Stage three: Bargaining

Three months after the start of The Year Of Bleeding Sun, the impact of Her Majesty’s abdication was felt in full force. The toll upon the sun’s energy caused a crop failure across the country, spurning Princess (then acting as Empress) Luna to permanently place the moon in the sky in the hopes the reflected sunlight might stop famine. The plan worked, albeit only just, but the influence upon the tides caused disasters along the trade routes of the world. The loss of sunlight also caused an unseasonable cold summer, killing off infants and elderly to the sudden drop in temperature where they otherwise might have lived. Starving, freezing and impoverished, the world turned its eyes to Widow’s Peak, but none dared mount the long climb to the mausoleum. Eventually, Empress Luna was left to confront her grieving sister. The encounter is, unfortunately, known only from second hand anecdotes, as Princess Luna refuses to speak on the matter, and Her Majesty’s notorious comment “some memories should stay buried with the dead” describes her stance on the matter.”

Haunted. That was the word the locals had used to describe the mountaintop. Sickly green light pulsed around its crown, or icy blue, or burning red, and voices of madness trickled down from the peak, or so they claimed. At the moment, there was a glowing green aurora floating around the pony statues that made up the summit. The long stairs from top to bottom were carved unevenly, as if they had been made as an afterthought. Which, Luna supposed, they likely were. She spread her wings, drawing in a breath of cold summer air in a vain hope it would prepare her for what was ahead.

She flew low to the ground, hoping that any stray magic from the mountaintop would not strike her down, which gave her a view of the unnerving scenery spread across the spire. Obelisks carved in the shape of ponies littered the mountain, some bearing faces she recognized and some not. One thing was common to the faces that triggered in her memory: all of them were now dead, and in looking closer she could see each of them had writing set around them. A pause above one revealed they were eulogies. On one particular outcropping there was a etching of an especially familiar pony falling toward the moon, her angelic features matched by the demonic ones present on the pony above casting her down towards the lunar body. Luna’s resolve crumbled, and she alighted in front of the relief with a sag in her shoulders. “Oh, sister…”

As if the mountain itself could hear her, the aurora at the top extinguished itself, leaving the whole mountainside in darkness. The air was oppressive, now. Silent and judging. Luna swallowed on nothing, then continued her way up the mountain, more slowly now. The sound of howling wind brought voices to her from the top of the mountain.. “Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes!”, “I’m a bad student...I’m...tardy…”, “Princess? I don’t understand? What did I do?”, “But...what do I do now? Is there a book about being a Princess I should read?”, “I think that...I think I’m in love with you. I’m so sorry, I--mmph!”, “It’s beautiful, Tia! Oh, thank you! Thank you!”, “Yes, I! Of course I do! I do! I do…”. Luna shivered.

The crest of the mausoleum was a flat plateau, with two doors on either side surrounding it. The voices of the dead echoed from her left, and to her right radiated the same light that had gathered around the mountaintop across the three long months. She dared not look in the room in which the dead were speaking, but she knew she had to. The entire world was dying, and inside these chambers lay the source of her people’s suffering. She walked towards them, but was cut off by the sound of naked hooves on the bleak, volcanic rock of the mountainside. She paused, turning her head very slowly, her animal brain hoping that facing away from what she was about to encounter would make it less stark, less oppressive.

The creature that landed before her was not her sister. At least, not recognizably so. Her once multi colored mane was now its original pink, albeit tinged with red. Red rimmed eyes tinted yellow stared out from behind her coat, guilt gleaming in them. Her sickly white coat was stained with the colour of ashes, and her body marked in strange runes. Tattoos in the shape of black arrows ran like teardrops from her eyes to the crown of her forehead, and down her chest from her collarbone. Her voice came out a sickly rasp, smokey and grim. “Sister? Luna...is that you?”

The magic in the room across flared down, leaving the two in silence. Luna had no words. What was there to say in the face of such an alien reality? Luna swallowed. “Yes, sister, it is me. I have come to take you home.”

Celestia spread a single grey wing, her stare hardening in response. “You should go back to yours, as I will remain in mine.”

Luna scanned her fallen family in disbelief. “Sister, this mountain you have built is a place for the dead. And you dragging the world of the living into it. You are breaking the back of the people we swore to protect.” The rebuke in her voice turned to a plea. “Ponies are suffering, Tia! Ponies are dying and you are doing nothing! We need you, Tia. I need you.”

Celestia leveled Luna’s pleas with a look from her empty eyes. “You are wrong, Lulu. In so very many ways.” She shook her head, turning aside to regard the outline of Canterlot. “This is the world of the half-dead. It is my home, and I have made it to reflect me. I have tried so many times--” Her voice broke, and she forced the croak back into an audible sound. “I have tried to bring them back so many times. Her most of all. Always her. I have sarcificed, offered, so much of myself. Anything I have to give. Anything.” She spread what was left of a wing, and Luna held back the urge to wretch. “A cruel spirit, he was, but a fair one. That time nearly worked. At the very least, it gave me a fitting eulogy. Why inform when you can show? He gave me her life, just as he said he would.” She walked away from Luna, passing her without a word to head towards Twilight’s tomb and whatever strange, black magic lay inside.

“Tia…”

“There is a second way in which you are wrong. Equestria does not need my help. Don’t you see, Lulu?” She gave a bitter, croaking laugh. “I can’t save anypony, Luna.” She spread her wings, her voice rising to a boom across the stark face of the mountainside. “I can’t even save myself!” She folded her wings back down, the brief spirit fleeing from her as quickly as it had arisen. “Besides.” And here her voice grew hollow, an emptiness to it that echoed with the howling of a windswept cave. “If I do, does it matter? Death wins either way. Death always wins.” She turned her head down, making a strangled sound. “Go home, Lulu. You don’t know this world I am in, and I hope you never do.”

The wind howled on the mountainside. Celestia walked through the archway of the talking tomb, and Luna was once more left alone amongst the dead.