explained. Her joyful expression soured when a memory came through.

"What's wrong?" Sunny asked.

The mare bared her fangs. "I just recalled the strange symbols and magic we found under my sister's former castle."

Sunny blinked slowly. "Weren't you trying to research them?" He fumbled through the letters as he spoke.

"No. There's nothing I can learn from brand-new magic. I am a magic caster. I can make new spells but not new magic entirely. That goes beyond my expertise," she growled.

"Oh, I missed a few letters." His eyes widened. "One from Calostell."

"Read it," Moon ordered.

Sunny ripped the letter and took a look at the contents. "She says that she has received your letter and is willing to keep to her deal as long as you keep to your agreement of independent vassalage."

The alicorn's eyes glowed angrily. "I said I would give her the right to do what she wanted. Not independent vassalage." Her anger turned to confusion. "Wait...that doesn't mean anything. Did she mean autonomy?" Sunny looked at the letter then the alicorn and shrugged. "Ugh. Is there anything else?"

"She says she found a teacher to learn magic from," Sunny explained. Moon felt her heart sink. "Oh. That's great, I guess!"

"Sunny..." Moon exhaled. "Her species doesn't possess magic like ponies. At best, it's close to the likes of earth ponies, from what I sensed." Her eyes remained wide open, and every breath felt shallow. "I've never seen them before, but the chance that she found a teacher to teach her that...magic is extremely concerning." She grunted. "Unfortunately, I have my hooves full here with training the new recruits until I deem them ready enough to handle themselves."

Sunny made several shapes with his mouth while thinking. "I could go--"

"No!" Moon interjected. "Don't go near her with the magic she has." Moon became stern. "That magic isn't anything good."

The stallion frowned and opened another letter. "Uh oh."

"What?"

The white unicorn started reading faster and became worried. "The griffin you made fun of told you that he'll have your head on a pike."

Moon rolled her eyes. "That explains the griffin assassin I caught trying to kill me in my room as I meditated."

"What?!" Sunny shouted. "What happened."

Moon grinned. "Squish," she stated simply.

The memory of the tiny metal ball just outside of his dorm room flashed in Sunny Dimple's mind, and a shiver coursed through him. "ah-also," he started in a vain attempt to try and forget. "There's a county next to us that declared war on you."

Moon's face shot to Sunny. "And I can't get the others to fight on my behalf yet." She rubbed her chin with a feather and shrugged with a smile. "I'll deal with them. My military isn't big enough. My magic and mere presence should pummel them into submission. Go tell the guards to prepare for a potential invasion. I'll have discussion in my quarters."



The alicorn found this all amusing, but extremely stressful. If she didn't plan everything out right, the ponies would turn against her again, and all those millennia of planning and revising would have been for nothing. She could be killed by some weird new magic, or worse, and she had already suffered the latter. Moon's quarters were at least a soothing reprieve. The stone was slowly being imbibed by the magic that flowed out of her. This, in turn, created seemingly random line patterns that snaked around and became visible only when Moon used her magic voluntarily.

"Ready to talk once again?" Mond asked.

"Quite so," Moon stated. "You and the presence of the others might have made those millennia in the dark silence tolerable, to be honest," Moon stated truthfully.

"That's very kind of you to say." The first successor smiled.

Mond and Mellow's forms had come with the avenue of night, but there was another hiding in the dark. Even in the simulacrum of space the two existed in, she could perceive a sickly blue and green that transitioned into each other in various areas of their body.

"Come out of the dark," Moon ordered. "Your attempts at 'mystery' and 'awe' are wasted on me."

The alicorn acquiesced hesitantly and stood before the trio. Her wings and feathers coursed with the shifting bands of colors, as did a large portion of her body. Moon grimaced in rage when she saw that the right wing of the alicorn was missing, as was a large chunk of her torso that took her two right limbs with it. The right side of her head was also sporting a gaping hole, but all of these were replaced with the green and blue lights that Moon could see in the dark. This mare's mane and tail were whispy shadows of colors that brought attention to the gangly body she possessed and the sunken eyes with which she gazed upon Moon.

Nightmare Moon couldn't help but bare her fangs. "What happened to you?" The new moon alicorn said nothing, preferring to keep her head low. "Well?"

"Don't mind her," the giant Mellow butted in. "She went through some..." She glanced at the sickly mare briefly. "Well, a rather extensive war."

"Many wars," Mond corrected.

The two ghosts grunted, intriguing the mare-in-the-moon. "I thought you liked fighting, giant," Moon said.

The immense alicorn puffed at the comment. "I enjoy fighting. It's a fun activity between consenting ponies or wild beasts. The rush that comes with it and the need to think on your hooves. It builds character! It trains your reflexes! But war?" She spat on the ground. "That's just mass battles for the pleasure of fools who sit in the back and destroy the homes of innocents and take the lives of those not interested. There is no enjoyment in a one-sided conflict." She raised a brow at Moon. "Something I noticed you wanting."

Nightmare scoffed. "I aim to retake all of Equestria diplomatically or by simple intimidation, but if it comes to it, then I will wipe out their armies and leadership." She leaned close to the ghost with a taunting smile. "That is the price to be paid for keeping me trapped for so long."

Mellow started turning red. "There's no value in that! The ponies are doing fine!"

Before Moon could say anything, Mond butted in. "Are they?" she shouted. "Look at them! They've lost their history! Thousands of years of it! So much learned and lost just as quickly! They've been stagnating technologically because somepony keeps erasing everything and everypony!" She dragged her hooves across her face. "Everypony I knew has been forgotten. Everything I strived for was destroyed with lies!" Wisp-like embers flowed from her eyes as she looked up. "The world was so promising back then..."

"And that is the world I am trying to return to. A world where Equestria is growing and developing. A world better than the one my sister left behind." She pointed to the sickly alicorn. "What is her name and what is she related to?"

"My name is Litid," she stated. "And I am related to the green moon you recently awoke to." Her voice was hushed but echoed, as though she were speaking from the other side of a cave. She looked upon her hooves and felt herself tremble. "I lived through five wars since I was coronated. I never even got a chance to know what peace was, but I know you're trying to take it away from these ponies." She looked to the side and felt old memories flash in front of her. "But I know that, unlike others before me, you're not doing it just to own the world. Otherwise you would be aiming to keep all the land that Equestria has taken over the years. There are many positives and negatives to your intention. I am not sure what to think."

"Then don't," Moon said. "I will take care of it all."

"Be careful of what you choose to do, then," Litid said. She floated over to Moon and booped her unintentionally, causing the alicorn to sneeze. "Even with my moon, I was unable to withstand the final war directed at me and my loyal followers. Be careful its misery doesn't consume your body to try and bring mine back."

Moon's eyes started glowing. "It is a moon. I will tell it what it can or cannot do," she threatened.
> Hot Spot
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

King Gallant got out of bed, frustrated. He was feeling even more haggard than ever. His soldiers had caught a few missives directed towards the heads of the counties that comprised Equestria. Dozens were intercepted, but hundreds more had gone out. That alicorn was clever enough to know the messages would be intercepted, and it was infuriating. The only respite he had was knowing that that thing was supporting him with everything it had on hoof, whatever that may be. He quickly dressed up and moved into the halls of his castle, ignoring the guards greeting him. He could feel in his magic that something had been going awry since the alicorn had made it into the world and was trying to change everything. It wasn't just her need to usurp him of his title and take away everything his family had worked on for generations. No. There was something else.

"Is he here?" the king asked a guard.

The stallion saluted. "Yes, sir. It became active a few hours ago and has been wandering the garden ever since."

Gallant groaned. "Thank you, guard."

The guard gave a silent nod and stepped aside, letting the king pass the wooden doors into the inner garden. There were a wide variety of trimmed bushes and trees spread about haphazardly, the whole chaos accentuated by the wide variety of colors and different flowers.

"Why did I let her make this?" the king sighed to himself. "It's so unseemly." He looked around the mess and called out. "Are you here, partner?"

"Yes I am!"

"Then show yourself to me! I don't have all day! The alicorn has started her work and is undermining my position and authority."

The thing laughed audibly, but the voice bounced off the white stone walls. "What authority? This place is fractured and everything runs itself!" There was a pause. "How do you open the roof to let sunlight in? Is it magic or--"

"You insult me then change subject so quickly?!" the king bellowed furiously.

"Oh, come now. If I intended to insult you, I would do so. It's obvious you just inherited the work of your father and forefathers." Their tone changed to a more concerned intonation. "You know, running a country is very difficult, and the bigger it is, the harder it is to keep everypony together."

"Would you stop speaking from behind the bushes? It's infuriating!"

The thing came into view. It looked like a gray, metal doll with glowing white lines running along its sides. Its joints were exposed balls that rolled and twisted with every step. Its head was twisted into a smile, something that it shouldn't be able to do due to the lack of any mouth or joints, but the metal was folded all the same into a twisted rictus. 

"I can't help but enjoy this! I can feel everything in this automaton of yours!" the thing declared as they spun around.

The king sat down and crossed his forelegs, annoyed. "I can't believe I let you take that. That automaton is a treasured heirloom of the royal family."

Gallant leaned back when the automaton slowly encroached into his space. Its eyes looked like cogs spinning in a transparent orb. "I can always give it back and take over your servants' bodies again," it suggested ominously.

"Fair enough..." the king trailed off angrily.

"I'm quite honestly baffled as to where you got this thing," the automaton exclaimed. "I don't remember finding anything like this in the past." It paused a moment. "Maybe it was the others who found them and never told me?" it thought out loud.

"So, what do we do now?" the king asked.

"Now we build up your forces and I enchant your weapons and armor with antimagic spells," the automaton stated.

Gallant frowned. "Wait...magic spells made from antimagic? That makes no sense!" He watched as the automaton started to fumble through the base of the trimmed bushes near them and grew angrier. "What are you doing?!"

"Found it!" the automaton cheered. It was holding up a small string instrument, but the king didn't recognize it. It was comprised entirely of wood with the neck covered in an ornate shell with small extensions on its side. Finally, there was a handle on the bottom of the instrument that the Automaton poked. "The guards gave me this yesterday. Looklook!" It strummed the two chords sitting atop a disc of sorts. "Strummmmmmmmm."

"What even is that thing?!" the king shouted.

"It's a...uh..." The automaton placed a hoof on its face and frowned. "Hurdy Gurdy?" it stated pensively. "Yes! A Hurdy Gurdy." The king stared silently. "Can you believe that ponies came up with musical instruments?" It laughed and rocked in place. "So much progress in such insignificant things while I was stuck in my own little paradise," it growled.

Gallant watched as the automaton's false breathing became labored and it started tensing up. On occasion, he could hear a faint chuckle and see the briefest embers of a smile form at the edge of its false mouth. 

The king furrowed his brow with concern. "Calm down, thing," he said. "You're not in there anymore."

It shot the king a look. "Oh, but I still am! Forever and ever trapped there! I can come out physically, but I decay when the magic starts to go insane!" it stated as it clutched the instrument harder and harder. "All for the betterment of the ponies and to keep the alicorns from coming back."

Gallant hummed to himself briefly and tensed his body. "Then enjoy this moment outside without suffering through such a...predicament," he said. He wasn't quite sure he fully understood what the automaton meant. "Now that you're here, you can enjoy the outside world to the extent the metal pony allows," he trailed off. "You had a proposition to stop the alicorn, right?"

Gallant flinched when he saw the automaton look down angrily and then turn away as it tried to work the instrument. "Alicorns."

"Al...ali...What? What?!" the king stammered.

"Well, not entirely. There's a few fragments of the night alicorn's sister floating about." It waved its metallic hoof dismissively. "Nothing to fret about. With my guidance they can be taken care of with minimal losses." Gallant grimaced at 'losses'. "Although I can't seem to sense them anymore." Its metallic brow furrowed. "I'm unsure what to make of it." It paused and shook its head. "Oh wait, that means without my guidance. Oops."

One of the doors to the garden burst open, and a guard came rushing through the foliage with a letter in his mouth. "My king!" she shouted. "I...uh..." She slowed down when she noticed the automaton who waved eagerly at her. "A missive. The small county of Cinditon declared war against the alicorn."

"Pass me the letter," Gallant ordered. The contents of the letter made him groan, and the stallion handed the letter back. "He's trying to curry favor with me, the imbecile. Just because he's next to Snowfege."

"Should we do anything?" the guard asked.

Gallant shook his head. "Even if we did, by the time we arrive it will be too late." He paced slowly as he thought of a solution. Any solution, but sighed in resignation. "Leave it. Nothing we can do. He dug that grave himself."

The automaton cackled. "Time to start shoring up your defenses, King," it said. "Time to be serious and start planning in advance."

"Ignoring the obvious urgency of what you just said prior, are we still preparing the weaponry and armor?" The king asked. He turned to the guard by the automaton's nod. "Send word to the messengers to get word out to my loyalists that they will be supplied with stronger anti-magic equipment in preparation for the upcoming confrontations with the alicorn. I'm not about to let centuries of history be wiped away in an instant," he growled.

"Yes, your highness!" the mare shouted before hurrying off.

"Jumping the cannon, no?" the automaton said while trying to wind up the instrument. "How does this work?" they mumbled to themselves. "We need to test out the spells for magic dissipation. Ones for alicorns would be exceptionally complex to make."

"So, what? We can only give them to the most elite troops?"

The automaton shrugged. "Depends on how many unicorns you can teach." It scraped its hooves across the surface of its head. "And then there's the complicated spells to engrave. I can do the best ones, but learning them could take years. You'll have to make do with the simplest ones for the general troops and mine for your most elite troops," it explained.

Gallant slow-blinked. "So it's exactly what I said, then."

"Yes, but with added details," the automaton grinned.

"You exhaust me," the king groaned.

It rubbed its hooves together. "Now let's see those tasty maps. Rivers and cities and villages and forests and swamps! So much to play with!"

"This isn't a game!" the king chastized it.

"And yet you are the one who made the alicorn angry by killing the head of that city in the mountains." The automaton looked at the baffled king and shook its head. "Tut tut. A bad plan. If you really cared about your history then you would have accepted the vassalage she offered." It rotated the crank of the instrument, creating a single note. It bounced in place excitedly as a result. "Instead, you threatened her life, which failed, her protégé, and then killed her first vassal. You messed up bad."

"What?! No! She came out of nowhere and threatened my people and our very way of life with a completely outdated perception of things! Her very existence is a threat!"

The automaton cackled. "Then you should have accepted vassalage and attempted to reeducate her in this 'new world' of yours." It continued fumbling with the instrument and started getting frustrated. "Or you could have researched her and developed something to kill her." It pointed the hurdy gurdy at the king. "Pride!"

The king swatted the instrument away from his face. "You're one to talk! You killed several of my subjects with your inane way of communications!" His face became pale. "And in horrible ways!" the king trailed off. "On top of that, it sounds like you've killed alicorns in the past and have an extensive repertoire of spells and techniques to get rid of them!"

"Don't use fancy words on me!" the automaton complained. "I don't know 'em! And yes! That is exactly why I'm offering my help!" Its eyes shifted and the gears stopped moving for but a second. "Because ponies might...will become dependant on alicorns again, or worse..." It looked around the garden and hugged the instrument close to itself. "She could reawaken alicorn magic and cause them to come back. The chaos that would ensue..."



Moon had cloaked herself in the darkness of the night sky and watched the soldiers of Cinditon marching towards the mountain path to Snowfege. The alicorn was pleasantly amused. It was like dealing with the nobles who fancied themselves inheritors of her bloodline when she had no foals of her own. There were, at most, sixty soldiers armed with spears and crossbows: All antimagic weapons. It was odd. Were they aware of her, or did they think she was just a con story?

"Tch. Sticking to the ideals of your stories, old pony?" Moon whispered to herself when she saw the leader.

While the ponies were draped in simple false-leather coats with bits of iron plating, their leader was sporting a fully armored attire, but not quite plate mail. He was fully encased, and Moon could spot some gambeson sticking out beneath his iron armor. What did he think he was doing? Putting down an uprising of would-bes? This at least saved the alicorn the trouble of having to go directly to him. They could have also taken an airship.

The alicorn found it more insulting that they would do this at night. Her domain! Having had enough of observing, the alicorn let loose her magic, announcing her presence to the soldiers below. The clouds of the sky vanished away as a curtain of sparkling back and white engulfed hte night sky, and Moon's body stood out in the middle with the white, ethereal magic that flowed out of her.

"Who are you, who dare to encroach upon my lands?!" she bellowed out to the miniature army below.
> Sunny's Introspection
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The young unicorn sat in his room, studying and reviewing everything he had already seen so far under the light of the day. Unfortunately, he was constantly distracted by memories of what had happened to him. He tried to look it up in the university's library, but couldn't find any spells that could help him contact his ancestors through magic. He didn't know why, but lately, he felt a strange tug in that direction. He frowned when going over a subject on Equestria's fabled 'lost history' that ponies had only speculated on up to this point. Sunny shifted in his chair. In the past, this would have fascinated him, but now? With what happened to him in the last few months, he could only confirm that Equestria's history had not just been lost, but destroyed. If only his...great great great...something exponential aunt would let him write down everything she knew and let him parse through the obvious bias she had regarding herself and her sister.

He heaved a sigh and closed the book. He had studied enough for the time being, and seeing the book on history did little more to make him excited as it did exhaust him. Sunny was going to have to find something else to do today. Moon was busy training her soldiers, and he felt awkward standing in the keep with all the guards around. Sure, he could admire the new decorations for the throne room, but what was the point of that when he went there almost every day?

The stallion hummed to himself. Perhaps he could find a way to get Moon to teleport him to the changelings so he could study the symbols. He could try asking her during training or a potential downtime, but--Sunny slapped the sides of his head. No more pondering or debating or anything like that! He knew the alicorn had the ability to teleport things long distances. Maybe she could do that for him? Or...he could check the portal and see if it would work with his magic. The future queen of Equestria would at least permit his magic to work, right?

Sunny quickly gathered up his writing tools, stuffed them into some saddlebags, and hurried out of his campus towards the castle. The guards gave him a belated greeting, their expressions dull and melancholic. The unicorn couldn't help but chuckle internally. Even he sort of missed the older days, but now was not the time to reminisce on how the 'older' days might as well have been yesterday. The stallion hurried down the damp stairs in the dark dungeons and let out a little orb of light from his horn to illuminate his path. He wasn't interested in just slipping and breaking his neck. Nightmare Moon wouldn't let him live it down. Plus, it felt worse down here than when he was with Moon. An oppressive energy bore down on him, like the dungeon itself wasn't happy that this unicorn was here without its master.

When the unicorn finally got to the teleportation pad, the stallion audibly gulped. "She didn't...trap it to kill anypony else but her who tried to use it, did she?" he wondered.

Sunny hesitantly tapped the surface of the stone before fully stepping onto it and letting his magic through it. To his surprise, it reacted to his magic, but instead of allowing him to walk through peacefully, he was instead yanked violently through the magic and tumbled upon landing. He groaned in pain and opened his eyes to a multitude of changelings staring at him in the thick fog that surrounded their hive.

"It's the white one that followed the big pony," one of the changelings commented.

"Where's the big pony?" one of them asked Sunny.

"Um...well..." The stallion sat upright and shook the dirt and gravel from his mane. "I came here to study the room covered in magic runes."

"Not allowed to come into the hive without asking the queen."

"Ah..." Sunny felt himself shrinking under the gaze of the bugs. "Well...c-could one of you go and ask her?"

The same changeling stating the rule was shoved by another. "The queen said he and the giant pony can come into the hive as long as they greet her first, idiot!" The shoved bug hissed at his aggressor and stepped away. "Follow me, pony," the shover told Sunny.

It struck the stallion once again to the extent of the damage that Nightmare Moon had caused. Even after all this time they still hadn't cleaned out the rubble and fully repaired their home. He dreaded going deeper into the hive...which was exactly where they were going, and Sunny decided that breathing through his mouth would be a good idea considering the stench there was deep below last time. To his surprise, however, the lower castle tunnels had been mostly cleaned out and the walls repaired with the weird green gunk the bugs produced. Some were mixed with pieces of stone as well, but Sunny didn't think that really changed the solidity in any real way since the pieces were present in significant numbers.

"Wait here," Sunny was ordered.

He did as told and waited at the base of the stairs, watching nervously at everything around him. The unicorn couldn't help but jump in surprise whenever he spotted the bugs crawling along the ceiling. Every second here without Nightmare Moon was a disconcerting moment of pure terror. Then a realization hit Sunny almost as hard as his hoof hit his face. He didn't leave a note for her. Sunny started to get goosebumps when a massive figure entered his view from down one of the corridors. It was Queen Hepetia. She seemed disgusted to see him, and it caused the pony to shrink slightly under her glare.

"What do you want, pony?" she asked Sunny. "I know you're the one who was with the alicorn, so why isn't she here?" the changeling hissed.

"I uh..." The unicorn cleared his throat. "I came here on my own to take notes and try and figure out what the symbols in that room we saw are."

The bug raised a brow and craned her neck down to look at Sunny directly as she walked around him. "You're not trying to have us wiped out, are you? Nothing threatening?"

"By my own life, no! Never! I-I-I-I Wh-No! I didn't even think of that!" the stallion stammered.

"Very well," the queen said while raising her head. "Then I'll accompany you, just in-case," she hissed. "I just finished my egg-laying period and I have a bit of free time before checking on the rest of my hive."

Sunny paused. "You what."

"My egg-laying period, pony," Hepetia repeated. "What, did you think we reproduced like you mammals do?" she asked with a tinge of repressed laughter.

"W-well, yes," Sunny confirmed. His eyes darted between the queen and the other changelings observing. "You look like equines, and there are others that--"

"Convergent evolution, pony," the queen stated with a boop of Sunny's muzzle. He sniffled and frowned while the queen smirked. "Just because we look like you doesn't mean we are part of the same family." Her smile quickly disappeared. "Now get moving. We'll lead you."

The pony gulped nervously. He was trapped between the queen of the changelings and her drones, without Nightmare Moon's support. He started wishing he was back in the campus dorms. Instead, he was now in a nursery where the grubs were moving about like worms. The stallion expected them to try and swarm him, but they ignored him completely, and he wasn't sure why. At least it was for the better. 

"Here," Hepetia said with an outstretched hoof.

She was pointing to the immense door left open but blocked off by some stone blocks the grubs wouldn't be able to get over but the adults could easily step over.

A changeling peered out from behind the immense door and bowed her head. "My que..." 

The changeling stopped when she noticed Sunny. There was a brief pause where she stared at him, dumbfounded, then hissed at the stallion and buzzed away rapidly into the tunnels, leaving the pony stunned.

"What was that about?" he asked the queen.

"Don't mind her. She is one of the grubs you chased away when last you were here," Hepetia stated apathetically.

"She what?! But it's only been a few months!"

Hepetia pushed Sunny into the room, still carrying her bored expression. "We age faster compared to you ponies." She looked the unicorn in the eyes. "We are bugs, remember? They don't exactly take long to mature."

"W-well...I mean, that depends on the type and the genus and--I'll do the research," Sunny trailed off when he noticed the queen glaring at him.

He dropped his saddlebags and dug through them with his magic to pull out a pencil and some paper. 

"What are you going to do first?" the queen asked.

"Um..." Sunny pulled one of the books on the floor up to him and opened it. "Well, first I need to see if the Solar Tyrant made any magic notes. This is a completely unknown type of magic, one that I'm fairly certain she built from the ground up." The unicorn quickly wrote down something on the paper and went through the book further. "Most of these are damaged from age, but if there are enough intact pages and parchments, I should be able to parse enough information to get at least a very simple understanding of the concept itself."

"You don't know what it is and you're trying to learn how to read it. Okay," Hepetia resumed.

"Uh...yeah. Sure," the stallion grumbled.

It had only been a few minutes that the queen was already becoming antsy from boredom. Sunny couldn't understand why she wouldn't leave. The changelings could stay behind, and it wasn't in a single day that he would be able to decipher anything. There were so many procedures to go through, and he would need the experience of proper linguistic historians, magic archivists, and the alicorn's help to figure out the magic. It was still fascinating to him. Some of the magic letters seemed to follow each other, like cursive writing, while others were stamped aggressively on the surface they were written on. Did this mean this room had multiple different languages? Were there experiments mixed into the finalized language? In fact, had the language been finished at all? Which writing was the finalized, functional version? What would happen if--

"This is a spell," Hepetia noted whilst looking at the wall.

Torn from his thoughts, Sunny turned to face her. "What makes you say that?" he asked.

"The way the characters are placed and how it all seems to intermingle with each other." She stepped back, letting Sunny get a closer look. "Changeling and griffonian magic share a similar pattern." She raised a brow. "Do you want to try it?"

"I don't even know what to do!"

"Then let me guide your magic. We will see if anything happens."

"But this is incredibly dangerous!"

"It's okay," Hepetia said calmly. "I can't die from something as simple as a rogue spell, and my hive has closed the door partially and evacuated the area. 

"We don't even know what kind of spell it is!" Sunny felt his mouth drying up and his heart beating faster. "What if it destroys the whole mountain?!"

The queen leaned in closer to Sunny and started speaking softly. "Imagine the recognition you would receive if you did this. All the accolades from rediscovering a brand new magic language. You could just taste it," she teased. The queen stuck her thin tongue out and hissed in the unicorn's ear.

"Blagh!" Sunny cried out. He slammed his ear several times with his hoof then started dragging his head across the ground. "Grossgrossgrossgrossgrossgrossgrossgrossgrossgrossgross!" he kept repeating in rapid succession. "That's disgusting!" he cried out. "And you stink, too!"

Hepetia, shocked at first, smiled with renewed interest. "You're immune to changeling magic and pheromones, like the alicorn," she stated in amused awe.

"If I try the spell, will you agree to never do that again?!" Sunny screamed. 

"Very well," the queen agreed. She lied down next to Sunny and pointed her horn at the wall. "Focus on the pattern of my magic and try to follow it as best you can."

Still digging into his ear with a hoof and shivering in disgust, Sunny slammed himself down on the ground and followed. It took around fourteen attempts to see a result that wasn't just sparking, but the close approximation of the wall spell took root.

"It's working!" Sunny declared. "Wait, what's happening?!"

The entire room swirled around faster and faster in the red vortex. Hepetia and the changelings attempted to catch him, but they couldn't reach him or touch him. Sunny found himself stuck in a space without gravity and could only waggle his legs about. He wasn't about to get some respite, however, as the red void around him tore itself apart for flames of great fury.

"What is this? What's happening?!" he cried.

Through the storm of heat and light, a face emerged, wreathed in the world Sunny now found himself in. 

"What is going on? Who uses my magic?!" the face shouted. Its every word caused its blackened face to crack and splinter off itself. "No pony should have been able to use it!" Its eyes of a blinding yellow locked onto Sunny. "Why do you look like me?" it asked. "Why do you look like my child?" Sunny didn't respond. "Answer me!" the face bellowed. 

The white unicorn flinched from the flames whipping angrily around and at him. "Wh-The Sol..." He caught himself. "Are you Pr-Princess Celestia?" he stuttered.

"Who else would I be? Three years and I'm already forgotten?"

Sunny wanted to go back to bed.
> A Whole Fragment
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Who are you?" the head asked again. "My child could not have borne a grandchild in the few years that I was gone. She's not old enough."

A realization struck Sunny outside of the overwhelming stress he was feeling. The fragment was speaking in old Equestrian. The same Equestrian that Nightmare Moon spoke, and he had the reflex to speak it the moment he heard it. He thanked his luck in this instance that the alicorn came into his life, because he wouldn't have been able to speak to this monstrosity otherwise. At least, not clearly.

"I...I just tried casting a spell using magic that was scribbled around a room," the stallion said nervously.

The fragment stared at him, wide-eyed. "Yes, I noticed. I'm unsure how you broke the lock on it but..." She eyed Sunny up and down. "No. You didn't break the lock," the 'fragment' realized. "Somepony else did, or many someponies, but you don't have the capacity to exert that much magic." Solar Flare narrowed her gaze. "No matter how familiar your magic might feel to me."

The stallion smiled sheepishly. "Are you sure I didn't?" Sunny asked. "I'm a unicorn, after all. A bit of time and--"

"Don't mock me, colt!" the fragment shouted. Sunny hid behind his legs when the flames surrounding the two grew immense and wild. "I know my own magic and the power required to break them! No pony has ever been able to match me without grouping up."

The unicorn gulped and smiled nervously when he 'stood' straight up and put his hooves on his hips. "W-well, you're looooking at him!" the stallion trailed off.

The mare's response was a bemused look. "I can sense the magic coming from you. You hardly have any magic in you compared to me." The flames licked at the broken head's face. "It doesn't mean you don't have magic on par with most ponies." The fragment's face twisted into a toothless rictus from which lava leaked. "If it were still a few years ago, I might have enrolled you into my academy for gifted unicorns." She frowned. "Had you actually undone the magic, then you would have dissolved this spell of mine." She snorted. "Just because you are in my castle doesn't mean I won't go to retrieve it."

"No! Don't do that!" Sunny cried out. When he noticed the fragment's confusion at his words, he cleared his throat. "There's no point in returning to it."

"You mean the fog spell I placed around it?" She scoffed. "Foal's play." Her eyes flickered. "How did you get past it?" Sunny shrugged with a smile. He screamed in pain when the flames started whipping him, leaving burn marks. "No more games. This isn't a dream. This isn't imaginary. Incidentally, you speak my language. Why don't the others?"

Sunny reeled from the pain and struggled to speak. "I...I'm still speaking Equestrian. You're the one speaking old pony tongue."

The tops of the flames turned a softer shade of blue and their movement became slower. "You all learned a new language in the few years I was gone?"

"N-no..." Sunny stuttered. "It hasn't been just a 'few years' since you were...alive," he strained.

"Then the spell didn't work properly. How long was it? Ten years? Twenty?" Sunny remained silent. "Answer me, pony!" He mumbled the answer. "What?!"

"Ten thousand years, at least."

The flames turned white and froze. "Wha...T..."

Sunny nodded. "I'm sorry, but it's been a very long time." He found that the fragment was bizarrely 'aware' of itself and its surroundings, but that didn't really matter right now. "It's, uh, been a bit longer than you thought, I imagine."

The fragment of Solar Flare was distorted. "But...but I took everything into account. I worked and studied on that magic for so long...I placed failsafes and countermeasures in the body of my magic...I should have returned..." Her eyes widened. "They stole away my magic..." she whispered to herself. "They broke me!" she shouted. "They...They took her from me, then they destroy my home and accomplishments..." The world Sunny was trapped in started pulsating violently as even the flames didn't know how to react. They became an ever-shifting wall of colors and flickering flames. "They took my own child from me! She was barely a filly!" Her eyes darted to Sunny "And you came to mock me by painting yourself with my colors?!"

"N-no! I was born like this! Why would I-Ow!"

The flames started lashing out in random directions. It was only by chance, or perhaps a lack of it, that some would strike the young stallion. 

"My own child would never have her own without my approving her mate!" Solar Flare snarled. Lava started gushing from her eyes. "She would have done everything to save her own mother!"

As Sunny's coat started to catch fire, multiple long, semi-transparent arms of a red color came out from behind the alicorn. The  arms ended in hands ending in five sharp digits. They wrapped around Solar Flare against her protests while several more extended further, reaching for Sunny.

"No! No, leave me alone!" the stallion protested.

He did his best to try and get out of the space he found himself in, but teleportation wasn't working, and he didn't have a good enough grasp of the new magic to figure out how to undo what had been done. Sunny wanted to close his eyes and hide from this place and the arms, but he couldn't muster the courage to even blink. Luckily for him, something struck the arms away.

"Nightmare Moon?" Sunny questioned.

Looking closer, he realized that his savior was an alicorn, but a ghostly apparition of an immensely bulky one. Several legs grabbed onto him and pulled him out of the strange space and back into Solar Flare's old castle. A cold wind swept across his body, relieving him of the burning pain and causing Sunny to reflexively relax. When he was able to focus once more, he noticed both Hepetia and Nightmare Moon looking at him from above.

"You idiot," Moon growled. Sunny opened his mouth, but the mare turned towards the queen. "You let him try and utilize this magic?!"

Stunned, the queen took a step back. "What?! You're accusing me of causing the whole problem?!"

"You helped him cast the spell! Your messenger was very clear on that!" Moon accused.

The queen slapped the alicorn's leg away. "I'm not a newly hatched grubbed, pony," she spat. "This is completely unknown magic, and I wouldn't allow it to be cast within my hive." She stood up straight, exchanging threatening gazes with Moon. "I saw a pattern in the magic and tried to teach your little protégé to use and recognize it. There were no true spells cast."

"Then she lied to me?" Sunny thought.

"Then explain how Sunny was pulled into an interrogator's pocket?"

"How should I know that?!" Hepetia responded with an equal level of volume. "I know very well not to mess with new magic. I used a false pattern for him to follow. Perhaps he became too confident in the end and tried to force in one of the patterns. I didn't feel it because his magic isn't strong enough for me to notice."

Sunny didn't enjoy the aggressive exchange between the two and eventually forced himself back onto his hooves. His body still stung, but at least whatever magic Moon was using made the stallion's efforts significantly easier.

"I-It's not her fault! Y-your majesty," Sunny said. Both figures looked at him immediately, startling him. He thought they broke their necks. "Queen Hepetia is right. I...I grew too confident. I wanted to be a useful asset to you and try to figure out if this magic was dangerous or not."

Moon's body glowed with magic. She gave Hepetia a side glance and flexed her wings. "That doesn't explain how the spell was activated."

"It wasn't," Hepetia interjected. "Even if he tried to cast the spell, he doesn't know the pattern. Something else happened, but I'm unsure what." She leaned down. "Tell us what happened."

Sunny looked between the changeling and alicorn and eventually shook his head. "It's something I will only tell Nightmare Moon."

The queen sighed and shrugged. "Very well. It still doesn't explain how we weren't able to break whatever the spell was, but no epicuticles off my exoskeleton."

"This...this won't prevent me from coming back here, will it?" Sunny worried.

"I also want to know what the nature of this magic is," Hepetia said. "But we aren't casting anymore foreign magic in my home." She waved at Nightmare Moon. "You can destroy her home. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

Moon huffed. "Thank you for your concern," she grumbled.

"Take your things, tiny pony," Hepetia ordered Sunny.

"Some of my brood scribbled everything around here on your papers haphazardly. You might be able to stay out of here for the time being."

Sunny levitated everything back into his saddlebags and slowly placed it all onto his back. "Th-thank you, your highness."

The nervous unicorn followed Nightmare Moon out of the hive under an unbearable silence. It felt like he was being silently scolded by his mother when he had done something bad as a foal. It was only when the two walked through the portal that Nightmare Moon finally spoke up.

She slapped Sunny on the back of the head. "Idiot! What were you thinking?!" she bellowed angrily. The darkness accentuated the glowing white of her eyes.

"I told you! I just really wanted to know what the magic was!" Sunny explained. "It's...it's like it was pulling me..."

Moon raised a brow. "Pulling you?" She frowned. "What did you see? What did you feel?"

"W-well, I saw a fragment of Solar Flare."

Moon's eyes widened. "A fragment?" She clicked her tongue in annoyance. "So it wasn't destroyed after all..." she grumbled.

"Your highness?"

"Continue your explanation."

Sunny nodded. "Well, we talked, she attacked me, then she was pulled away by strange arms that looked like they were made of red gelatin. They pulled her away and reached for me, then I saw a giant, really bulky alicorn swipe them away."

"And that's where you saw that Hepetia and I had pulled you out together," Moon completed.

Sunny looked at the mare, surprised. "You both did that?"

The alicorn nodded. "Yes. I couldn't decipher the magic surrounding you, so she aided me. You have been in there for hours." She let her magic relax, diminishing the white glow of her body. "And you saw them," she whispered to herself.

"Hours..." The unicorn bounced up. "Weren't you supposed to be preparing for war?"

The alicorn chuckled. "No need to worry. I have already taken care of that problem."



"Is that the so-called alicorn?" one of the invaders shouted.

Moon landed in front of the ponies loudly, making sure she made the land shake. The ponies in front of her were sporting a faded red color on their shoulder armor and, to her surprise, an apple with an open mouth and sharp teeth. She was taken aback.

"Yes. The 'so-called'," Moon mocked.

"Fill this actor with holes," one of the invaders ordered.

The first row of five stallions charged at Moon with their spears attached to harnesses over their left or right shoulders. They raised their hoof right before contact, placed them in a little receptacle beneath the weapon, and pushed forward. The weapons struck through the alicorn's chest easily, perturbing the soldiers.

"Ha ha!" the assumed commander cheered.

Said soldiers slowly raised their heads to see Moon glaring at them.

"Boo," she blurted out. Three of the stallions let go with a frightened scream while the other two hung on. "Oh ho. The bold and the brave," Moon said. She let loose just a smidge of magic, crushing the two guards briefly between two walls of solid magic. The sudden impact and pressure knocked them out cold. "Oops. I went too soft. They lived," Moon said. She brushed the spears off of her casually and started moving forward. "I assume one of you is the leader of that little county that declared war on me."

"Little?!" a voice yelled out. 

Some of the soldiers stepped in, trying to stop him, but the stallion instead pushed on. He was a middle-aged pony with brown fur and a black mane and tail. The tail had been cut short, and his mane brushed back, making it puff up. His green eyes glowed with conviction and certainty as he stared down a creature that dwarfed him entirely. He wore the same armor as the others, save for a golden trim around the collar.

"My county is an important exporter of vital produce and calcium!"

Moon smiled and raised a brow. "Really now? A farming county. That could be useful. It also explains this paltry contingent of soldiers."

"P-p-paltry?!" the count repeated. He was turning red, and his soldiers couldn't calm him down. "I'll make you eat those words!"

He ripped a spear out of one of his soldier's hooves and pointed at Moon. "I thought this was just some stupid rebellion, but I'll take this pretender out. Even your disguise can't survive antimagic weaponry for long!"

"Oh no. The horror," Moon said apathetically.

She casually stepped aside every time the count charged at her and deflected every strike he attempted. The earth pony was growing annoyed and becoming sloppier and sloppier and cursing all the while.

"I'm bored," Moon said suddenly. She grabbed the count and his weapon in her magic, separated the two, then broke the weapon into pieces while holding the count in her grasp. "You committed a grave error against me, energetic little pony."

The count struggled to no avail. "Release me at once!" He didn't flinch when Moon let her magic out, unveiling her true form which terrified the soldiers. "Wow. You can make a magic show," the stallion mocked.

Moon laughed, causing the world to shake. The moon started to glow brighter in the sky, as though it wanted to bare direct witness to its ruler. "You still think that I'm a fraud?" she laughed.

"W-well, after seeing the moon do that, I'm not so sure anymore," the count hesitated.

"Count, you should apologize and just leave! There's no need to throw your life away for this!"

"Silence! It is for the honor of our great country of Equestria and the royal family!"

Moon slowly blinked. "Yes. It's not because you thought I was a fraud and you could garner favor from the king by suppressing his 'dissidents'."

"That doesn't matter. Whether I die now or later, my county remains under his protection, and my sons will not let you rule over it!" the count declared.

Moon scoffed. "You idiot."

"What?"

There was a loud crunch, and the count fell to the floor, lifeless. The soldiers could only gawk in horror.

"Take me to your county and the next in line," Moon ordered the soldiers. "I don't intend to take anymore lives." She prodded the count's body with a hoof. "Just this one's."
> World of Insanity
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"And then what happened?" Sunny asked.

"I went to the 'capital' of their county, used the soldiers to verify my claims, and then threaten to wipe out the entire lineage of that count if they didn't cease their actions," Moon explained casually.

"...I see."

"Then I was contacted by one of the changelings, telling me what had happened to you." The stallion shrank away under Moon's gaze, embarassed. "So that makes the base of my own territory protected, with the flank owned by the thestrals inaccessible." She frowned. "But I'm getting ahead of myself." She looked at Sunny's fading burn marks and grit her teeth. "Leaving things as they are behind is a bad idea. I'm going to check on the bird at the griffin city."

Sunny faltered in his steps. "What? Why?" he asked.

"I let the new magic of my sister fester in the bowels of her old castle, and you ended up going there in my place," she said. "I don't like that he was pulled by it, though," she thought to herself. "A fragment can call on magic of her descendants?" Her brow furrowed.

"So?"

"You already forgot the letter you read from the bird?"

The unicorn thought hard and then bounced. "Oh! What was her name...ca...cr...Calostell?"

"Yes. That was it. The bird creature." Moon became more stern in her disposition, worrying Sunny. "She had dormant chaos magic in her."

"What?!" the stallion stammered. "But...is that a good or bad thing?"

Moon rolled her eyes. "That's a bad thing, Sunny Dimples. Discord and Accord were gods of chaos and order respectively, and their power had a tendency to warp everything around them, neither for the betterment of any creature." She put a wing to the side of her head. "No pony knows how chaos magic works, and your stupid question means that even those magic types have been lost, and for the better."

"Why didn't you do anything about it before then?!" Sunny asked loudly. "You could have told her and the minotaur--"

"And what?" Moon interrupted. "As long as she was unaware of it, then it wouldn't have done anything much but make her..." The alicorn cleared her throat. "Quirky, so to speak. No. I'm going there now. It hasn't been that long yet, and without order magic to balance it out, she might destroy everything around her without being fully aware of it."

"I'm coming with," Sunny said firmly. "You'll need me in-case--"

"No. A mere fragment of my sister almost killed you just for trying to figure out her new magic." The mare stomped the ground. "This isn't mere pony magic. This is chaos magic. If this 'teacher' is who I think it is, then I need to know what he was doing this whole time and to keep you and anypony else behind." She snorted. "As much as chaos magic is dangerous, it is still magic, and the users always have a limit to what they can do, even those like Discord."

"But-!"

It was too late. Moon had rushed out of the dungeons, leaving a deflated Sunny behind. Normally, the alicorn would need Sunny's help to remember where she needed to go, but with the now-active chaos magic coming from the bird, Moon only needed to follow it. She raised a brow, noticing the discoloration of the sky as while closing in. It had turned pink, and the land around had started to turn into a fascimile of a nest. Trees grow sideways along the ground and were covered in leaves and pine bristles. The animals were...random. Their parts were assigned in the wrong spots, but they, evidently, weren't bothered. Nightmare Moon was naturally repulsed when one tried to get near her. It had an eye where a nostril should be, a swollen beak twisted to the side, and an eye inside said beak. She burned it away. 

The city fared slightly better, but that was only by the standpoint of the constructs: They were wobbling like rubber. The griffins didn't even seem to notice the changes, but their faces had been...redrawn, like somepony with no true artistic talent sloppily drew happy faces on them with a pencil.

Annoyed and worried, Nightmare Moon quickly focused her magic for teleportation and found herself in the muddy undercity startling Calostell and her observers onto the floor when she materialized.

"Calostell," Moon called out.

"What the-?! What is the meaning of this?!" Bombastic demanded. The minotaur stomped forward from one of the shacks.

"I've come to see her 'teacher'," Moon stated.

"Teacher? Oh, you mean the pony." He pointed to a cloaked individual helping the bird up. "I agree with you that I'm still skeptical about him." Bombastic crossed his arms and retained his scowl. "But so far he hasn't done anything dangerous, and he hasn't heard our leader."

"He's been teaching me magic!" Calostell announced next to the alicorn somehow. 

Moon looked around for the source of the bird's voice and flinched in disgust when she saw that Calostell's beak was floating in the air, connected to her through a swirling pink portal. 

"Oops," Calostell blurted and pulled her beak back, covering it with her dextrous feathers. "Sorry. Still learning to use magic!" she giggled nervously.

"I knew it," Nightmare Moon hissed. "Chaos magic."

"Oh, you know what it is?" Calostell crossed her arms and her feathers puffed up. "My teacher wouldn't even tell me."

"Nightmare Moon?" the figure noted in surprise. "I thought you were gone from here."

"Well, yeah. She left the city a while ago," Calostell said. She turned to Moon with a nervous smile. "What brings you here?"

The alicorn raised a brow at the bird. "What did you do to her?" she asked the hooded pony.

The figure shrugged and shook their head. "I don't know what you're talking about. She just became nervous when I came to teach her."

"And you knew about her magic how?" Moon took a step forward. "No pony should be able to sense what she had within her, and some no name equine comes out of nowhere to teach her it? I don't buy your story," Moon accused.

"What do you expect me to say? I am big spooky pony who want destroy world?" the figure mocked.

Moon pointed at him. "Where were you, Discord? You vanished from the world along with your magic. Why would some of it attach itself to this creature and not stay with you? What did you do?!"

"I can speak for myself..." Calostell muttered nervously.

"Discord?" The figure paused. "Ah right. The draconequus." It chuckled. "No, I'm not him. I'm just here to teach her to handle her powers."

Bombastic pulled the bird back, and the observers slowly backed away as well. The two figures were starting to gradually release their magic, but the hooded pony's was...warping the land around it.

"What are you doing?" Calostell protested. "I can handle myself."

Bombastic held onto the bird's wings. "No you can't. The giant pony is right," the minotaur said. "You've been acting strange since that pony came by. It's like you're numb when he comes by, and then you become so..." He stuck out his tongue in disgust. "Fragile."

The bird started panicking, and her eyes darted about. "N-no. I'm...I'm still the same!"

Everyone was momentarily blinded by Moon unleashing a spell against the figure, unveiling Calostell's 'teacher'. Even she was somewhat shocked.

"Aw, now you went and ruined the surprise," the unveiled pony complained.

Moon focused her magic in front of her. A pony made of multiple layers of random types bones that shifted around with every movement stood before her, and the magic it held wasn't any normal kind of chaos magic. Well, as normal as such magic could be. Just looking at this entity was straining her senses. He was the same size as a regular adult stallion, but it felt like something immense was backing him. An immense thing that would squash the world if it wanted to.

"A surprise? You wanted to spread chaos around the world using her, I imagine."

The stallion's demeanor turned somber. "Oh. It was that obvious?" He huffed. "I didn't realize that the one Calostell was sending a message to was Nightmare Moon, of all ponies." He snorted. "But, I suppose you go by another name as well, hm?" It twitched in delight.

Moon stood up and laughed heartily. "Such a predictable fellow, like most things chaos."

The stallion 'frowned'. "Chaos? Predictable." He grumbled. "You sound just like them." He started pacing back and forth slowly. "No. This place is devoid of chaos and order. I wanted chaos to take over and become a driving force of this world and everything in it. The power that could be exerted just from her using what little she possesses." The stallion flexes and took in a deep breath. "The marvels that would become of it."

"So you just wanted to complete your own powers of chaos that you inherited by using her and many others, I imagine." Moon grinned. "Couldn't just kill her to take that power?" she scoffed.

"Do what?" The stallion laughed heartily. Little bones fell from the black circles that served as his eye sockets. Glowing red dots finally revealed themselves from behind the shifting bones. "I don't have chaos magic, Nightmare-in-the-moon." The mare scowled further. "I mean, I had no idea that the shift in magic was due to your return, but thanks to that, there's likely going to be another chaos god returning to this world." The bones on his body formed an arm and presented Calostell. "And why not have it be her instead of yet another pony?"

"Because chaos magic is inherently opposing to the nature of ponies," Moon said.

The stallion shook his head. "That's just what you told yourselves long ago. Magic is magic." A hand came out of his shoulder and shook a finger at Moon. "There's no defining the true nature of something without digging deep to find the reality within."

"You were just using me?" Calostell shouted. "I was so excited to learn magic and you use that against me?" She frowned then smiled and laughed. "Well played! I would have done the same!"

The stallion clicked his tongue. "Her nature is going back to normal," he complained. "Well, at any rate, I'm staying here to teach her and make her into the next chaos lord of the world."

"No you aren't," Bombastic declared. The minotaur and many of the griffins in the underground city stood, threatening, against the chaos pony. "You will be leaving."

The stallion smirked and shrugged while shaking his head. "Now look at what you did, Luna. You ruined everything." Bones erupted from the ground and impaled every creature around them several times then pulled them into the walls of the shacks or the dirt elevations, trapping everyone. Much to Moon's and Calostell's shock, nobody was dead or bleeding out. It was as if the bones fused to their own skeletons.

"Cute," Moon said. "Unfortunately, I must admit that you were right." She looked back at the pony. "That isn't chaos magic. What is it?"

The bones covering the pony's body shifted, spasmed, twisted, and expanded. "It is chaos magic, just not chaos you're used to." 

His eyes flashed several times as he stared, unmoving, at Nightmare Moon. The alicorn clenched her teeth and felt her innards start to twist, expand, and split, but her overwhelming new magic reverted the changing and threw the stallion away. He looked at Moon, shocked. The alicorn noticed that his magic had briefly become unnoticeable and he looked around nervously, spinning around and looked every which way.

"You...undid my power with your own magic by overwhelming it?" His hooves dug into the ground. "I thought he was protecting you, or the lessers were around somewhere."

"What in Equestria are you mumbling about, you insane fool?" Moon asked angrily.

"Insane?!" The pony laughed. "That is exactly right! I am a herald of the World of Insanity. My name is Bahua, and you ruined everything that had been prepared so carefully after coming to this world, so you better make it up to me!"

"From another world? Then I simply need to banish you!" Moon claimed.

Bahua didn't hold back and immediately created bone serpents from the ground that snapped at Nightmare Moon. To her horror, they were extremely sturdy. Only a shield spell covering her body saved her from being clipped into pieces by the uneven bits of calcium comprising them. She teleported out of their grasp and back onto the ground, allowing her to harness the inherent darkness of the underground. Tendrils of darkness flowed out of the many tunnels linking to the city and slowly engulfed the serpents. After a few seconds of thrashing, the darkness dissolved, taking the serpents with them.

"Hrm. A pony shouldn't be able to carry that much power without being backed by something," Bahua noted aloud. "You have quite a few tricks up your sleeves yourself," he told Moon. "You accused me of being Discord, but then you mention him being absent until I came. Where were you, then?"

"In the moon," Nightmare Moon replied simply.

Bahue looked away and fumbled with the bones comprising his chin. "That doesn't sound right," he muttered. "Seems like I need to get rid of you first and deal with that next." He was struck directly in the head by a lance of darkness, twisting his head at an unnatural angle and throwing bones everywhere. "Ow," the bones said flatly. 

Bahua's neck readjusted itself by spinning and reshaping the rings comprising it. Moon was taken aback by the sight. A red light floated where his eye was meant to be, but now there was an immense gap where Moon had struck him. A strange current of white light flowed out of his body but did not disperse into the air. It was simply reabsorbed when it reached past his muzzle.

"What?" Moon said in shock.

"Headshots are too easy, Moon. You should know that, or have you been trapped in the moon for so long that you weren't able to learn anything from your past?" He shook his head, causing some bone fragments to fall off that gap's edges. "No need to worry about this. I always have some bones to fix it, but I have to admit...I don't like this," he stated in a deeper tone of voice. "I have only visited one other reality with alicorns strong enough to harm a herald at my level." He poked some of the bones on the floor and casually swiped away another lance. "You do know that chaos unchecked could ruin this world? They aren't here, and there is no more order magic." He looked at the minotaur Calostell was trying to pull free from the shack. "What are the odds that he has any?"

Moon frowned. He didn't, but this oddity didn't need to know that. "What if he does?" She shook her head. "Your incessant stalling for time is annoying! I'm getting rid of you right away!"

The alicorn enveloped herself in magic and charged at the stallion, intent on causing her spell to ripple through his body and tear him apart. Instead, she found her position in the air twisted about, making her crash face-first into the ground and drag along it back to her starting position.

Moon spat out mud and small stones from her mouth in disgust. "What?!" she spat.

"The World of Insanity might have limited my magic in this place, but it should be sufficient to deal with a pony overloaded on magic she can't handle!" Bahua declared.

Moon tensed her muscles. This was yet another strange fight in a strange world that she wasn't accustomed to.
> Darkest Side of Chaos
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What's the matter, princess?" Bahua asked.

The space in front of Moon started collapsing in on itself and then erupted with several pillars of bone spinning around outwardly towards her. The mare just barely blocked the attack with her magic.

"I bet you're wondering how I came here without anyone knowing?" 

A wall of bone raised between the stallion and a black hole that Nightmare sent his way. The bones wrapped around her spell and crushed it. Bahua charged at Moon, intending to chop and crush her with his body as she intended to do to him prior, but another coat of magic protected the alicorn, albeit barely.

"Imagine what things are happening around the world that you're unaware of? The technology being developed. The magics being made. The creatures planning. The civilizations fall-oomph!"

The stallion was smashed into the ground by Moon's raised foreleg crashing down upon his head.

"I'm not interested in a speech that bloats your ego, imbecile," the alicorn spat.

Her opponent's body shifted and pulled away, seemingly stunned. "It's almost like they are here at this very moment. Infuriating!" he yelled. "I represent the darkest side of chaos, and I have to make do with what I have been limited to?!" 

He stomped the ground angrily, and several horned monstrosities with the faces of deer emerged from the ceiling. Red light came from their eye sockets and reflected off their abnormally long arms and hands reaching for Nightmare Moon.  She smirked.

"I can summon things too."

The shadows around the city waxed wider, wider, ever wider, and familiar figures emerged from them. Gigantic, twisted approximations of life that were too long, or too wide, or too thin and tall, emerged and grabbed the boney creations. Several were ripped to shreds just by mere contact, but more came from the portal, straining Moon's horn fiercely.

"You might be able to summon things too, but who says you can maintain that?" Bahua 'grinned' as best as it could be distinguished. "Looks like someone has new magic she can't use." 

"I still have...my own!" Moon declared.

The creatures reacted to her outburst of rage and wrapped whatever appendages they had as limbs and extended them up along the bodies of the bone creatures to their roots and eventually, with great effort, ripped them out of their footholds. They disintegrated almost instantly, followed by the shadowy summons fading out of existence. Moon gasped for air several times. It felt like her lungs were held in a vice grip and not allowed to expand with the air she so desperately needed.

"Wow!" Bahua mocked. "What a kickback! The green herald would have loved to see this, but I can't remember his name." The stallion shrugged and shook his head. "He's too obsessed with his hatred and rivalry to do what he's supposed to. Unfortunate."

"You put on...a great act...but I can tell that..." Nightmare Moon stood up straight, letting her magic stabilize. "That you're pushing yourself as well." The stallion remained silent. "I know that kind of behavior all too well. An act used by the fools who know they are losing."

Bahua dug into the ground. "Fine. You're right. I have no reason to hide it." He chuckled. "But the levels at which we become exhausted are leagues apart from each other."

"I can't get him out!" Calostell shouted. She smashed her head against the bones holding Bombastic, serving only to knock herself out.

"Not now!" Nightmare Moon spat. "And you!" she pointed at Bahua. "You have obviously failed here! Leave!"

The stallion shook his head. "No, I haven't. I just need to enlist the aid of one of the members and erase everyone's minds once you're dealt with. We've done it before. It isn't hard," he stated with amusement.

Moon raised a brow. "Really? That's it? That's your only solution?"

The stallion shook his head. "No. There are far better solutions, but anything else might attract them."

Nightmare grit her teeth. This fool was grinding her patience away. So there were other things happening in the world. She was already aware of that, but how could something like this come out of seemingly nowhere? She had never even heard of such a thing as the 'World of Insanity'. Moon pondered that maybe they were just another organization that had worked with the fools that destroyed Equestria's history.

"I have a question for you," Moon said.

"I have all day."

"Did you aid whomever it was that destroyed Equestria's history?"

"I wouldn't know," Bahua stated. "You would have to ask the members that were here long before I was sent here. There's always a few, and no chaos is bad chaos." He summoned bone whips that crashed against a shield brought up right before impact, much to the stallion's annoyance. "It seems I don't have time to do this dance with you as I thought I did!" he complained angrily. "The schedule is being pushed forwards."

The bones comprising Bahua's arms reached out into the air with open palms aiming at the prisoners. They all began to howl in a mixture of pain and fear as their bodies started morphing and twisting at the behest of the herald.

"What in Equestria?!" Moon gawked in disgust.

"Discord represented chaos, but we represent its darkest side!" Bahua declared. He grunted, noticing that his efforts weren't bearing fruit, and the horrific transformations had halted. "What is-oh."

Calostell's wings had taken on a bright blue pigmentation with pink edges. "I won't let you harm my people!" she declared. "I have plans to get this place under my control!"

The herald became visibly irritated at the colors of the bird's wings.  "You just started learning how to feel chaos magic, and now you think you can overpower somepony like me with tens of thousands of years of experience?!"

"N-no!" Calostell strained. "But I will in the future."

"I can stop you, however," Moon said.

The herald was sucker-punched from beneath by a simulacrum of the alicorn emerging from his shadow. Bahua flipped several times before landing back on his hooves and readjusted the bones forming said jaw.

"Charming," the herald mused. "But a simple punch doesn't do any real damage."

Spines lined with blade-like protrusions emerged from his hooves and started digging through the ground like worms. The alicorn countered by impaling them with a multitude of magical spears and having the magic expand from the blade and wrap around the creatures like vines while also expanding into the mud. It took Moon's full concentration to hold the spines back, making her regret using the immense satellite just to try and intimidate her opponent.

"Real stubborn one, isn't he?" Calostell stated.

Moon had trouble focusing on her. There seemed to be shiny shards of small size but varied shapes that changed the way the bird looked depending on the angle. She looked like a peacock in one of the strange windows, then a secretary bird, and then some kind of ornate, pink parrot.

"I hate chaos magic," the alicorn growled to Calostell.

"Gotta say I ain't a fan of it either." She looked at her own, outstretched wings and smirked. "I don't want to use this if it affects everyone around like this...thing is doing." She lowered her head somewhat to resist the pushback she was getting from the herald. "I think I'll use it only in dire situations. It's no fun to cheat when playing a game," Calostell stated.

Moon cried out angrily as she began pushing back against the spines. Step by step the ground dented as the weird creations struggled against the willpower and strength of the alicorn they were up against.

"Hmmm. This is annoying me," Bahua stated. "I-!"

The spines instantly vanished, throwing Moon forward from the sudden lack of an opposing force and faceplanted into the mud. The victims were also returned to normal and freed thanks to Calostell. The alicorn raised her head, furious, and saw Bahua looking around, nervous and terrified.

"I didn't release too much! I can still do this!" he shouted angrily. His voice still carried a twinge of fear despite his cocksureness.  "They won't have noticed!" he yelled at something.

Everyone watched as he began panicking more and more, bouncing left and right and having forgotten what to do with himself. Moon noticed a large spiral growing in the muddy wall just above a tunnel entrance Bahue stood in front of.

"Not yet! I--"

But the herald didn't have time to finish his sentence that he was ripped in half by a force in a space that couldn't be seen and pulled back in a seamless transition. The alicorn raised a brow at the spiral that remained for a few seconds in the wall afterward and then dissipated without much else occurring. She and Calostell slumped down, exhausted from the efforts now that the threat was finally over.

"If that is what I have to deal with just because I don't keep myself appraised of every little happening, then I think I'll have to make some kind of reconnaissance team..." the alicorn wheezed.

Calostell reached over and lazily pat Nightmare Moon's back. "That'll do, pony...So, what now?"

A large figure stepped into view of the two creatures and put his hands on his hips. A scowl decorated his face. "Now, you two take a breather," Bombastic ordered. "I...think we all need it..."

"Then we talk about you," Moon said. "I've started my retaking of Equestria. Figure out how to take over this city," Moon said. "You'll rule it within Equestria as a home for the griffins." The alicorn grunted as she forced herself to turn her head. "And we need to figure out what to do about your chaos magic."



Solar Flare was pacing about her old castle underground, ignoring the fight that occurred above. She was clenching her head every now and then, horrified and disgusted by everything. Her spell was supposed to take a few years at best. The alicorn expected that there might be interference, and so a decade was planned for, but...thousands of years?!

Everything swirled around her. Whenever she'd look at it, a black hole would suck up all the imagery. Even her own body seemed false and rotten, just like the building around her. It had only been preserved by the rocks and dirt protecting it from the elements far above. Breathing became labored and difficult, and the fires in her body flickered wildly. Some became tall as mountains while others had turned into sizzling embers.

"Your majesty?" a cacophony of voices spoke. The alicorn's eyes shot towards the source. "Will you be okay?"

They took everything

"I..."

They took everything

The figure speaking to her stepped closer. Its body was semi-transparent, had very small bubbles pockmarking its body just under the 'skin' like a soapy fluid, and shifting white clouds upon which black holes would form, usually paired with another before they were swallowed up by the shifting white within, filled the rest of its interior. Its black eyes with white iris and pupils were half-lidded, like it was very bored, extremely tired, or dead until just recently. Its mane and tail were solid masses of the same substance as the body. With every word it spoke, its mouth would only shift shape and position for every other word, making it look like an afterimage was left when any speech was made.

"You did not learn of anything pleasing, I surmise," it said.

"N...No," Solar Flare struggled to get out.

She felt her blood boiling and festering more than usual. An anger that was directed at a group that was no longer around. The ones she wanted revenge on. The alicorn was going to ruin their lives and everything they held dear, just like they did to her, and her new spells would have ensured that.

They Took Everything

"What will you do, then?" the entity asked her. "You have been here for several hours already, pacing about the castle." It looked around, and the clouds within it pressed against its insides. "Staying here won't improve anything."

Solar Flare's body sparked wildly as she laid on the floor, her hindlegs and wings outstretched to their absolute limit and her head clutched between her hooves. The mare's mouth gaped open in a silent scream, unable to process the information despite all the time that had passed.

"Nothing left...it's all gone..." the mare cried. "My daughter...my sister...All I worked towards."

THEY Took Everything

The strange entity leaned forward. "You made us with your new magic." It looked the suffering alicorn straight in the eyes. "What else can it do?"

THEY TOOK EVERYTHING
THEY TOOK EVERYTHING
THEY TOOK EVERYTHING
THEY TOOK EVERYTHING

Her eyes glowed and her teeth crashed together, creating a multitude of sparks.

IF THEY TOOK EVERYTHING

"Then I'll take everything they have!" The alicorn's body erupted, coating everything around her in bright fire. Magma pooled from her mouth and eyes and she began breathing harder, taking in more air to feed her flames. Her eyes glowed like suns and her mane and tail arced and erupted like their owner's namesake. "There's no reason to use it as a threat. Now I'm awakening the gigantis vesuvius vulcan and scorching the world in sulfur and heat!"
> Further on the Map
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moon and Calostell were back in the run-down shack the bird called home, along with Bombastic in the kitchen preparing warm drinks that the alicorn was hesitant to try.

"So the king started it is what you're saying?" Calostell asked with a smile on her face. Moon nodded, making the bird laugh heartily and slap her legs. "What an idiot!"

"It's good to see you back to normal," Bombastic said in relief. He brought a beat-up metal tray with a pot and a few glasses sitting atop it. "You were so...shy when he came. You couldn't look anyone in the eyes anymore nor could you look over us." He clenched the tray, denting it further. "I had to take care of everything, moreso than usual. Even had to go looting for resources."

The bird jabbed his leg with an elbow. "Come on. Looting is the best part," she said as he lowered the tray onto the table.

Bombastic looked around and shrugged, letting a smirk escape. "I admit that it was entertaining, but dealing with the guards is something else." He grunted. "Not as fun."

Calostell waved at him. "Pshaw. That's part of the fun."

Moon stomped the ground. "Enough of this! You were all almost subsumed by some entity of pure chaos magic! This isn't the time for jokes."

The bird puffed up and crossed her arms. "You're no fun. He's not coming back." Both the alicorn and the minotaur facepalmed at the same time. "What? It's true." She twirled the teacup in her feathers and then chomped down on it. She pulled another cup out of nowhere, shocking her observers. "What?" Calostell asked them.

"Are you really using that magic that completely changed your personality just for something that stupid?!" Bombastic asked in exasperation. 

"Not to mention the city and its population were completely warped." The two looked at Moon in shock. "The populace's faces had been replaced with crudely drawn facsimiles of one, like a foal had made them." The alicorn noticed the two turning pale. "As for you, minotaur, you have no traces of order magic within you, so you needn't worry about somepony coming to 'train' you or anything of the sort."

Calostell looked at her wings and flexed them. "Well...if I can focus and use them in moderation, then I think this power would serve to take over this city pretty quickly." She grinned. "And I'll have my own massive city to call my own."

"What about those who want to stay down here?" Bombastic asked.

The bird leaned her head left and right. "You can take care of it, or I'll have someone else do so." She looked up at the immense bull creature. "This place is a haven for the downtrodden. If they can't live up top, then why should I wipe this place out when I take power? No value in it." She rotated her left shoulder and grimaced in pain. "I would suggest they change the entries, though." She grimaced. "Disgusting goop dripping occasionally from the ceiling."

"Regardless, the king and that thing have forced my hooves. I'm moving forward now," Moon said.

"Then we should get ready on our end," Bombastic explained. "We have griffins in place to take over the city and overthrow the current governing body." Moon grimaced. "When you give us the all-clear, we'll take it over and send whomever chooses to join you."

The bird jumped on the table, shaking the contents upon it. "But most importantly, we'll go on raids and steal supplies!" Calostell said enthusiastically. "That should limit the pony king over here, and then we can join up with your forces and get rid of everything else!"

Moon poured some water in one of the glasses and drank the contents, taking seconds to ponder the outcome. She didn't know very well what it was they wanted specifically out of this, but they did want to go home, and their limitations made that impossible. She could very well fund such an expediting to get them out of Equestria and have a brand-new city built already for the ponies. Pegasi would live here at first, but some work would boost it.

She looked through the bottom of the glass at the minotaur and the bird. The alicorn believed that the two would take over through more...passive means. Was life here really that unfair? She poured another glass. Even if this was just a coup for power, that would likely breed fear. Fear breeds contempt. Contempt breeds hatred. Hatred breeds anarchy. Moon chuckled to herself. She had all the time in the world to wait for the aftermath and take over if something were to occur to her future vassal city.

"Fine. We'll go with that plan," Moon agreed. "When I approach the city, I'll send a message out." She grunted and stood up. "And no accepting any strange ponies or griffins or whatever trying to 'teach' you anything."

The bird patted her chest. "I promise on my chest feathers that I will not make that mistake anymore."

Bombastic stomped forward. "And I'll make sure she doesn't make the mistake again." He punched his palm and twisted it several times before slowly turning to face Calostell.

The bird laughed nervously. "That's a good joke." Her smile slowly started to fade when she realized Bombastic wasn't changing his demeanor nor the intensity of his glare. "Y...You're joking, right, Bombastic?" The minotaur moved to the door to open it for Moon. "Bombastic? Bombastic, you're joking! Say you're joking! Bombastic!"



King Gallant and Queen Majesty sat in the war room in front of a long, rectangular table. Only three of their generals were present, each emitting a heavy presence simply by existing in the room. 

A pink pegasus stallion whose wings were wrapped in enchanted metal stood opposite the royal couple. His coat was black with yellow trims at the sleeves and collar and his cutie mark was a tornado on a brown slab of rock. The stallion's mint green eyes exchanged glances with his unicorn neighbor's daisy-yellow oculars. 

Her horn had been replaced with a prosthetic that hummed like cables with terawatts of electricity coursing through them. In fact, it wasn't unusual to see a haze and some vaguely visible patches of color forming in said visual effect. She wore armor, unlike her two colleagues, which covered everything but her head.

The last was another unicorn wearing another uniform akin to their pegasus colleague. His bright, yellow coat made them and their deep blue eyes, mane, and tail stand out. He was mostly bare of clothing, save for a plain, gray cap resting on his head.

But no pony could wrap their head around the metal pony on the side getting annoyed while trying to fiddle with the hurdy gurdy. The pink stallion opened his mouth to ask about it but stopped immediately when Queen Majesty raised a wing to her lips.

"Ignore the animated toy there," the king told his generals. This prompted an insulted 'hey' from said 'toy'. "Where are the others?" he asked.

The pink pegasus straightened himself. "They've been busy with potential uprisings in response to an alicorn of old coming up. They deemed tending to these issues more important than meeting you," he explained.

Gallant leaned forward.

The king and queen nodded in approval. "I should send them messages about our discussions here today, then." Gallant snorted. "Should have brought a scribe but..." He sighed. "So tired nowadays."

"You should go to bed earlier, then," the automaton mused.

The unicorn mare stifled a laugh. "S-sorry. It's just everything was so awkwardly silent," she apologized.

"This is not the time to joke around," the queen 'said' with her wings. "Even with that abomination my husband has brought here."

Said machine stopped fiddling with their instrument and looked up with wide eyes. "I feel like she just insulted me," it muttered.

"Don't worry about it," the king reassured. "Now, as for why I summoned you all, the alicorn is causing issues with the stability of Equestria."

The pegasus leaned back and raised a brow. "I suppose you mentioning that rumor means it's real." The king nodded and the pegasus' body clenched. "I can't believe it."

"I was fooled too," King Gallant said. "I thought she was just a disguise spell or somesuch other thing concocted by the mayor of Snowfege the alicorn appeared in. It turns out she was real, and can summon dimensional portals filled with all manner of...of things."

The unicorn with a prosthetic horn slammed her hooves onto the table. "Then we just need to cut off her magic at its source!" she bellowed.

"We can't break her horn, Plurry," the King corrected. "That would be far too difficult."

Plurry grit her teeth and scraped the table on her way back to her seat. "Rumors said she was linked to the moon?" she asked. Gallant nodded. "Then we need to find a way to break her connection to the moon."

"That won't be so easy," the automaton interjected. It pressed on the keys on the side of the hurdy-gurdy and seemed to marvel at them clacking successfully. "She's linked to many more moons we can't see anymore." It tilted its head. "Are you going to spend significant resources cutting off every single moon? Not to mention each moon is a different size and has different magic bound to it."

Plurry leaned back, a brow raised at the machine. "I'm best at direct tactics, not circumventing with big brain stuff." She gestured to the stallion. "Leave that with Pink Prose. He's the one best at gathering information."

The pegasus' wings twitched and he swallowed audibly. "Well, I believe that we should start a misinformation campaign against this alicorn. Fund performances to show ponies disguised as an alicorn and make it obvious that it takes several ponies to do what it is she's doing. Then no pony would have any confidence in her when she finally arrives or sends proclamations of allegiance."

"And there are nobles that despise the thestrals and the nobles that claim to be descendants of her's," the yellow unicorn said. "We could capitalize on that as well. They could impede the enemy nobles' efforts to support the alicorn," he added.

Gallant smiled. "Fantastic ideas! With the indirect backing of the crown, we won't have to worry about ponies getting suspicious and they would just see this as another spat before the rich foals."

Queen Majesty looked at the automaton, pulling its attention. "What do you think, thing?" she asked it through her husband.

"The ideas are amusing. The one you just came up with reminds me of a plan we used for the final few alicorns, especially that last one," it mused. The automaton's face twisted unnaturally, and a protrusion of metal resembling a fake tongue grew. "After all, is a god a god when no pony believes in it or praises it?"

The others shivered suddenly at its response and face.

"Ignoring the creep factor of that...thing," the yellow unicorn resumed. "I've received reports from our colleagues of something happening in the southwest of Equestria." He was about to compound but restrained himself, pulling his lips back into a crumpled shape.

"Continue, General Pudding," King Gallant said.

The stallion heaved a heavy sigh. "Well, a whole village was burned in a blazing inferno, and it hasn't stopped since. There's been no news about the villagers there, but firefighters and local policing forces reported getting attacked by ponies made of ash and fire." The automaton ceased fiddling with its instrument and slowly looked up at Pudding, unnerving him. The head was no longer twisted into the vague shapes of facial features. "That is about all we know for the time being, but some unicorns there started frothing at the mouth. When they were extracted, they mentioned an overwhelming amount of magic power there."

Gallant grit his teeth and furrowed his brows. Queen Majesty looked at him with concern, fearing for his health when she noticed his labored breathing. 

"Was it the griffins? Have they initiated another war?" Plurry asked.

"If it was them then we would have heard directly from their ruler," Pink Prose explained. Disgust crept on his face, and leaned over the table. "You know how full of themselves they are."

"So it's a war on two fronts now?" Gallant strained to say through gritted teeth.

"It cannot be...even a fragment could not...we sealed her away. All the pieces scattered," the automaton mumbled. "We'll need to start using more and more antimagic equipment," it continued.

The automaton wouldn't stop mumbling to itself under the gaze of the other ponies present. King Gallant didn't like an entity that acted so aloof and apathetic to the misery around it to change personality on a bit.




Nightmare Moon panted from exhaustion. She had been training her magic in the same, pockmarked stretch of mountain land she used since claiming the castle as her domicile. Everything had seemed so new, and not much had changed despite being in Equestria for nearly a year. Where there was just her, now she had to contend with the possibility of chaos and order returning. At least the chaos was accounted for, but the order? Two sides of the same coin forcing their way of existing onto others while thinking they're doing the right thing, or simply through sheer arrogance and amusement.

Nightmare Moon took in a deep breath and relaxed her muscles. She was learning to repair the damages she caused and thinking about visiting the twins at the same time. Ever since they took over the position of the mayor, they hadn't once directly spoken to the alicorn, but they never seemed to oppose any demands.

"Quite unlike them," Moon thought aloud quietly.

She looked up to the night sky, admiring her beautiful moon and stars, and felt the coming of her unofficial successors. Nightmare Moon was immediately ripped out of her relaxation trance by a sudden yanking sensation and the impression that the souls of those princesses had been pulled away against their will.

"You. Failed predecessor. Give me your body. I command it!" a haughty and demanding voice yelled.

Moon's eyes glowed. Who was this foal that had the audacity to command her?
> You Had Your Chance
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What manner of inane stupidity is this?" Moon asked aloud.

Standing before her was yet another alicorn of the night. Another successor, but the mare could not sense any moon attributed to it. She bared her teeth. A trick? Every other one was associated to a moon, so why not this one?

"Why are you veiled in shadow?" Moon asked her.

"You don't get to ask me questions, failure," the newcomer spat.

Moon grit her teeth and bared the entirety of her fangs while her body began to glow white with anger and magic. "You will reveal yourself to me, now!"

The new alicorn laughed. "I have no reason to listen to a foal who was sealed away before she could do anything."

Moon's magic coursed through her body and erupted into the ground through her hooves, cracking it around her. "Enough of this!"

"I agree!"

The newcomer bolted towards Moon and enveloped her head in her gaseous body. The alicorn struggled momentarily before realizing that she had panicked for no reason at all. While the ghostly figure's tendrils were digging at Moon's mind, it was like trying to mine iron using a stick ripped from a tree. The metal would eventually become loose, but who knew how long it would last? The aggressor was chased off with a burst of magic and thrown roughly onto the ground.

When the new alicorn reformed, she was crouched and glaring up at Nightmare Moon. Said alicorn felt a weird twinge in her mind and soul upon seeing the true form of her aggressor. 

"I'm not giving up yet!" the newcomer declared.

She resembled Nightmare Moon more closely to how she was before she...became as she was now: saturated in multiple types of lunar magic. The newcomer's coat was pitch-black and decorated with a few white specks. Her wings more closely resembled the batwings of the thestrals, although a loose feather dangled from the ghostly remains. Hooves were bare from the fetlocks, revealing cracked hoof walls. Her mane and tail were long and flowing as well, but they better represented some form of imaginary version of the night sky: Filled with a plethora of colorful clouds and bright stars. Her eyes bore through Moon with fury that only the reptilian slits that comprised Nightmare's eyes could fully convey through a pony.

"What is your name?" Moon asked the alicorn.

"Whatever yours is when I take over your body and get my revenge on everypony!"

While Moon couldn't directly interact with the ghosts, she realized with this confrontation that basic warding spells could chase them away. An idea formed in her nefarious mind. Moon chased the ghost away and cast her warding spell, but she started tightening the dome into a serpentine shape.

"Cease your attempts at stealing my body," Moon warned.

The ghost snorted and trembled with anger. "It's not yours anymore! You had your time to shine. I didn't get mine yet!"

The ghost resumed her attempts, but this time Moon was ready. She whipped the ghost away, stunning it briefly. This went on for several minutes and could very well have continued if it weren't for the instability of Moon's warped warding spell and her aggressor lying, defeated, on the ground. 

Amused, Moon grinned and tilted her head. "How is a ghost out-of-breath?" she asked.

"I must keep the basic functions of a pony's body in mind when I reacquire one," the mare growled. "Preferably yours!"

Moon rolled her eyes and walked about, thinking. "This is the first time I've seen any of my unofficial 'successors' act so aggressively to the one, true Mare-Of-The-Moon."

The aggressor spat. "True. Pah. You failed miserably, and now look at the world."

"And what should I call you, my angry successor?" Nightmare Moon asked bemusingly.

"I have no name to give you, failure," the ghost hissed.

A devious grin grew on Moon's face. "Then I shall call you Solaris," she mused.

The invader's eyes glowed bright and angrily. "You'll do no such thing!" she shouted angrily. 

Moon raised a brow. The ghost's 'spooky' and serious façade were starting to fade. She was becoming increasingly flustered.

"And why should I? You've been trying to usurp me and you refuse to give me your name." Nightmare Moon shrugged. "I have to be able to identify you somehow."

The ghost alicorn clenched her head angrily and started swiping at Moon who remained still and apathetic, leaving her would-be aggressor to scream in frustration and float towards a wall while cursing. Whatever magic she had used to chase off any spirits faded slightly, allowing something to manifest as a formless fog pockmarked with white lights.

"So that's what happened," the cloud sighed.

"What is this now?" Moon complained. She watched the ghost float about angrily. "Don't ruin this for me. It is the most fun I've had in a long while."

"I'm Mond." Moon turned her head slightly and looked at the cloud with a wide eye. "And I see you've met the last of your successors."

"I figured as much. Anything you can tell me about her?"

Mond's form shivered. Moon equated it to a shrug. "She never told us much, and we were able to perceive even less compared to others."

"How is that possible?"

"I..." Mond paused and watched as the ghost tried possessing Moon again but received a slap on the cheek instead. "She...isn't very old, actually. Most of us managed to reach a century or two before everything degraded. She's...still technically a teenager."

Moon looked at Mond, shocked. The former successor wasn't sure how to feel, seeing Moon wreathed in her magic and holding the intruder in a foreleg-lock. Said intruder was immediately let go to wander angrily through the room, resuming her tantrum.

"They killed a teenager?"

Mond shivered. "I guess? She has this weird field about her that disrupts spirits and cuts off the outside world. I'm guessing whatever tried to make her wanted to use that to make her last a long time like most alicorns? At best we know she stubbornly tried to use the original moon of Equestria and something...came from it." She looked to the ghost. "She never tells us anything besides accusing us all of failing our purposes."

"I can see that," Moon muttered. The ghost attempted a sneak attack and failed in her attempts, having been caught, face first, by Moon's magic. "But I'm still alive while all of you are dead," she specified. The ghost struggled against her grip, and Nightmare Moon could feel frustration and misery hidden behind searing anger. "I am the only one left that can accomplish whatever 'purpose' you have given yourself."

"Then...make them pay," the ghost grunted as she fought against the grip. "Make them pay for what they did to us...to alicorns...to me," she growled. "Wasn't given a chance..."

As the first rays of sunlight peaked past the horizon, the ghostly apparitions slowly faded away into nothing, leaving Moon alone with her magic passing through the spirit. Annoyed, Moon wasn't ready to deal with several guards rushing in in a panic.

"What is it?" NIghtmare boomed from above after hearing the cacophony.

A pegasus stepped forward, nervously, while gasping for air. "We caught a pony trying to infiltrate your castle."

"And?" Nightmare Moon asked dismissively. "Just throw them in the dungeon and I'll deal with them later."

The guard tensed and looked at the others who had followed her in. "It...uh...Something isn't right with them."

Moon rolled her eyes and flew down. "Fine. Let me see this would-be spy."

She went out to her courtyard to see four heavy guards struggling to hold a quadrupedal beast snarling and thrashing about. They were keeping it away with catcher poles, although they didn't seem to do much to inhibit its movements. All that strength and increased weight and they still couldn't hold it down, but Moon raised her brow at another thing.

"You have pole catchers?" she asked calmly. "A bit long, aren't they?"

The guards watching paled.

"U-uuh...t-to catch beasts that wander in, your highness," a guard stammered nervously.

Moon, jaded, slowly walked towards the creature as she talked. "So many giant creatures around here. I am glad that you have kept such foresight."

"Blasted, ponies..." the creature spat.

"Ho ho," Moon said in amusement. "Another pony tribe? There are so many already. I fear that even I may not be able to memorize them all," she mused as she leaned forward.

The creature standing before them was all but pony. Its equine body was wreathed in flame and its fur burned away to revealing crackling, blackened plates beneath covered in yellow cracks from which steam blasted out. Its mane and tail were nothing more than streams of soot and ash flowing from its body, evacuating from the fissures like a volcano ready to erupt. Their teeth resembled jagged rocks of obsidian cutting up their own mouth from which a glowing liquid leaked to clean and lubricate said protrusions. As for their eyes, they had long since disappeared, replaced by literal orbs of fire eating away at their own sockets.

"No, your highness," the same guard corrected her. "We've never seen this kind of thing before."

Unphased, Nightmare Moon leaned forward at the snarling pony struggling against its bonds and locked eyes with it. For barely a minute the fury intensifies, then its eyes extinguished and its light dimmed. It seemed enamored by what was looking at it.

"Impossible," it whispered. "She instilled into us the hatred of your loss, but you are here?" Its ire began to reignite. "What trickery is this?" it yelled at the alicorn. "You cannot have learned of us, let alone the purpose of our empress!"

Moon snorted. "Empress? What lofty ideals your 'leader' has." She raised her head and let her magic slowly leak into the air around her and the creature. "And what do you mean by me being here? Of course I am here. This is my home. My castle. My capital," she boomed.

"But...but!" The creature's light and fires fizzled and reignited randomly, like they were having a panic attack. "You were sealed away forever. How can this be? She instilled this knowledge, this hatred, into all of us."

Moon narrowed her eyes and intensified her glare as the guards mumbled together. "Elucidate me."

The intruder, witnessing Nightmare Moon's intimidating aura and vast magical reserves immediately dropped to the ground in reverence, pulling the guards with it from the sudden lack of resistance. "I give deference and respect to the Sister of the Night," it said. "I humbly beg and grovel at your hooves to grant me the unworthy honor of forgiveness."

Moon smiled widely, revealing her teeth and fangs that sent a chill through many of the guards' spines. "Rise, then, flaming pony, and tell me who sent you?"

The pony kept their face against the ground. "No one," they said without moving. "At least not specifically."

"I believe I told you to raise your head," Moon growled behind clenched teeth. "I do not like repeating myself." 

Hesitance and trembling marked the movements of the intruder, but they gradually did as told. "I was one of many sent to scout Equestria. My empress wanted to know what had become of her daughter and the lands she once held dear."

Moon furrowed her brow and tensed her body. "So my sister sent you?" She ignored the guards repeating 'sister?' multiple times.  "Or rather, a fragment." She put a hoof to her chin. "I thought they were all focused on a single thing and didn't have any true sentience, let alone sapience, to them."

"She seeks to expand her army and get revenge on those who wronged her," the intruder explained. "She will reconquer everything, and with you at her side I am certain you will both succeed, for the glory of the Two Sisters."

The alicorn paced around, audibly groaning. "I don't know how the fragments work, but that seems too complicated for the one called 'The Solar Tyrant'." Moon noticed the ponies around starting to panic. They had heard enough from Sunny and his constant ramblings to know she was bad news. "But what to do? I don't want to share," she giggled. She gave the intruder a side glance and a large smile.

They jumped up and charged at Moon, placing their hooves on her chest. "You cannot! She has pined for your presence for millennia ever since she imprisoned you! She had regretted it for a thousand years, living with the guilt, hoping that somepony could help you when you were freed where she could not."

With disgust, Moon wiped the pony's burning hooves off of her chest and looked down on them, both figuratively and literally. "That was her mistake: Hoping."

The alicorn's body glowed, and with a scream that was immediately silenced, the intruder was engulfed in an orb of white light that gradually faded to pure black.
> A New War
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

King Gallant paced about impatiently in the garden, extremely nervous and stressed out while the animatronic strummed the strings of its instrument and adjusted the tension of the chords with each passing of its hoof.

"Doing that will make you age faster," it said.

Gallant glared at it briefly then resumed his nervous march. "I thought you were supposed to help me!" he squeaked. "I have two literal goddesses crunching me from both sides."

"But one is expanding through conquest and corruption," the automaton said. It strummed the chords of the instrument again, kept its ear close to them, then smiled as the tune got closer to what it wanted. "The other is expanding by mere existence and a promise she cannot keep." It stood up and slowly stepped into the path of the panicking king. "That lightens the load on your shoulders."

Gallant grumbled and bit his hoof. "Are you saying that I should pit vassal against vassal?" he said in a somber tone. "You would have me begin a civil war just to retain my position."

The automaton shrugged casually. "You're the one who declared war on the alicorn by offing her first vassal." It tapped its chin. "A certain mayor, no?" it asked with a sly and knowing grin.

The king's features grew more strained. "I believed that without him, she would be lost as to what to do next. He was the one pulling her strings."

"Seemed more to me, by what I read, that he was directing her for his own amusement and left to her own devices." It gave the king a large smile.

It casually leaned aside to dodge a pile of dirt thrown by Gallant. "So I made a mistake! I've made them in the past! I've fixed them through my own determination or the aid of my vassals."

"But this mistake didn't catch the ire of a literal moon goddess that had made you an offer you could have accepted."

Gallant grit his teeth. "You think you're so perfect? Why else are you in this...thing!" he said as he gestured to the doll.

The false smile receded into the automaton's 'head' and it looked away. "I overestimated the power she had accumulated over the years and she destroyed my body." The king huffed and looked as though he had won the argument. "My...predicament, however, means that I can't really die." Gallant's smile faded as the automaton slowly laughed maniacally. "You think I haven't died or failed before? It's the sacrifice I made! Me!" it said as it pounded its chest multiple times. "The others are all gone! I'm meant to safeguard the future of ponies!"

"And a lot of help that's been! It's like we stagnated," Gallant accused. "I didn't even know that there were alicorns in the world. I thought they were a myth. Now there's not one, but two! This is getting out of hoof!" he waved his hoof away. "What next? There's going to be ghosts? Am I to expect some kind of apocalyptic beast to awaken and torment us all with its mere existence?"

The automaton chuckled. "It's that fiery passion and imagination that makes you the perfect candidate to rule ponykind." It watched a flock of birds fly overhead and drop a feather onto a nearby bush. The king's 'advisor' plucked the feather from its new home and analyzed it meticulously. "Perhaps you could ask the griffins for help."

"And why would I do that?" Gallant asked. He was exasperated. "They were our enemies in several wars in the past. Why would they suddenly see to aiding us when we're being destroyed from within?"

The machine pondered a moment and strummed its instrument. "A common enemy."

The king rolled his eyes. "Oh please. The enemy of my enemy? Is that where you're getting at?"

His question was met with a head shake. "No. When the alicorn of the night is done with taking back Equestria, what is she going to do next? A being that is ageless and so powerful won't be satisfied with Equestria forever." It grimaced. "Then there's the firey one to the south. Her hunger for getting revenge on those who wronged her has gone beyond simply killing the ones that attracted her ire. She'll likely go after everything around Equestria to turn all into ash and cinder. Of the two, the night alicorn is the most dangerous."

The king nodded. "Because she's more cunning and rational. Is it not possible to direct them towards each other? They could battle and we take out the exhausted remnant."

He flinched when he saw the automaton look up at him then smile ear-to-ear. "Or they ally. They're siblings."

Gallant felt himself shaking. "So I'm trapped between a volcanic eruption and a falling moon." He slumped. "Fantastic."

"Could be worse," the automaton mused. It turned to the king and smiled slyly, creasing its 'eyes'. "Could have an alicorn made of literal lava consuming your fractured kingdom." They bounced in place when the king slowly turned to glare at them. "I forgot. Aren't there little pockets with griffins here and there? That can be levied as well."

The king grumbled. "That's true. The pockets we couldn't take back last time." His face illuminated with realization when he suddenly realized that they existed. "What's Nightmare Moon going to do with those pockets?"

By this point, the automaton had arrived next to Gallant and patted him on the shoulder. "Never you mind about that. You just need to figure out a way to start negotiations with the griffins."



Solar Flare peered at the lands in front of her from her burning cloud perch in the sky. Her expression had grown somber and her face tense. Nothing beyond her burnt domain and mindless servants was even vaguely recognizable to her. Even Canterlot mountain, which she should have been able to witness from where she was, could be seen nowhere. She could feel magic, but it was not the same kind. Not the right kind. With her brow furrowing further, Solar Flare looked upon the many forests and the misshapen lands. Whatever had destroyed her legacy went so far as to reshape the land itself. Her tenseness lessened when she noticed the sunlight reflecting off some glassed areas and looked up at the sun shining brightly with white light for the first time in so long.

"Yes. I missed you too, but we can't keep musing ourselves with the presence of one-another," Flare said softly. she frowned again, looking down in annoyance. "But these ponies. I don't recognize anything." She grumbled. "Since they refused to listen to my demands, I think I'll just charge forward and burn everything as I retake my country," she growled. "I've had enough of just sitting here."

The alicorn had been resting in her newly burned land, taking in the heat she had produced. What was once a city on fire had turned into a bubbling molasses of lava and soot. The buildings had been warped into ever-flowing shapes of lava from which molten rock flowed and corrupted the land around. Trees became crystal-like and their leaves resembled dripping red brushes. The grass had become like burning sticks of incense: Forever bright and letting out tiny streams of smoke. The air beneath her was choked with the cinders of what once was and what would happen to the rest of Equestria.

Flare dug her hooves into the cloud, breaking pieces of its burned body off and revealing the unharmed, cottony surface beneath. There was something in the air outside of her rage and grief that could never be quelled. Something oddly familiar, but not yet her daughter. Where would she be hiding? Suddenly, Solar Flare's fires quelled, and she felt her broken heart with yearning for something lost long, long ago. She clenched her teeth and wiped her cheeks of the burning rock flowing down before reigniting her flames. She was stolen from her. It was nostalgia and her need to see her again that brought about familiarity with errant magic.

"What..." The alicorn looked to the north. "Something broke my magic?" She paused then grinned. "Only half of it." Solar Flare let her body glow with magic before speaking. "Go to the source. Destroy it. If you're unable to destroy it, report back to me." She looked to the side. "And try to return my pony. They are a ressource I require at this time. I cannot spend them so freely."



The 'intruder' was dropped onto the ground, their body cleansed of whatever curse had befallen them. Sitting before Nightmare Moon was a pony seemingly freshly removed from the sea. Its tail made of wrapped tentacles flickered nervously as it looked down at its hooves, trembling.

"There. I cleaned...whatever this thing is of its curse," Moon stated dismissively. "They can go back home or something. I don't care right now." She shoo'd the pony and her guards away, but when she made to turn, the intruder yelled in horror.

"What have you done to me?!" he exclaimed. "You got rid of your sister's blessings?!"

The alicorn spun around, shocked, to see the pony's eyes were still burning as though on fire. "What is this?"

"That's a crancan, your highness," a guard explained. "But they shouldn't be resistant to magic."

Moon put her wing to her chin and hummed pensively. "That would have been my first guess."

The crancan looked between the guard and the alicorn angrily. "Why are you talking about me like I'm some sort of display?" He clumsily got onto his hooves and almost toppled over. "When Empress Solar Flare hears of this--"

"Empress?" Moon repeated incredulously. "You mean to tell me my sister aims to control Equestria before me?"

"B-but I thought you didn't-Ulp!" The guard was immediately silenced by a hoof to her mouth.

"If she wishes to rule alongside me once more then I would be remiss to act on such a suggestion." She paced around while keeping her eyes on the intruder. "But judging by what she has done to you, I can only surmise that her intentions are through conquest and corruption." Moon leaned in closer and stared at the crancan's burning eyes. "You still seem to be under her thrall."

The crancan was taken aback and visibly disgusted. "You say that like I'm brainwashed. I follow her willingly!"

Moon rolled her eyes and backed away. "Yes, I'm sure you are." She gestured to the guards. "Take him to the dungeons until I can figure out how to deal with this."

The guards saluted her and took the now relatively harmles pony kicking and screaming into the dungeons beneath the keep.

"How did the spell not break?" Moon wondered to herself.

Her newfound powers should have been enough to handle anything her sisters' fragments might have been able to conjure, so why didn't the brainwashing change? She couldn't think of anything until she noticed several guards holding up a map while arguing and writing various things on it. Besides that being a waste of a perfectly good map, the writing reminded her of something. Something she had seen a while back in the old castle of her sister where the changelings were.

Was this part of that new magic that her sister was researching? The alicorn walked around the grounds of her new home and looked in delight at the progress that had been made for the keep and the walls. It kept the guards distracted and prevented her from showing any weakness that these ponies were sure to capitalize on. 

It allowed her to think clearly, which she needed. She wasn't entirely certain what the magic was that affected the crancan's mind, but simple brainwashing or mind control could be done with any number of magic tools and spells, all which paled in comparison to Nightmare Moon's new power.

"Look out!" a guard atop the walls shouted.

Moon looked at the door blow open, blasting a wave of freezing wind her way and blowing away several guards around her.

"Intruder!" another yelled. 

They sounded the bells sitting atop the walls while Moon confronted the attacker. She was going to comment on this creature's audacity but instead found herself utterly baffled at the view before her.

"What manner of necromancy is this supposed to be?"
> Sped-Up Plans
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moon was staring at some vaguely pony-shaped creature. It was glowing red and seemed semi-transparent. Its half-lidded eye seemed to melt and drip with infinite matter while its one open eye glowed intensely, veins flowing from its shrunken pupil thrumming stressfully. Its red body flowed like mist in a windy tunnel, swirling around and crashing back into itself, recoalescing. Its legs seemed to jitter in and out of existence in time with screams coming from its body.

"You aren't supposed to be here," it spoke in multiple voices. Every word was accompanied by silenced screams of those trapped within this form. 

Three guards charged at it with sword and spear and found themselves passing through and crashing into each other. They had the reflexes to move their weaponry out of the way, luckily, but the thing didn't care. Red darts crunched through the armor of the guards and raised them into the air while their bodies spasmed and the red light started flowing from the wounds. It was only with the intervention of the unicorns that the tethers were severed and the creature was vaguely harmed.

"What are you supposed to be, wraith?" Moon asked.

"Us all serves," it blathered. "Serve...S...Solar...Flare," it strained.

The last word was almost drowned out by the wails of the dead that comprised it. The essence of this being broke through Moon's memories. She recognized the sensation this thing gave off. It was the strange presence she felt in Canterlot. She had dismissed it as paranoia, but this thing was here now. The mare snorted.

"How are you even here?"

The alicorn was caught off guard by the sudden lunge of the amalgam and only just managed to put up a barrier that stopped its incorporeal body. It didn't stop the momentum, however, pushing Moon further away and digging a divet into the ground.

She growled in response and eventually managed to dig herself in. Using a classic spell, she gathered magic into the specter then expanded it suddenly, causing it to explode and terrifying everyone around by the light show produced. Dozens, if not hundreds, of spirits were screaming in agony from the shell they were trapped in and were desperately escaping their former prison, only for several chains to emerge from the remains and latch onto all of the prisoners. Acting like a fish net, the chains dragged the prisoners back into their reforming cell.

Moon stared in horrified awe. "What kind of magic is this?" she gawked.

She pushed against the spirit creature again and dodged as the energy cackling from its damaged form drained the life away from the plant life the lightning bolt scorched. Moon formed a cube around the ghost and locked it into place. She piled on spell after spell after spell to seal it in place. Much to her horror, however, she could not contain this amalgamation of horror.

"Is this the magic you were working on, sister?" Moon thought to herself.

Before it could free itself, the mare purposefully broke the seals, focusing all the raw and unfettered magic into the cube. The guards had raised their weapons and a few had come with antimagic equipment pointed at the cube. Everyone waited with baited breath, hoping that the abomination would have been destroyed. Instead, it was now a stretched, wobbly thing that looked like it had been put into a taffy machine and pulled far in many directions. It wobbled towards Moon and jittered.

"Help...us..." it forced out. "Need to...warn...herrrrrr," the collective wailed.

It sunk into the ground before Moon could attempt to seal it again, causing her to curse angrily and smash her hoof down. This fragment was abnormal to her, but they were still a strange phenomena to even the aged alicorn. She couldn't just wait idly by anymore. She had to act, and she knew just who to get.

Sunny faceplanted on the ground in front of Nightmare Moon, followed by several books and loose parchments.

"What-?!"

"I brought you here, Sunny," Nightmare Moon explained. "We have a problem."

"I was studying!" Sunny protested as he got onto his hooves and started grabbing his belongings with magic. "Why would you--"

"A fragment of my sister has made itself known and seems to have a lot more power than the one I met in the archives of Canterlot." She watched the guards around gradually stop their activities to look at her. "And if she's anything like I was, then she'll be trying to conquer or destroy Equestria by force."

"Was?" one of the guards mumbled.

Moon glared at them with one, glowing eye, shutting them up and making them tremble in fear. 

"So...why did you bring me here?" Sunny asked. "This seems like something you could take care of yourself like last time, no?" He smiled nervously. "And no chaos bird-thing around either."

Moon smiled. "For my own amusement.'

Sunny frowned and stared, wide-eyed, at his great-something aunt. "You're going back to that?"

"And I need you to help me confront her." She noticed the young stallion pale further than he already was. "Not in a combative capacity, foal. Your appearance might trick this shard, allowing me to shatter it." Her brows furrowed and she looked up at the sun. She didn't like the sensation it gave off. "I've a far better grasp of my new power than I did during the confrontation. If the shard is at that level, then the difficulty should be almost non-existent."

"...I'm bait?" Sunny bawked.

He was pat on the head by the alicorn. "Very well-protected bait," she said with a tiny smirk. "All that's left is trying to figure out where this shard is."

"About that," a guard said as she stepped forward. She dug into her armor and pulled out a letter. "One of your new vassals to the south has reported that they're under attack by fire elementals." She looked at the letter further. "There's two more being attacked as well." 

Moon clicked her tongue in annoyance. She didn't have the equine power to handle such things yet. "Any signs of a giant pony-shaped elemental?"

The guard looked at the letter she was holding and tilted her head slightly. "Yes. The city bordering the griffin sanctuary in the south-west. It's my understanding that they are a former fortified city meant to hold back the griffins, so they still have the walls, but the anti-air defenses haven't been maintained."

"Hmm. That's a convenient situation. I thought it would take weeks to find her," Moon noted. "Looks like we'll be reaching her quicker than I first thought, and if it's near the griffin city that weird bird is in, then I should be able to find the city easily." She felt her magic spark within her. Something wasn't right. "Come on, Sunny," she said as she encased the protesting stallion in her magic. "Guards. Stay on high alert. Keep the Snowfege twins appraised of the situation and make sure no more of those flaming monstrosities try sneaking in. You have the antimagic weaponry you attempted to use on me." She waved a hoof. "Use them."

"Wait, it'll t--" Sunny wasn't able to finish his sentence before getting jerked aggressively and suddenly into the air.

"We don't have time to mill about," Moon said. "I'll attempt to use the sensation of magic from the intruder when we get near the sanctuary city to figure out where to go."

Moon started glowing white and a wreathe of ethereal space emerged from her mane to wrap around her and Sunny. In seconds they were already looking at the griffin city in the distance. The alicorn spun around several times, trying to feel where the fiery magic could be coming from and gave a look of apathy when she saw the columns of smoke engulfing the sky. She approached cautiously until she could see the fortified city fighting off the hordes of ponies leaking lava and burning the landscape.

Sunny leaned forward, gulping audibly. He felt his blood freeze and his muscles tense up. "What...they're corrupting the lands," he said. He couldn't help but feel severe despair when looking at the situation.

"Stop that," Moon said. "Despair is unbecoming of a member of my family lineage." She extended a foreleg out. "You lived in stagnation for millennia. This is what progress and evolution look like. Fear is just the byproduct sloughing off of it." The young unicorn tensed up as he stared at the hordes of monsters going after the defenders. "Where did she even find these creatures?" Moon wondered.

"You ever wonder what would have happened if you didn't come by now?" Sunny asked. "What would have happened if you weren't freed?" Moon looked down at the stallion without shifting her head. "Ever since you came back, the world has been getting more violent and dangerous." His voice started cracking from fear.

"Say what you want to say, Sunny," Moon commanded. "I'm not going to kill you for making sounds with your vocal cords."

He looked up at her, down at the battle, then to the side. "I...often wish you never came back..."

"I see." Moon remained silent as she analyzed the hordes of living fire crashing against the walls of the city, burning the stone black. "And do you think life would have been the same forever?"

"Well--"

"We learned through history that some foals have messed with history and waged war against all alicorns." She grit her fangs. "It's possible that they went after those that came 'too close' to learning the truth, bringing pain and misery to their families, if they were even allowed to live."

"That's not possible! They wouldn't go that far! Ponies wouldn't do that..." Sunny's words were full of conviction as he started speaking, but with every syllable came further and further doubt.

He looked back up and saw a hideous smile that seemed to rip Moon's face apart. "Look at me."

"B-but...you're a goddess..."

"Look at my sister."

"But--"

"Look at the ponies that harassed her and the subsequent alicorns and the damages they caused." Moon's smile never faded, and Sunny felt himself crumble. "Don't consider the behavior of the one to encapsulate the whole. Wondering what life would be like in an imaginary 'better' scenario will forever be unknown outside of the world in your head, now let's get to the wall." She looked the perturbed unicorn in the eyes. "Peace can only ever last for a fixed amount of time. At some point somepony would have come in my place. Maybe not during your lifetime, but in the lifetime of your children, or their children. Eventually, some grand catastrophe would have occurred."

Sunny wanted to cry out against her claims with every fiber of his being. He loathed every word that came out of her mouth and wished he could shove them back in so he would never have to hear them. He hated Nightmare Moon so much...because he knew, despite his idealism and hopes for the best, that she was right. 

The alicorn crashed onto the wall, crushing four fire creatures in an instant and startling the soldiers. 

"Wh-what?!"

"Have you spotted the leader yet?" Moon asked them.

She only had to turn and face the horde burning the land for the soldiers to realize who she was.

"You're real?!" one of them shouted in disbelief.

"The leader is there in the back!" Another shouted. His wood-leather armor was charred, and his face was covered in burn marks, but he stayed at his post regardless."

"And my vassal in this city?"

"Hey, we can't just tell this pony anything! What if they're a con artist?"

Sunny rubbed his head and heard the terrified screaming of ponies in the city contrasting with the bestial wails of the attackers. He was so engulfed in his own thoughts that he didn't hear one of the guards shouting to 'watch out' as several house-sized orbs of molten rock were flung from some unknown source and were headed straight for him and Moon on the wall. The unicorn shut his eyes reflexively, freezing in place, but when the explosion resonated in his ears, he felt nothing. Moon had made a semi-transparent barrier of magic that absorbed the impact. She didn't, however, stop the rest. 

"Let's go," she told Sunny.

"But the city!"

She ignored his pleas and engulfed him in her magic once more, but before jumping into the horde, she cast a spell. a powerful spell. A simulacrum of a black moon took shape above the battlefield, stunning many of the monsters. It lowered slowly before splitting into five pieces that elongated along the length of the sea of flames. Sound left everypony's ears when the moon pieces expanded suddenly, throwing every single creature in their vicinity high and far into the air, crashing against those that weren't in the range before the spells collapsed inward, pulling in more victims and 'clapping' before finally dissolving. There was nothing left, and when the duo landed amidst the survivors, the creatures made to attack but found themselves frozen when gazing upon the tiny unicorn. Many motioned to bow while others hesitated to move forward. They all parted when a familiar red sheen passed through them, floating oddly above the ground while also seeming to touch it.

"This way," the amalgamation commanded.
> Two Imposters
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wisp twitched, fighting against a bond that neither Moon nor Sunny could see. The monsters around them made no sounds, much to Sunny's surprise. With the few books he had read he had expected them to perform intimidation acts like animals; false charges, roaring, growling, and swiping the air. Instead, they followed him, silently, with their eyes, confused and entranced by his appearance and size. The battlefield's voice had gone silent, leaving the muffled screams of the city inhabitants to take its place.

If Nightmare Moon wasn't there next to him, the unicorn would have frozen from fear if this occurrence had even happened in the first place. A thought crossed his mind as he looked up at his...aunt. He felt more comfortable next to her wherever he went. His fur dried at the realization.

"Why have you stopped the siege? My retaking of Equestria stops for nothing!" a voice cried out.

Sunny suddenly felt himself suffering under sweltering heat the likes he never experienced before and began panting from the exhaustion. The sky seemed to burn red as the sun brightened the closer the source came. His eyes widened when he saw the titanic pony made from molten lava stomping before them. Its every hoofstep burned the ground. Its every breath filled the air with toxic gasses. Its mere presence cooked everything around it.

"I-is that Solar Flare?" he asked with a tremble.

Moon snorted. "A more bombastic shard of my sister, for sure."

The eyes of Solar Flare glowed brightly and flames erupted from her body, each screaming in hatred. "Who are you who dares to stand before Equestria's ruler garbed in the face of my sister?!" She stomped on the ground, cracking it and causing the monsters around to cower. Moon remained unphased and slightly raised a brow. "Who are you to stand before me so brazenly with empty bravado and not immediately bow before me?!"

Solar opened her mouth, seemingly dislocating her jaw. From the depths of her maw came a flood of burning magma that Moon blocked with a shield. Layering a spell of 'deep space' on it, she froze the molten slag in place and startled the alicorn. 

"Really? You vomit hot stone now sister?" Moon mocked. She shook her head. "That's disappointing. Even I did not resort to such things." She leaned closer to Solar Flare who leaned back reflexively, her mind swimming. "This fragment of yours is perturbing, to say the least."

A flash of light came from the firey alicorn's horn and pushed Moon away, digging divets into the ground. "Wha-How did-Fragments?" She grit her teeth, creating sparks. "How do you know that I--" Solar's eyes drifted towards Sunny and the fires within her flickered to a quiet. She jumped at him and embraced him. "My daughter! You didn't betray me after all! Even if you did, I have missed you for so long!"

Moon chuckled silently while Sunny glared at her. He felt himself being burned alive. However, their faces turned to worry when Solar Flare froze in place and pulled the stallion away. She eyed him up and down and stopped at a specific place that made him cover himself up. The burning alicorn's body ignited with even greater fire, and her eyes became veritable sparking suns. 

"You aren't my daughter!" she bellowed furiously. Every word caused fire to escape her teeth. 

She made to throw him, but Sunny was caught by Moon and placed him gently back to her side.

"He is your descendant, sister," Moon explained calmly.

Solar Flare's temper dimmed slightly as she looked to Moon then the young stallion. "What?!"

Sunny waved a hoof at her from behind the alicorn of the night. "H-hi, great great great-something grandma," he greeted nervously.

"Wh-what? It's only been a few years," Solar claimed. 

"Then how else would I know of your fragments?" Moon asked. "How else am I here?"

"Trickery! They stole my sister from me and use you to attack me psychologically!"

Solar Flare concentrated her magic 'in front' of what they could perceive as the sun and sent a beam of light directly at Nightmare Moon. It was big enough to engulf an entire house. The night pony dug into her new powers and opened a gulf in space in front of her, engulfing and dissipating the magic.

"Impossible! You're only one pony!" Solar shouted in disbelief.

"So you finally succeeded at that spell?" Moon cackled. "Last time you tried that you burned Starswirl's beard off and set the garden ablaze."

The sun alicorn blushed. "That was an accident and you know it!"

Too blinded by embarassment and rage, the molten pony dug her hooves into the ground and dug out two sharp pillars of rock and hurled them at her opponent. Moon Caused two swords of moonlight to crash down from above, slicing the pillar in two and sending their halves into the crowd of monsters around them instead. 

"I was never a fan of that spell," Moon lamented and she swiped some dirt off her coat. "More primitive, and I thought you gave up on using spells that required you to dig into the planet and pull out its flesh and blood."

"Th-that-!" Solar stammered. She panted heavily, her spells having failed so spectacularly. "You can't be here! It was only a few years that I broke myself apart!"

Moon's confident expression flushed away to pale uncertaintude. "A fragment shouldn't be so self-aware," she thought to herself. "But that's impossible. The fragments must have been sealed off somewhere and some destroyed."

"Moon?" Sunny called out.

He watched as a bewildered Solar Flare came closer to Nightmare Moon, the magic of the two canceling out their atmosphere-affecting bodies.

"If you are truly my sister, then you wouldn't know of my daughter," she stated firmly.

"You're right, but I found a burnt journal of yours in Canterlot." Moon pointed down. "Buried under a mountain. A result of many wars we weren't part of in our exile." Her eyes started glowing brighter and brighter with every word, and the black mist engulfing her body spread out with every following word. "And I killed the one responsible for keeping me trapped in that damnable moon!"

Solar Flare trembled as she raised a hoof towards her furious sister and flinched when she touched her cheek. The sun mare's body started to simmer down and the monsters around started to lose their energy along with it. "Is it really you?" she asked with a trembling voice. "After all this time...how did you get out?"

"The spell keeping me trapped could no longer hold all the power I had accumulated, and its strength had weakened considerably after ten thousand years."

The molten alicorn flinched and pulled away immediately, her eyes darting between Moon's at her words. "T...Ten..." She dropped to her rear and held her head between both hooves. "N-no. It's not possible. The fragments were meant to reform after at least five years."

"That's the thing, sister. Our plans and our spells never work out in the end. I would know," she growled.

"I-if it's all the same to you, g-Solar Flare," Sunny hesitated. "You have family alive right now. I learned that we're your descendants from my mom's side."

Solar Flare looked at the stallion, terrifying him. "B-but..." the alicorn stammered. "Where, then, is my daughter? She should be around. Alicorns are immortal."

"She was an alicorn?" Sunny blurted out loud.

He shrunk down when Moon glared at him. "Setting aside your grandchild's misplaced words, I have many things to share with you based on what I have learned."

Solar listened patiently, asking questions and clarifications as her sister shared her words. Sunny, however, wasn't feeling so comfortable. He was trapped between two literal gods. Worse, the second one shouldn't have even been alive in the first place. Were there other alicorns still alive? Gods of other races hidden around the world? He was too terrified and exhausted to move or speak anymore. He just wanted to go to bed. However, Sunny found himself pulled out of his stupor by Solar diving onto her sister and crying her eyes out. She was slumped against Moon's chest, much to the night alicorn's discomfort.

"A thousand years of regret, expecting you to finally come back so I could make reparations! A thousand years of seeing you rise into the sky as a result of my selfishness! I had planned for your return and sent a pony of mine to Ponyville, but you never came back, and she never stayed. Everything went wrong!" She hid hersellf from Sunny with a wing, which her sister reciprocated. "Then they declared their actions and I was...filled with so much vitriol. I hate all the ponies so much!"

"But they're all dead now," Moon said flatly.

"Yes, but this is the world they made!" Solar said. She looked up at her sister with a maniacal and toothy smile. "We can do this together: Destroy everything they made and build it back up. With us together, the neighbors won't bother us, then we can go after them!"

"Why?"

Solar Flare's fires started to ignite. "I asked their leaders to help me free you from your prison, but they all refused." She pulled away, stomping the ground. "I catered to their every whims, but they spat in my face in return! I want to destroy their legacy!"

"Sister."

Solar turned back to her sister, excited. "They'll never see it coming, the foals! Erasing everything they ever loved after we've rebuilt Equestria in our image!"

"Sister!" Moon shouted again. "There's no reason to destroy everything. As I was trapped in that moon, I had so long to contemplate." She leaned in to look at her sister in the eyes. "They will not submit through conquest, but they'll submit through voluntary obedience. Already I have cities and provinces in my grasp. They submit to us because we are alicorns of legend. Eventually, the king will have to submit, too, then we will have entire worlds to explore. We will no longer be limited by the goings on of this place." She smiled, throwing Sunny off. "A fresh start with the descendants of your daughter. They were prepared to offer me a home in their hearts. I'm certain they would be more than ecstatic to welcome you as well if your heart is bleeding from the loss accumulated for so long."

Solar Flare backed away and started to mull over the concept, but the two observers could see that something was wrong when the fires surrounding her body started to reignite more intensely than before.

"No. No! I won't have this world that spurned me after all my hard work continue to exist!" The ground under her hooves started to melt. "I will not exist in a world where my daughter's face will haunt me wherever I go!" She dug in and her eyes took on the aspect of a sun again. "You will survive, but the rest of the world won't."

"What are you planning, sister?"

The sun alicorn laughed. "I discovered the location of a gigantis vesuvius vulcan." Moon's pupil's shrunk."With it the world will become a wasteland!"

"Are you out of your mind?!" Moon shouted. "Nothing will be left if that abomination is awoken!"

Solar shrugged. "Too bad! We'll be able to stay together forever and no pony will ever threaten us again. See you soon, sister."

"No!" Moon shouted.

The alicorn attempted to catch her sister in a spell, but the sun alicorn had warded herself, making her free to teleport away as she pleased."

The monsters around them were also taken away, much to the joy of the defenders cheering from the walls. Neither Sunny nor Nightmare Moon had any reason to cheer, however. 

"What was she talking about? I know about the vesuvius vulcan, but what's the 'gigantis' for? A bigger one? What's so bad about that?" Sunny asked.

"The gigantis epithet is not because it's bigger. They live in super volcanoes," Moon explained. "If the classification system is still valid nowadays, they would be above titans. Something nigh-indestructible. A veritable, unstoppable force of nature."

Under the weight of the sudden realization, the stallion slumped to the ground. "N-no. They wake up the volcanoes when they burrow themselves in their magma chambers and fill it out...so if this one follows the same pattern of sizing..."

"We'll be able to see it from the moon."

Horns blared in the distance, prompting the two to look to the sky. Several chariots, including a gaudy one covered in gold, were coming in from the horizon accompanied by hundreds of soldiers.

"What now?" Moon groaned.

"Why is the king here?!" Sunny asked.
> Alliance of Convenience
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A battalion of armored ponies rushed out of the chariots the moment they landed and surrounded the two ponies standing in the charred landscape. King Gallant and Queen Majesty followed closely behind, escorted by guards garbed in golden armor. Moon rolled her eyes at the display. Golden armor? Easy to spot the royal family this way. That worked in cities, not the field of battle.

"You! Nightmare Moon!" Gallant called out. "Cease stealing my citizens and land from me!"

"I have stolen nothing," Moon stated matter-of-factly. "I am reclaiming what is rightfully mine. My sister and I founded the Equestria you fools have torn apart."

"That was millennia ago! This is no longer your Equestria!"

Moon's body glowed an ominous white, and her magic pushed the soldiers around away by the sheer pressure. "It is always going to be my Equestria!"

"Now now, everypony. Let's calm down," a voice calmly suggested. The automaton stepped forward, a grimace distorting the metal comprising the facial plate. "Petty squabbles won't stop that fragment of Solar Flare from destroying the world."

Moon narrowed her gaze and peered at the magical essence surrounding the artificial construct, then her temper flared with her magic. The sky became pockmarked with holes showing the dark space and stars behind it.

"You! I killed you!"

"Indeed you did!" the automaton mused. "But you didn't kill the actual me." It stepped forward and gazed up at the furious alicorn that made many of the guards tremble in fear. "I've been alive all this time not because of the alicorn power that was forced onto me. You saw what that can do, but this is for another time." It turned around and caught a glimpse of Sunny. Moon noticed its body twitch and its face shift ever so slightly before continuing. "Right now we have to find where your sister went and stop her."

Majesty made movements with her wings which the doll smiled at.

"What are you mumbling at?" Gallant asked. "We came here to stop her and instead come upon this one?" He looked at his wife making movements again. "She's right. Why not stop this one right now and move on to the fragment?"

"Because my sister wants to destroy the whole world," Moon explained.

The automaton cackled. "What else is new? That's all you alico--"

"She wants to awaken a gigantis vesuvius vulcan." 

The automaton froze in place and immediately spun to look at Nightmare Moon. Even Sunny could see the absolute terror despite the lack of a face. "What?!"

The guards around mumbled in confusion while Gallant stepped forward. "What? What's wrong with that? What's a gig--"

"The vesuvius vulcans live in volcanoes," the automaton explained.

Gallant and Majesty exchanged looks and shrugged. "So?" the king said.

"They cause them to erupt when they find a dormant or active volcano." The automaton started pacing around nervously and speaking faster and faster. "You can deal with a vesuvius easily. They aren't that tough. They go in whatever direction they feel has an active vein beneath it, but they fill it out, and the volcano erupts."

"Then we need to prepare for a volcanic eruption?" It turned to his wife. "My wife, take a contingent of guards with you. You'll need to go back to the capital and p--"

"There's no point in that!" the automaton interjected. It tapped its head several times with a hoof. "If a vesuvius lives in average-sized volcanoes, what do you think the prefix of gigantis means?"

The king remained silent for a moment, taken aback by the serious behavior of the formerly aloof spirit. "Big?"

"They're impossibly big!" The entity cursed loudly to itself as it paced about. "Long ago there were monsters born from who knows what, but most of them were hunted by groups and organizations, but the gigantis? They couldn't touch them. The gigantis live in super volcanoes! They fill them out! When they enter a volcano they cause it to erupt! Most of Equestria is sitting on one that expands into the ocean and past the mountains of the west."

Almost all of the guards dropped their weapons and onto the floor when they heard the words.

"You can't fight something that enormous! Even the mighty alicorns couldn't!" it stated derisively.  "They're passive not because they aren't aggressive, but because nothing is a threat to them!"

Sunny felt his blood run cold and his heart catch in his throat. He understood from Moon what it meant, but to have all those additional details added and the reactions of those around him were too much to bear. He almost fainted when Moon caught him in her magic.

"What's wrong with you? I thought you got over your fear," she asked him.

"Th-there's a difference between fear and knowing that you're completely doomed."

"Then we find a solution," Moon stated. "You. False alicorn," she called out to the entity.

"What?!"

"We join forces. Just this once. Find my sister. Stop her before she awakens it, then I deal with the fragment once she's been put down."

"Why should I work with an alicorn?"

Moon grinned. "Would you rather the whole world die? I would survive." She pointed to the entity and the royal family. "None of you would, however."

It took several minutes and pacing and growling in frustration for the automaton to yell in response. "Fine! An alliance of convenience then!" The automaton shouted while throwing their forelegs into the air.

"I take it you watching Equestria this whole time means you know where the super volcanoes are," Moon said.

She was met with a shrug. "What am I, a geologist? My job was to prevent anything about alicorns from leaking into the world and preventing more from being born." The automaton tapped its wrist. "Don't think volcanologist is in my résumé either!"

"Instead of employing your graduate in sarcasm, help me find a way to locate her!" Moon snapped back.

"I-I know a bit about geology," a pegasus meekly proclaimed.

"I do too."

Four of the guards dabbled in geology, and one in volcanology as a pastime. The king sighed in relief and patted himself on the back for overturning his predecessor's law that only nobles and university members could study in libraries, and only in their specific fields. He cast a glance at the automaton arguing with the alicorn and the four guards. Was that another effect of its interference? He saw the alicorn, the so-called goddess-taken-shape, and started to harbor doubts if she ever did intend to destroy everything like the automaton claimed. Gallant pursed his lips and looked to his wife who mimed 'are you okay?'. 

"What is the closest supervolcano?" Gallant asked the guards.

"Well, we pooled our curiosity together and realized the closest is in the griffonlands to the east," a guard answered.

"Up north or across the ocean?" the king pressed. "Come on, hurry up!"

"Yes! It's underneath one of their mountain ranges."

Gallant started pacing about and cursing fervently. "The mountains are the most densely populated locations. If that thing wakes up--"

"Yes yes. Many will die. New world. Big war. So on and so forth," Moon groaned while rolling a wing. "The question then is not where to find Solar Flare, but specifically where." She cast a sideglance to the automaton.

"True. With a body that immense, the fragment could go anywhere it wanted and disturb the beast in its slumber."

Moon stretched her wings. "Then we need to assemble an army."

The automaton scoffed. "Take your personal guard up north then."

The alicorn grinned mischievously. "They aren't numerous nor well-trained enough to deal with something like this." She smiled and tilted her head to the side, wide-eyed. "Or would you rather the one land bridge linking us to Griffonia be left unprotected?" She watched Queen Majesty leave hurried in a carriage with a large contingent of troops to disappear on the horizon.  Nightmare looked at the king. "Sunny and I will follow the path your guards will have set and await your soldiers to fight off the monsters my sister has created. I imagine you might need to deal with some necromantic abomination as well. It was a brief encounter, but I can tell it was strong, and whatever is binding them together can't be easily dispelled. Even I have no clue what the magic is."

The automaton cursed to itself. "She finished it?!" it whispered to itself.

"What monsters?" King Gallant asked. "I thought the burning and warping of the landscape was her doing."

"She apparently has creatures now that she created using a new brand of magic only she was privy to understand," the automaton explained.

Moon nodded. "I took my time studying the language she used, but I was unable to decipher their purpose. I just know it does something to some form of essence in living creatures."

"Wait wait wait," Sunny interjected. "What do you mean 'Sunny and I'? I'm not going to a super volcano!" he exclaimed while shaking his head and backing away.

"I'm aware of the dangers," Moon said. "But...your mere presence destabilizes my sister. That is needed to minimize exertion against her." The alicorn could feel the hatred of her last successor gnawing at her soul.

"But...But what about the griffins? We've always been enemies!" He turned to King Gallant. "Maybe you need somepony to go and send a message to them? She's a literal goddess!" he said while pointing at moon. "She doesn't need me! You could send some kind of super elite guard instead, can't you?"

Gallant slowly pushed Sunny away in disgust. "Firstly, there's no such thing as 'super elite guards'. Secondly, I have no reason to bow to the needs of a traitor. Thirdly, we need a fast flyer to reach the emperor of Griffonia as quickly as possible. No doubt they noticed the other alicorn burning their mountains and have sent their army there." His somber face deepened. "He'll think ponies are attacking again and might send forces up north to cross the land bridge and attack us."

Moon leaned in slowly, her eyes glowing. "And that's why my troops will be staying up there and the twins will be able to handle any 'preemptive strike' against my territory through diplomacy."

"Got a map of Griffonia!" a guard shouted. She brought it out and let her unicorn comrade unfurl and flatten it in the air. "It's outdated by a few decades, but I don't think that will matter for the location of a volcano."

The amateur geologists stepped in and looked at the patterns on said map. Its age was apparent by the yellowing of the parchment and the frailty the fabric was displaying to the touch. It also didn't help that even Moon knew that the shape of each landmass was off. She could at least guess an approximation of the volcano's emplacement.

"Any specific landmarks I should look out for?" Moon asked.

"Oh no. You're not leaving on your own," the automaton said. "I'm not letting an alicorn go gallivanting on its own. Who knows what you'll do to the griffins!"

Nightmare Moon rolled her eyes. "I don't have time for this." She looked to Sunny and rubbed her tired eyes. "Leave as quickly as possible. This isn't time for bickering. When you find them, just defend. The terrain is unknown to your soldiers, and those beasts seem to just throw themselves at whatever obstacle is in their way."

"Then it's settled?" Gallant asked. "We deal with the greater threat," He looked to the alicorn and his face grew somber. "then we deal with you," he growled.

"Fine by me," Moon stated half-heartedly.

The ground shook violently, interrupting their negotiations and planning. Looking up, everypony could see the sun had returned to its former state, but it had become actively aggressive. Beams of light would come from its focal point as thin strands before suddenly expanding and pounding the planet with a fiery explosion.

"She is using the sun to stop the largest groupings of ponies and prevent us from reaching her," the automaton said.

Sunny paced about nervously while staring at the sun. "But how does she know we know where she is?" he blurted out.

"She doesn't," Moon interjected. She pointed at the sun. "She's just making sure everypony is too occupied here to deal with her." The alicorn felt the anger of her last successor boil over and engulf her. "But I have a potential solution," she said. "A temporary one."

"And what is your solution?" the king asked. "Turn off the sun?"

Ignoring his sarcasm, Moon let the fury out. Her body became enveloped in a curtain of night sky. Of nebulas and stars. Of comets and planetary giants. The sky broke apart in several places and an immense moon emerged from one of them, positioning itself in front of the ball of nuclear fire.

Everypony watched silently as Moon worked her literal magic. Only Sunny had the wherewithal to be able to speak.

"Is it...is it in the sky or in front of the sun? I'm confused?" he muttered.

"It's time to get going," King Gallant said hurriedly. "My wife has gone back to the capital to send messages to those still loyal to me and the rest of my soldiers." He took a deep breath and shivered. "And, with some luck, the message will reach the griffin emperor in time before an international incident occurs."

With a nod, the automaton followed after the king, keeping an eye on Moon. She grinned at it as it disappeared into the gaudy carriage along with the map of Griffonia. As they left for the easy, Sunny Tapped his lips nervously.

Moon slumped and groaned. "What's bothering you now?" she asked in exasperation.

"Is...is there a way to stop your sister without killing her?" Sunny asked.

He looked up to see Nightmare Moon staring at him, flabbergasted. "You're developing a consciousness now?! With what she's doing and what she's done?"

Sunny crossed his forelegs. "And you're any better?" he asked. "You threatened to destroy everything when you got out of the moon!" He paused. "Or was it untethered...? Still! You even wanted to make the night eternal and kill us all through that!"

Moon chuckled. "Oh, you're exaggerating now." She loomed over the young unicorn. "If you managed to find a solution, I'm willing to hear it." She leaned in next to his face, displaying her sharp fangs. "But there are no Elements of Harmony this time around."

"What are those?"

Moon chuckled. "Don't worry about it. They've long since dissolved."
> Seen From Above
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Where are we going, then?" Sunny asked the alicorn.

"Up."

"What?"

Sunny was engulfed in a bubble of magic and watched the ground slowly sink away. He was about to relax when the alicorn jettisoned herself at incredible speeds upwards into the sky. So great was her speed and strength of flight that she caused a sonic boom that only just reached the stallion's ears. When his head finally stopped throbbing and his ears stopped ringing, Sunny opened his eyes to cast his gaze down, down, down onto the world below. He looked up in shock to see the horizon of his planet being caressed by the light of some distant giant of yellow light. It looked like an eye of white gold glowing over everything. High above the world, he bore witness to the tumultuous fury of the fireball that had been tormenting everypony long before his birth. It seemed so close but was so far. The stallion looked back towards the gleam. If that fiery sphere above was the sun, and the larger, spherical stone creating a huge shadow on the world was the moon, then what in the world was producing that light on the horizon?

Moon silently gestured to the world, filling Sunny with awe. He had no idea alicorns could perform feats like this. Were they in space?

He could see the mountains of the griffin empire. He could see the deserts stretching south of Equestria where odd puffs of black light and smoke emerged large enough to be seen from where he was. He could see the fractured continent past the mountains and forests to the left of Equestria. It didn't escape Sunny to see Nightmare's face in complete shock and horror upon seeing the state of the world. He had always known the broken lands to the west to be as they were, held together by titanic plants whose roots acted like bridges and created immense gaps in the sea. The landscapes in those craters were always awe-inspiring judging by the descriptions in his books.

Nightmare Moon, however, felt horror. It was the same sensation she felt when she emerged into this new world and could not communicate with anypony. What exactly was waiting for her when she took over and reunited Equestria? Tensing herself, she decided to focus on where her sister had gone rather than sink in the mire of nightmares that was this new world beyond Equestria. the Griffonian mountains seemed so quiet and still from where she was, but Celestia was somewhere down there, trying to awaken something that even she dared not meddle with. 

Moon almost expected a comment from her nephew, but remembered he was sealed in her magic. Looking down at him, she saw the reflection of something distorted in the orb. There were small flashes of light, almost imperceptible from where the alicorn was floating. 

"There," she said to herself.

Gathering magic into her horn, she cast a spell on the rocky titans that caused a gigantic pillar of purple 'fire' to emerge from where she saw the flashes and coalesce into a glowing, spinning ring above the mountains. It took around an hour for the king and his soldiers to reach the mountain area in dozens of extra-large, metallic chariots. Moon estimated that each one could carry around thirty ponies in them. They were followed by smaller, inconspicuous chariots likely carrying supplies. The mare bided her time as she focused her magic into her eyesight to get a better look at the incoming army and watch as they settled in a pass and several caverns around.

They barely had a few ponies disembark before they were already assailed by the fire creatures. The alicorn of the night watched impassionately at the fighting and the magic being used to protect and enhance the non-magic ponies and try to carve a path through the living flames. Sunny, however, with the spell cast on his bubble to see what was happening, was not having a good time. Moon could see him pleading for her to help them out, but this was their purpose: Die for their true queen. Their true ruler. She felt especially angry and disgusted after encountering this twisted, broken form of her sister and tried to push down a feeling rising with bile, but failed. Is this what Celestia felt when she saw her as Nightmare Moon? To see the core values of the being you once cherished twisted so completely that even their physical body changes?

Mulling over the thought, Moon left the ponies to battle and try and establish themselves. It seemed to be going well. Only a few casualties compared to the fire beasts, and more armored chariots were coming in from Equestria, but then armored chariots from the griffins came by. Unlike the ones used by the ponies, these ones were rounded like a turtle shell and covered the griffins flying them both above and below. That was something she would have to take into account later.

It was an amusing sight for Moon to see the griffin chariots slam into both ranks like wild cannonballs and disembark to attack both parties. Unfortunately, the ponies retreated almost immediately while trying to negotiate with them. It seemed the queen didn't reach the griffin emperor in time, or the message hadn't gone through. The alicorn looked down at Sunny looking up at her with pleading eyes, but it was pointless. If she intervened then the ponies wouldn't be able to negotiate in any meaningful way since a veritable god would be standing there, on griffin rock. She even saw a small column flying towards her castle near Snowden. Moon grinned, knowing she was right yet again.

The two stopped trying to evaluate the passage of time and watched as the battles unfurled with the griffins eventually taking up arms beside King Gallant. With this added pony...grif...creaturepower, the fire monsters were gradually pushed back into the crumbling mountain. Columns of highly-pressurized steam burst out from the mountains, breaking them apart little-by-little. Bright lights would glow and dim in slow succession, but Nightmare Moon knew what was happening. This was it. She just had to sense which crack Celestia was in.

There!

Moon dove as fast as possible, grinding against the atmosphere of the world and cutting a swath through several flying monsters emerging from the cracks, leaving only a trail of ashes behind her. Sunny screamed in terror the whole time. If he wasn't protected by the orb, he would have become completely flattened by the g-forces. The two obliterated a massive portion of the mountains when they crashed through it, coming up several tunnels of cooled magma that were starting to heat up again. They all led to a central chamber which Solar Flare was in. Sunny was freed from his orb and rolled around, dazed, when Moon arrived next to her sister.

The chamber was dark and the air choked every breath out of its occupants, but the sheer size of it was such that even the alicorn would have trouble conceiving of a building of its dimensions. Snowden would have been nothing more than a tiny, two-house village compared to the sheer immensity of available space.

"Go away, Luna!" Solar shouted. She focused her magic into the core of the dormant chamber, heating it up some more before it cooled again.

"I'm here to stop you from destroying everything," Nigghtmare Moon stated. "It's obvious, but in your delusional state I thought it best  to explain my presence."

"How did you even find me?! There's a plethora of supervolcanoes in this world!" Solar grumbled as she focused her magic again.

Sunny and Moon braced when multiple columns of steam burst out of the ground and slid along the fractured walls like gray water.

"But it's the closest to Equestria and will tear it apart when you awaken the monstrosity here," Moon said. She looked at the ground and absent-mindedly kicked a black stone. "You claim to have nothing left in this world to protect." Solar looked at her sister with an increasingly glowing body and bared fangs. "But you have...me," Moon forced out. She felt disgust at herself for even uttering such things, but she needed to do anything to calm down her sister. "And, most importantly, you have the legacy of your daughter in the form of this young stallion." 

Sunny gulped audibly and hesitantly approached the fractured alicorn. "Uh..."

"You would kill off the spawn of your own daughter?" Moon asked with a raised brow.

Solar Flare scoffed. "This isn't her. Just some dregs from dregs of the dregs of her loins," she grumbled. "I was not there to approve anything."

"Because of your own fury, sister!" Moon shouted. "You went to such lengths just because of me?! You killed and slaughtered and--"

"Enough!" Solar Flare screamed. She started breathing harder as her body glowed and the chamber illuminated and dimmed in tandem with her heartbeat. "I'm not interested in having some kind of inane 'convincery' trite sputtered my way! The time has passed for that. This world means nothing to me, and I would sooner see it burn than continue to bear witness to what was stolen from me!"

"Looks like you were right, Sunny," Moon mused. "I brought you for nothing."

"Deal with her, servants! I have to focus," Solar commanded.

A ghostly chill ran over Sunny's body before a red mist emerged from the shadows and collided with a magical barrier erected by the alicorn of the night. She skid past Sunny and let loose moonlight from her body, eliciting multiple screams of pain from the single, ghostly collusion attacking her. All the young unicorn could do was watch in horror at the sight before him. He looked at Solar Flare, trembling, but then a realization hit him. He hadn't thought of it because it became so natural to him...but Solar Flare was speaking ancient equus. Her control over the monsters was such that her speech didn't matter, and she only spoke to Nightmare Moon. 

He cleared his throat and approached her nervously. "Um..."



Solar Flare paid Sunny no heed.

"Excuse me," the stallion muttered nervously. He squeaked when the volcano flowed brighter than he had seen yet. "What should I address you as?"

Solar Flare, panting, looked at Sunny with wide, shocked eyes. "Somepony who isn't speaking some bizarre mumbo-jumbo?" Her surprise made way for disgust. "Your accent is bizarre, however."

"Yes, well, when learning to speak a language ten thousand years old you don't exactly emulate the original accent." Sunny believed he 'had her now'. "Q-Queen Nightmare Moon taught me just as I taught her current-day equus."

"Queen?" the alicorn repeated with annoyed apprehension.

Moon glowed green, engulfing the red 'pony' in that color and prying them apart before failing and watching it snap back together and grind against the wall as it lost control of itself.

"I suggested she call herself that," Sunny explained.

"I see. And what do you want, pony? I told my sister I'm not in the mood for emotional speeches or any such ridiculousness." She cast another spell then pointed suddenly at the stallion. "And you looking like my daughter is not going to dissuade me."

"I wasn't trying to dissuade you. More like, I'm a historian and wanted to know of the past and learn from somepony who lived through it."

"Ask my sister."

"I did, but that's just part of what happened back then." Sunny smiled nervously. "I wanted to hear your side to it."

Solar chuckled. "What does it matter? You'll all die anyways."

The unicorn thought hard and said the first thing that came to mind. "So you would destroy your daughter's legacy?" Sunny asked nervously. He saw the alicorn hesitate in casting her spell. "I don't just mean me. There's likely a bunch of her work left around today, even with all the time that passed. We wouldn't be able to look for it if you destroy the world, and I and my family are your best bet to trace that legacy back to its origins."

Solar was about to respond when one of the hollow chambers belched out a contingent of armored ponies, a few griffins, and King Gallant. They screamed in surprise when Moon shot past overhead, engulfed in a weird, semi-transparent film of red. The ghostly entity fighting her popped into existence before the group, its body shifting, blinking in and out of existence rapidly. Dozens of ponies clawed at the form they were forced to take before being pulled back in by Solar's curse.

"What in Hades is that?!" Gallant shouted in horror.

Solar chuckled. "Well done, stalling for time."

"B-but I didn't--"

The automaton pushed past the soldiers and tackled the ghostly abomination. While the face it was given was stale and emotionless, the spirits coalesced within were startled. The doll engulfed its hood in red, arcing magic and struck the ghost multiple times before it managed to throw its assailant off of it.

"I didn't think you'd have trouble with a ghost, alicorn," the automaton taunted.

Solar Flare looked at the possessed doll with a bizarre, deep interest. She slowly straightened herself in front of Sunny as her eyes widened. She stared at the creature, her heart having seemingly frozen solid with the cold sensation coursing through her.

"Oh. If it isn't Princess Celestia's fragment. I thought you were taken care of definitively," the doll mused.

King Gallant looked at it, perturbed, then his gaze shifted to the fiery alicorn that was starting to tremble violently. "What did you say?!"

"You! You're the one! You killed me and stole everything from me!"

"I might've overstepped..." the automaton squeaked.

Solar turned to Sunny and jabbed him in the chest several times with her burning hoof as she spoke to him. "You want to see the world not be destroyed?! Too bad! You'll all die like I did!"

"Sister no!" Nightmare Moon shouted.

Everyone evacuated from the mountains as they crumbled around them. The sheer magical force Solar Flare managed to conjure with the fury that birthed her existence in the first place jolted the slumbering Gigantis Vesuvius Vulcan beneath them awake. She laughed maniacally realizing that she didn't need to directly influence the creature and watched as it rose from its slumber.

The onlookers, however, were less enthused. Griffins watched, horrified, as their homes were ripped apart by a creature none of them were able to imagine even in their greatest nightmares. The titan had awoken and its immense form rose high into the sky, its six, bulky legs carrying it aloft the ground. Every step of its calcified, black obsidian stones that served as feet caused earthquakes, shaking apart whatever was left and wounding the planet with every step. The land cracked apart under the powerless eyes of the soldiers, Nightmare Moon, and Sunny as they watched Solar Flare laughing so hard that tears of lava streamed down her cheeks.
> The Final 'Sacrifice'
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The soldiers all scampered to escape the beast larger than even titans as it was roused from its slumber. Hundreds were lost to the fissuring planet as the vulcan did the equivalent of getting out of bed and yawning. To Moon's displeasure, Gallant survived, likely not without the aid of the automaton. Sunny sat on a platform of Nightmare Moon's magic, completely spent. He couldn't quantify the feeling he currently had when looking upon a mountain range crumbling under the weight of something that shouldn't exist. A multitude of tendrils whipped back and forth from its underside, casting frozen magma everywhere in an imitation of an asteroid shower piercing the sky.

Its back shuddered, merely irritated by the thousands of tons of mountain range and living creatures that inhabited them. They were pushed away by a crenelated structure similar to what Sunny had seen on industrial production lines. Rows of bronze-colored spikes pushed and flattened, launching whatever was on its back further along the rows until the debris was flung off and away. Whatever hadn't been destroyed by its body had been by the debris and it had shaken off of itself. The young unicorn felt like he knew what it meant to be a bug, now.

"We need to stop it from moving," Moon panicked.  It was the first time that Sunny ever saw the alicorn show any true form of panic, and it unnerved him further. "My sister has lost her mind, be it fragment or not." The alicorn's body glowed. "She wouldn't have done this in a million years in the past." She cast a side glance at her nephew. "You will stay here. I'll try and stop that immense beast."

"But you can't--" It was too late. She had already left.

The gigantis' head emerged from the debris still coating its rock-like skin, revealing it to be relatively flat and wide, like an arrowhead. Six massive eyes greeted the world, each looking like a chiseled ruby reflecting light through its core. It looked around, apparently ignoring or simply being unaware of the tiny things around it.

Even from the height he was at, allowing the young unicorn to peer down at the immense beast, he could still feel the tremors of its muscles flexing and vibrations caused by every step it took. He couldn't do anything as he watched Nightmare Moon and the surviving guards attempt to hold the monstrosity back with barriers and restraints of magic. Nothing worked. The creature would just absentmindedly continue forward as if nothing was in its way. It knew immediately where to go to find its new home. 

"Entertaining, isn't it?" a voice asked.

Sunny jumped in terror. Solar Flare was flying next to him, a tremendous grin plastered on her shattered face, letting lava flow abundantly.

"Why are y--" Sunny cleared his throat. "Why are you up here? Aren't you going to kill me?"

"And why would I do that?" Solar asked. "You're going to die anyways." She leaned in, amplifying her smile. "Slowly and painfully."

Sunny gulped, but he's lived with Nightmare Moon breathing down his neck for a year now, if not longer. The threat of a painful death meant nothing. "But you'll just turn me into that weird ghost thing down there."

He pointed towards the amalgamation fighting with the automaton to occupy it. From what Sunny could see, the automaton was struggling against the weird amorphous entity that would simply reconstitute itself whenever it was struck by a spell or physical object, but it struggled with a smile.

"Like you did them."

Solar snorted in disapproval. "I plan on dissolving them afterward. They'll have no purpose then." She looked at her sister, and Sunny could see her brows furrowing. "Why does she insist on trying to stop that thing? There's no reason to save any of you."

The young unicorn shrugged. "She told me that, being in the moon for so long let her think about what happened to her and how to avoid it." He ignored Solar staring at him with contempt.  "I think she never expected to be freed, so she ran a bunch of scenarios through her head. I do the same when studying." She scratched her neck and watched as immense, living shadows emerged from around the Gigantis and started wailing on it and attempting to push it away. "It helps to understand what you're potentially doing wrong, but without an outside factor it only stays theoretical."

"You...study?" Solar asked with incredulity.

"Y-yes? I'm a linguist and a historian, or at least I am...was trying to become one."

The molten alicorn grit her sharp, obsidian teeth against each other, creating sparks. "You look like my daughter but you don't share her 'passions', so to speak." She snorted, unleashing flame and soot from her nostrils. "I even had a school set up for those that displayed talent beyond the usual for ponies their age."

"Never heard of such a thing."

Solar snorted. "Of course not. They probably destroyed it, too. My legacy obliterated by overzealous ponies."

Sunny remained quiet for several tense minutes, watching the beast ignore even the shadows rising to its height and attempting to push it back. "They destroyed the legacy of all alicorns, not just yours," the young stallion explained. "I don't know how many came after you, but they were slaughtered and their stories tarnished before being forgotten altogether." He shifted in place, uncomfortable. "At least I'm assuming they made them go crazy. Every single alicorn destroying the world seems farfetched."

"You even talk like her..." the alicorn trailed off. Her face started cracking again, and copious streams of magma flowed from her eyes. "But soon I won't have to look at you or the world that betrayed me and stole my sister from me...And my daughter," she growled as the flow increased.

Sunny tilted his head away from her, perplexed. 



Nightmare Moon, however, was not enjoying her time with the beast. Her digging into the power of the immense moon did nothing to stop this creature. She narrowly dodged a swipe by the amalgamation and gave her own, burrowing it into the rocky ground below.

"This isn't going anywhere!" Moon cursed loudly.

"Could be worse," the automaton mused. Its body was bent and twisted, but its pilot suffused it with more magic to keep it running. "You could still be alive."

Moon glared at him. "The whole world is going to be destroyed and you use this opportunity to make an ill-conceived joke?"

The doll shrugged. "As good a time as any." Its false face frowned. "But if the world ends I will be left with only you two alicorns as companions." The magic within ground its gears angrily. "I can't let that happen...but what to do?"

It watched Moon glow green as she dug into the powers of the third moon. She flew far in front of the beast and let the magic loose. The surface of the green satellite appeared briefly behind her, engulfing everyone's vision before fading into a cloudy of wispy, green smoke. The gigantis reacted poorly to feeling its soul and lifeforce being stretched and pulled around. It rose one leg up slowly, allowing the rock and dirt that had clung to it to fall before being compressed even further by a stomp. It seemed like the whole planet shook violently from the strike alone. Cracks and fissures grew along the entirety of the mountain range, causing most of it to collapse into the newly formed fissures. Moon screamed in pain as she, the automaton, and the amalgamation were launched into the air.



"Nightmare Moon!" The young unicorn screamed.

Solar Flare fumbled, clinging to her body as she shook from extreme pain.

"What's wrong?!" Sunny blurted out despite himself.

The alicorn looked at him with a half-opened eye then towards the hecatonchires-class monster. Multiple screams filled everyone's ears as a red bubble covered in roiling, screaming faces expanded then popped in front of the beast.

"Truly a beast of the apocalypse," Solar admonished through clenched teeth. "Broke my new magic through a simple stomp of its hoof."

"You have to help her! She's your sister!"

The alicorn groaned as the pain started to fade away. "She'll survive. We've been through similar with the changeling hordes."

Sunny frowned. "Hordes? But they're only in hives and keep to themselves."

Solar laughed. "Queen Chrysalis and her ilk are biding their time?"

The unicorn tilted his head, perplexed. "Who?"

He was met with a concerned and annoyed expression. "The queen of the changelings."

"She's not the queen."

A sinister smile crept along Solar's face. "So she died then. Fantastic. Her immortality meant nothing."

Sunny raised a brow, confused. "But they aren't immortal."

Solar shrugged. "Lives long. Immortality. No difference to me." She put a hoof to her chin and started thinking. "I'll have to figure out how to deal with the others, though. Discord is the main concern for me. Him and his damnable chaos magic."

"Who?"

The alicorn's fires dimmed when she heard that one word, and she slowly looked at Sunny as though he had just done some kind of unspeakable act. "The god of chaos..." She was met with a shrug. "If he's gone, that means they all are. That can't be...So my daughter is well and truly..."



Moon collapsed on a pile of rubble, watching the beast slowly approach her and the automaton. All that was left of the doll was a head, a torso, and half of a foreleg. Gears and cogs within whirred angrily, many too damaged to grind correctly. The alicorn felt the boiling rage of her final successor trying to boil over within her but kept her composure.

She sputtered up dust. "Even the green moon did nothing."

"A lot of good you are," the automaton mused. 

"I didn't see you succeeding in your attempts," the alicorn spat back.

"I'm not a god now, am I? I'm just a puny, downtrodden mortal," it stated sarcastically. It hobbled its body around to get a direct look at the Vulcan. "Well. If even you can't stop that thing, then..." It groaned in annoyance.

"What are you proposing?" Nightmare Moon asked on wobbly legs.

"I can free myself from my self-imposed prison with a drop of your magic," the automaton explained. Moon stared at, befuddled. "It was a failsafe in-case they needed me to come back out and kill another of your kind, or another immortal. I only managed it partially in the past, and you saw to ending that simulacrum."

"So my and my sister's magic aren't enough?"

The automaton laughed. "You need a focal point for it to work, usually using somepony as a sacrifice."

Moon narrowed her eyes and let her magic intensify her ghostly glow. "And freeing you will do what?"

"I'll use all the alicorn magic that I've been given to guard and send the beast to another world."

The alicorn collapsed to the ground, fatigue overtaking her. She cursed. "And then you will come after me."

Her suspicion was met with an 'eye' roll. "My simulacrum could not cope with the little alicorn magic it was given. What do you think will happen to me?"

Moon gazed at the beast growing steadily larger and saw griffins attack it from afar unsuccessfully. "Fine. It's either the world gets destroyed or helping you, but I don't trust you."

She focused her magic into her horn, causing her body to glow brightly, but she was interrupted by the automaton slamming its broken leg against her barrel.

"I will not survive this," it explained plainly.

"So you have said already."

"You misunderstand." The doll paused, staring seemingly into nothing. "All the alicorn magic I have accumulated over the years will be freed, so you will be responsible for what is to come. This will create an era of new alicorns popping up left and right at the same time, each encompassing its own aspects." Its leg dug in further. "Don't let them live. Kill them when they're born if you have to."

Moon said nothing and let an insignificant portion of her magic into the automaton which became limp on contact. The sky above rent apart, unveiling a swirling red gash in wish the false alicorn Moon had fought before floated in the fetal position. He unfurled his tired, aching body, and floated out, limbs cracking and snapping at every effort. Even the alicorn could see that he was a creature that lived far beyond the time life had granted him. Without warning, countless millennia of alicorn magic flew out from him causing the world to shake violently. A red portal broke open next to the gigantis, unveiling a world filled with rows of active volcanoes, its skies filled with toxic gasses and its seas a morass of hungry light and fire. 

The alicorn watched as her opponent's body cracked and crumbled as he funneled more magic into the vortex to pull in the gigantis vesuvius vulcan. It struggled briefly, but the sheer power being exerted was a surprise even to it. After several moments, the creature found itself sucked into the world of fire and gas and wailed when the portal closed. Nightmare Moon could not determine whether it was misery to losing its home or joy from being in a world it enjoyed.

She was startled by a dry 'thud' occurring next to her and saw that it was the false alicorn, resembling the automaton in all but his disheveled and bony appearance.

The false alicorn chuckled. "You know," he said with a weak and quiet voice. "I really did want to have a family and child of my own, but I thought that worrying for the well-being of the others was a grander goal..." He groaned as his skin shrunk tighter over his bones. "I've had more than enough time to ponder if that was true or not..."

"What is your name?" Moon asked him. "I can at least respect somepony for their dedication to their cause and the work they put in to accomplish it. I can at least put a name to the one that wiped gods from the world."

The dying pony laughed, coughing up dust and dry red. "I didn't do it alone, but my name is Shining Sparkle. We never touched the legacy of regular ponies. You might find mine somewhere out there, maybe." He leaned his head against his leg, sighing in relief. "Finally. I can finally rest now. I wonder if I'll meet my loved ones again. Dear ol' Twilly..."

With those last words, his body dissolved completely and the magic once held within him burst out, terrifying even the alicorn of the night. Magic of all types and colors burst forth from the ashy remains and flew in every possible direction before the sky was left bare and clean save the dust kicked up by the awakening of the gigantis vesuvius vulcan. Moon looked down at the dust and felt a tinge of envy at his final moments of rest. She almost wished she could have destroyed him in person...a thought that brought to light a question: Where had the king gone?

"No!" another voice shouted angrily. Sunny was thrown down with a pained grunt and ended up next to Moon. "No no no! What have you done?! It was almost done! We were almost free!"

"Ah yes, my sister. I still have you to deal with," Moon grunted. She made to stand, bracing for the pain, but rose in shock instead. She felt nothing. "Such invigoration...Was he holding on to my magic?!" she bellowed furiously.

Her magic crashed into Solar Flare's, and the two stood against each other on equal footing. Sunny watched in horror as yet another catastrophe was about to occur. Griffonia was in ruins, and now two goddesses of opposing ideals were about to let loose upon each other. What could he do in this scenario?
> The 'Little' Sister
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The magic of the sisters clashed spectacularly, melting away the rock around them and chasing Sunny off into the distance. He used the little practice in magic he had to teleport himself a short distance away and land on what little remained of the mountain range rather than fall to his death. Everything Solar Flare's magic touched turned to fiery slag, while everything Moon's touched seemed to lose all of its color and become brittle and freezing. Moon formed spinning spears that she launched at Solar Flare who dodged and returned in kind with a crescent that burned the very air it touched.

The alicorn of the sun used the distraction to barrel into her sister, unleashing the full force of her body's heat onto her foe, burning the black alicorn and pulling a howl of pain from her. Moon gathered magic into her hooves and struck down. Sunny winced at the audible 'crack' that reached his ears and watched the glowing pony shoot through the rubble and deep into the ground. He backed away instinctively when the ground burst apart and columns of magma rose with Solar Flare's wingflaps. She aimed them at Moon who had an increasingly harder time to dodge as more and more spouts of molten stone broke through the ground and singed her form.

In response, Moon formulated a spell as she dodged the attacks and gritted her teeth when they struck. Solar Flare found herself caught in a vortex of darkness and compressing air, clawing at her throat as the fire in her body started to fizzle out. Gasping and expecting a victory, Moon relaxed herself only barely, but that was a mistake. The sun itself came to her opponent's aid, bathing her in a light that burned the ground beneath and focused its horrific gaze onto the night pony. Sunny equated the chase to a foal with a magnifying glass attempting to burn an ant.

Shivers coursed through the young unicorn. He had never seen magic on this scale before, let alone one using the celestial bodies. He was further horrified by the sight of the moon moving in front of the sun, causing an eclipse, like it was coming to Nightmare Moon's aid. Solar Flare's colors became replaced by black with white outlines as Moon's celestial magic grasped at her body, causing cracks to form all over the sun alicorn's body. Sunlight shone once again, freeing Solar, but now the moon was chasing after the sun, like the astral bodies were fighting with each other just as their alicorns were.

Was this a battle between gods? Was the scale of their magic going to get bigger and bigger? Sunny felt the air escape him when something struck his stomach. The source was a pair of clawed hands clamped around his stomach, bringing him to a small encampment further away where the griffins and ponies waited with bated breath.

"Ah, there's the little traitor," King Gallant spat. He stomped forward, pushing pony and griffin alike. "Look what your 'goddess' has wrought!"

"She didn't do any of this!" Sunny shouted. "She told you what was going to happen and tried to put a stop to it!"

"Trying and doing are two different things!" Gallant responded angrily. "What's next, she moves to conquer what's left of Griffonia?!"  His words put the griffins on edge. "She already assaulted the isolated griffin city in Southern Equestria, and now they're declaring 'freedom' or something inane like that."

Sunny bobbed his head up and down while he muttered quietly. "I mean, you kind of isolated them to begin with and the griffins didn't want to help them anyways."

"What was that?!" Gallant bellowed. 

"You heard me!" the unicorn shouted. Gallant was taken aback as Sunny stood up to him and stomped forward with an angry scowl on his face. "I don't question your rule over the ponies, but you've made nothing but bad decisions lately, and quite honestly, I'm starting to doubt your decisions in the past too."

Gallant started turning red with fury. "How dare you speak to me in such a manner. You think ruling a country is easy?!"

"You killed the mayor of Snowfege!" Sunny accused. "He wasn't doing anything bad!"

"He was undermining my authority and threatening the very delicate balance of Equestria and its borders."

Sunny snorted. "Yes. The fractured borders with ponies that are spread about randomly. Had you left the mayor alone then this 'war' wouldn't have happened in the first place." he looked to the side. "Although I would've rather it not happen at all to begin with."

Gallant struck his chest several times as he spoke. "My family has run Equestria for decades! I will not let some upstart from a forgotten era take all that work away from me!"

Sunny snapped at those words. "You idiot!" He stepped forward, unaware that his magic was gathering in his horn and causing brief wisps of light to spark at the tip. "She said that you would be keeping your position seeing as you ran Equestria this whole time! She's still a newcomer to this era, but she and her sister ran it first!"

"So?! She would have me act as a glorified servant?!" Gallant rebutted. "I am King Gallant from a long line of kings! I will not be usurped by some would-be goddess that came out of nowhere!" His own horn started glowing, and tendrils of magic started spinning around his tattered body. "If you planned on threatening me with your magic, colt, then you should have unleashed the first spell!"

Sunny was taken aback by the sudden display. "What?!"

"Look out!" a griffin warned.

Solar slammed clumsily into the ground next to everyone and skidded to a halt. Gasping for air and exhausted, she looked at Gallant then Sunny, and frowned, baring her teeth.

"You tricked me!" Solar accused Sunny. "I've had enough of everypony trying to lure me away with memories of my daughter!" Her body started glowing brighter and magma began to leak from the newly formed cracks and crevices on her body. "I'm getting rid of you now!"

Before she could act upon her words, Moon bodyslammed into her side, producing wince-inducing cracks. The night alicorn was in shambles and gasping just as hard as her sister. The wispy blackness of her body was floating around her in great rivers and causing Sunny some concern.

"I've had...just about enough...of this fighting between sisters, and idiots, and some gigantic beast that destroys the world just by waking up!" Moon bellowed angrily. She let the rage of her final successor overcome her, causing the moon in the sky to glow. "You are getting rid of no pony, Celestia! I am getting rid of you!" she emphasized.

The moon in the sky grew bigger and bigger until it was almost all anyone could see. It felt like the eye of a cosmic being gazing upon the tiny things that were the living creatures of the world. Moon slowly rose into the air, the wisps of her body being blown away to reveal a white, alien-like creature with no features and black outlines at its joints. The wind being made by her surging magic power was such that they were producing powerful gales of wind that were pushing away boulders the size of three two-story houses. The soldiers and Sunny could only barely hang onto the cracks and crevices of the mountain to not be taken away by the tornado of strength, and even those fissures were growing deeper and wider.

Solar Flare, in a desperate attempt to stop her sister, unleashed multiple orbs of flaming magic that took the appearance of miniature suns, but Nightmare Moon swiped them away with her wings. Gritting her teeth, Solar Flare grew increasingly red as she dug into her own, new brand of magic she kept secret from the world. Multiple slow-moving tendrils of it bled from the cracks on her body and crept through the air toward the night alicorn, ignoring her power. It didn't take long for them to seep into their target's body like parasites, eliciting screams of pain. It was brief, however, as they were broken off and no longer able to seep back in, startling the sun alicorn. Both she and Sunny could barely make out the appearance of several alicorns standing beside Moon, but one caught the attention of Solar Flare more than anything.

The sun alicorn leaned forward, squinting. "Sister?"

The image lunged forward, furious. Sunny saw lava flowing from Solar Flare's eyes as she started laughing again, the sounds drowned out by the furious, banshee howl of the ghostly entity. The unicorn felt his heart sink. Those weren't tears of joy.

Sunny felt his body lunge forward against his will, pulling at something within him. "Don't kill your sister!" he pleaded with Moon.

Then a bright light. When everyone's vision returned, Moon was splayed on the ground, a single foreleg just barely keeping her fully off the stones, and before her lay a white pony. She seemed so bizarrely familiar to Sunny, but he couldn't place it. Her mane and tail were very long and pink in color. Their tips and the base of her hooves were burnt and still crackling with fire, and as she struggled to get back up, Sunny's pupils shrunk in realization. That was Solar Flare. He hurried over to Moon and did his best to help her back onto her two hooves despite the size difference.

"What did you do?" he whispered.

Moon exhaled and grunted in pain. "I sealed away most of her magic. I cannot simply cast away her hatred, her loss, and her ambitions, but the corrupted magic that gained strength from her negative feelings is still there." She frowned when looking at her broken sister. "She shouldn't look like that..." The mare thought deeply, pooling over everything she knew and the limits of her understanding of Solar Flare's new magic. "Is this really just some kind of more complete fragment of hers?"

Everyone looked up to see a procession of griffins coming down from above accompanied by Queen Majesty and a small retinue of her bodyguards. Sunny gulped reflexively. The emperor himself had come. He was draped in a cape of dyed feathers, each purple with the tips colored mint-green. He wore no crown save for his natural plumage consisting of three large red feathers also tipped in mint-green, although the rest of his body was covered in brown feathers. The left side of his beak had been scored black and was chipping, although it seemed to be an old wound that would never heal.

"Emperor Ifiltrix," King Gallant said coldly. "I see my lovely wife came to inform you of--"

"Stop talking!" Ifiltrix shouted. His voice was so powerful it boomed off the ghosts of the mountain range. "It was tedious enough dealing with a deaf-mute, and now I come to see that half of my empire has been razed and countless thousands, if not millions have lost their lives!"

"She's the one responsible for this," Gallant declared as he pointed at Solar Flare. "I was afraid of this outcome, but still it came to pass."

Sunny looked at Solar staring at her smoldering hooves, her face blank. She was flipped over onto her back by Ifiltrix who brought his talons up and slashed at the mare's throat. Unfortunately for him, he only scraped the surface of a magic barrier. The griffin turned towards the ponies, livid. When he realized none of them were responsible, he turned to see the magic coming from the tiny unicorn holding up a giant, shadow-like entity.

"You can't kill her," Moon declared weakly. "She is my responsibility."

Ifiltrix crushed a stone between his talons. Had he teeth they would be grinding. "Your existence is inconsequential, pony, regardless of how strange your form." He made to grab Solar's head but found Sunny's barrier in the way again. "She must pay for what she did with her life! The dead demand no less!"

"Your high...empe...Emperor Ifiltrix," Sunny squeezed out. "If you kill her now then yes, you will have your vengeance, but..." He looked up at Moon who nodded almost imperceptibly. "She's of the same breed as Queen Nightmare Moon whom I am holding up."

"Queen?" Ifiltrix repeated with a raised brow. He tilted his head slightly to the side to see Gallant

"Queen?!" the pony king repeated with great vitriol.

The griffin emperor failed to hide his surprise for but a moment, which Moon caught. She whispered to her nephew, letting him speak for her, as clumsy as he might have sounded.

"S-so, since she's of the same vein...shouldn't she be allowed to live?" He realized Solar Flare was breathing but not moving. "They're immortal," Sunny said in long strings. "So, she would be able to pay for what she did by repairing the mountains, provided she's allowed to stay under ou-Nightmare Moon's watch. They're siblings, after all."

Ifiltrix scoffed and paced about, laughing. "So they're siblings?!" he yelled angrily. Sunny winced from the sudden shout, realizing he misspoke. "Then I have more reason to not let her leave here alive!"

"You can be sure that I will watch her," Moon assured. "She trapped me in the Moon ten thousand years ago." Her eyes glowed white. "She'll know what that's like as I watch her and...rehabilitate her."

Ifiltrix turned to his guards and began speaking with them, allowing Sunny to speak with Moon.

"What did you mean by 'rehabilitate'?" he asked. He started to sweat nervously when he was only given a smile in return.

"We can agree to those terms," Ifiltrix said when he came back. "But I want my mountains repaired first. Additionally, I will be giving you two griffins who will watch you and report back everything to me," he stated firmly. "If they skip even a single day, I will see it as them having been assassinated and acting as a declaration of war." He exhaled loudly. "I will have everything prepared in a few days time."

"We're up north in Snowfege in the black castle," Sunny explained.

"The one bordering my empire? A former territory of ours?" Ifiltrix asked. The young unicorn nodded. "Hmmm. I see. That's where my son butted heads with a giant pony he spoke of." He passed his claws through his neck feathers. "I know where to send my soldiers now." He approached the alicorn and Sunny, unafraid. Even though Moon's head was hanging low from exhaustion, she still did her best to look up and glare at the emperor who remained unphased. "Don't forget our deal," he reminded Moon.

"I will not. I am not interested in war," Nightmare Moon stated.

The griffin smirked, tilted his head to the side, and poked the peeling area of his beak with a claw. "And what are you interested in?"

"A ruler should know better than to pry into the affairs of his neighbors without a spy."

Ifiltrix hummed pensively and gestured to his guards with a wing. "Escort the ponies out of my lands. Leave these three here." He peered over his shoulder. "They're deities," he mused. "I'm certain they can handle all of this on their own."

Gallant made to protest, but Ifiltrix stared him down. Although he shared the effort in kind, he was unwilling to cause any further incidents, so the king left reluctantly, leaving two weakened alicorns behind. When all was finally quiet, a soft weeping could finally be heard.

"Why didn't you let her kill me?" Solar Flare asked. "I would be with my daughter again...I wouldn't have to live through all of this."

"Because-" Sunny cleared his throat. "Because you caused all of this. If you died, it would be an easy out." He looked at Moon frowning. "Plus, I didn't want Nightmare Moon to kill her sister. That kind of thing haunts you forever, and since you're both immortal...well...Gah!"

Nightmare Moon had slapped Sunny aside the head with a wing. "Let's rest, then I'll take you both back to my castle." She grunted as Sunny laid her down. "That's too much magic. I think I wounded my insides with that one."

The three lay in silence, occasionally hearing a few stones fall from the rubble.

"You think the griffins that were attacking your castle broke through?" Sunny asked. "I'm worried."

"I don't think they got anywhere," Moon mused with a smirk.

Outside of Moon's castle were several griffin soldiers, broken from the encounter with the reinforced fort. The majority were only wounded, and only a few had lost their lives. The same could be said of the defenders, but the ponies held firm against the would-be invaders. Far away from all of them was a very angry Prince Melcluf having a fit and stomping about angrily on the mountainside of Griffonia.



"One more push!" the doctor urged.

With a pained grunt, Crystal Shimmer finished what seemed like an interminable series of increasingly strong pain coursing through her. The mare panted from the effort while nurses and doctors alike tended to her to keep her strong and healthy. Her mate, Grassy Pomme, rushed into the room of his wooden cabin where Crystal had been placed. He was drenched in sweat and looked just about ready to pass out from the stress.

"Doctor?!" he squeaked.

She greeted him with a warm smile. "She's going to be alright," she assured them. Her smile slowly faded to one of shock. "The foal on the other hoof..."

The would-be parents paled. "It's not...?!" Grassy wheezed.

He was met with a head shake. "No no. She's fine! It's just...Uhh..."

The nurse that had wrapped the baby up passed it hesitantly to Crystal who was quick to unfurl the pale-blue cloth. Both she and Grassy were shocked to see a horn and wings. Stranger still was the wood of the cabin slowly being covered by green moss, flowers, ferns, mushrooms, and some drosera plants as well. The patches were small, but them just growing made the parents stare at the newborn who had kept quiet the whole time. She looked at her parents with glowing green eyes and a giddy smile.