Everypony gaped at Princess Luna in utter horror.
My Lady was not the compleat mistress of social situations that was her Sister; in truth she is somewhat uncomfortable dealing with civilian strangers in the waking world; this causes her to love those lucky enough to earn her trust all the more. Celestia might well have divined all that had befallen at a glance at the expressions on the faces of the Ponies around her: Luna's powers of social observation were more limited, closer to those of any highly-perceptive Pony.
Yet and withal, Princess Luna is a super-intelligent, immortal Alicorn, who had at that time been incarnate some fifteen centuries and two decades, and in that long space of life had no doubt had ample chance to talk with other Ponies in many sorts of situations. And mine own kin were acting most suspicious -- guilty, and frightened -- such that a filly of a hundred times younger age, as I had been, might well have seen it. 'Twas plain to a Lady three times older than the very Realm she did defend.
"What has befallen Ruby Gift?" she asked. Though her speaking volume was no more amplified than normal for one using the Royal Voice to address a crowd, there was an edge to it that made her audience wince, and a look in their eyes that made them tremble.
She cast her gaze from one Pony to the next, and she must have seen both the fear and the shame. Last, she directed it at the little knot of Ponies around Grey Hoof, including Gladstone.
"I didn't do it!" Gladstone suddenly shrieked, and cowered, saying "I didn't do it! I didn't kill her!"
At that, Luna made a little gasp -- no more than a small sudden indrawn breath -- but Grey Hoof and Three Leaf both noticed it. Also, they saw the brief flash of pain in her eyes -- very brief, and then coldness closed over her face, as if the visor of a war-helm had slid down across it.
Luna leaned toward Gladstone, looking down at him with all the advantage of her greater height, and an expression of compete calm, and her wings flexed a little way open. "Somepony has slain Ruby, then." Her eyes narrowed, her gaze drilled into Gladstone. "Who has done this?" Her voice was low, but ice-cold as the Northern Wastes.
Gladstone blubbered, may have lost control of some bodily functions, and shot Three Leaf a look of mute appeal. Always, when he was in trouble, has she been able to count on the protection of his mother; she always would shield him from whatever trouble he had found. Now, in what must have been the worst trouble he had ever known, old habits returned, and he turned toward his mother for a safety beyond her power to provide him.
Luna saw this look, and in a sudden step, aided by her wings, stood directly before Three Leaf, glaring down at her in turn "Thou," she almost growled at the healer. "What kennest thou of the slaying of mine young friend?"
Three Leaf looked up into Luna's blue eyes, and she saw a terrible cold wrath, and growing malice. And though Luna was still Luna Selena Nyx, rather than her more frightful other self, Three Leaf seemed to see flickers of the slitted yellow-green orbs of that other identity.
Three Leaf had but a moment to think, and her desire to protect her son and her lover were paramount. So she said:
"Mark-Pox. Ruby had the Mark-Pox."
Now, that was not a bad lie. It had the merit that 'twas most of Sunney Towne did believe, so 'twould not be contradicted if Luna interrogated the others. What was more, since it did not directly state that it had been the Mark-Pox which direct killed me, it passed muster even should the Moon Princess learn that I had not died of the disease.
Three Leaf was very cunning, and 'twas a clever improvisation.
There was but one thing wrong with it.
Three Leaf knew full well I did not have the Mark-Pox. She had lied direct to Luna's face.
And Luna had been Honesty. What this meant I did not ken, at that time, but one thing that it meant was that Luna was very, very good at telling when someone lied to her.
Luna gazed at Three Leaf, inspecting her up and down. Finally, she said. "I wish to see the remains of my friend. Where is she?"
"The bake-house," replied Three Leaf. She had no reason not to reveal this, were she telling the truth.
"Thou didst place the corpse of a victim of the Pox hard by thine own primary food depot?" Luna asked. "Why this folly?"
"The bake-house oven has the hottest fire in Sunney Towne," explained Three Leaf. "We moved the food, and will scrub the house thorough afore we use it for food once more."
Luna nodded. Then, before Three Leaf could say aught else, Luna leaped straight up into the sky.
There were no Pegasi then dwelling in our village -- Greyfeather Pie had moved to Riverbridge -- and even had there been, none could have kept up with the powerful wings of the Moon Alicorn. She had been to our village before and hence knew where was the bakehouse; even had she not she might have seen it by the flare of its fire, or known it through some subtler senses.
She landed right in front of Lily Melon, who was keeping her husband company, and Melon Pie, who had returned from a long absence bringing more food and drink to her adoptive parents. Melon screamed in surprise, and would have dropped her burden, had not Luna caught it in her aura and set it down gently.
Luna looked at the two adult Ponies, and instantly kenned that Mouse was in no mental condition to answer questions: that must in itself have made the Moon Princess even more suspicious. She turned to Lily Melon and asked "Where are the remains of Ruby Gift?"
"They were placed in our main oven," Lily answered, gulping. "We did not ask them to do so. 'Twas quite against our wishes!"
"I did not accuse ye," Luna said calmly. "I shall inspect them now."
Without saying further, she stepped into the bakehouse.
As ye may imagine, none of the three Ponies outside did aught to impede her. What could they have done, to check the Moon Princess? All they could do was wait, and hope that Princess Luna would n9t be enough wroth to destroy them, for they were in truth innocent. They were sure that they would be safer if they stayed than if they ran.
Most times, they would have been right.
Melon Baker was curious, with all the inquisitive nature of her sixteen winters. So she crept up to the door of the bake-house, ignoring her mother's imploring glances to cease this dangerous prying, and she listened and peered through the crack in the door.
It is due to her curiosity that I know what Princess Luna did in there.
Luna gazed into the oven, her tail drooping but ears up and alertly pointed within. Her horn glowed, and her aural hues flickered within the brighter glare of the firelight.
From her vantage point, Melon Baker could not quite see what Luna was doing within the oven, but she could hear the sound of my corpse shifting, and she shivered at the thought of my gruesome remains moving about untouched by living Pony hooves, as if recalled to some terrible unlife by the workings of dreadful necromancy.
There is a funny side to this, in that Melon first related this to me, of course, after we had both been slain and returned as Wraiths. When she told me the tale, she did use the very words 'dreadful necromancy' to describe her fears regarding the sounds she heard from within that oven.
And I simply stared at her, and giggled, and then slowly let mine Aspect shift into that of the flaming charred skeleton. "Meanest thou this?" I asked Melon, and giggled some more.
And then she saw at what I was getting, and she guffawed as well, and shifted into her Death Aspect, and there we were, a flaming charred skeleton and a half-seared corpse, laughing together like the little fillies we had once been together. 'Dreadful necromancy,' indeed!
Eh, no mortals I have told this to have seen the humor of it. I suppose that one had to have been there. And undead. I might not have seen why it was funny, in mine own breathing days.
In any case, Luna was not performing some dreadful necromancy upon my bones. She was, instead, engaging in the ancient art of forensic medicine, which means that she was examining my remains to ken how I did meet mine end. And, I would guess rather quick, she did notice the two great crushing blows that my father had dealt upon my poor pate.
She hissed in horror, her nostrils and wings both flaring, and scraped the floor with one hoof, as if making ready to charge some foe.
"So," Luna said aloud, "they have slain her. My poor young Ruby, to be so destroyed -- and by her own kin?" She turned and began to pace, as best she could in the bake-house, which while large by the standards of our little village, was small for her great frame.
"But why?" she asked herself. "Why would they want to slay the best of them, the one whom I favored, whose love would have brought them all to lesser favors?" She laughed bitterly. "And thus I have answered mine own riddle." Though she did not then explain it. "Still, I suppose they must be let speak in their own defense. Nay, I should not slay them all, not yet ... I must give them the chance ..."
The strange thing about this that she seemed to be addressing somepony else, such was the intensity of her speech, yet she obviously did not mean it for Melon Baker. Nor did Luna often talk to herself aloud. Though I guess she was under strong strain at that moment.
Then, she did two things. First, her horn flared, and the oven-fires went out. Then, she turned abruptly on her hoof, and strode to the door.
At this, Melon Baker caught sight of the expression on the face of the Moon Princess, and Melon fell back in fear before that look of grim fury, and the fell light in Luna's eyes. This last was more than an expression, for her eyes seemed to be glowing -- glowing a sickly green, which was weeping off the corners as if they had been tears. Other parts of her -- her horn and mane and hooves and wings -- also seemed to be glowing, and thin smoke rose from the floor where each hoof met the wood, the effect apparently unimpeded by her sabatons.
Luna must have seen Melon when she turned, but she did not seem to care about her presence, only acknowledging her briefly, and that by a look of such casual and cold contempt that it fair froze Melon's blood in her veins, or so Melon said. Overcome by the force of that mere glance, Melon Baker stumbled backward and sat down on her rump, watching helpless as the Alicorn Princess stepped out of the structure.
As Luna walked, she muttered, her speech strange and disjointed. "Kill them all ... nay, some are worthy ... no respect ... they destroy the best .... 'tis the way of the world ... murdering beauty and passion ..."
By some of which, I suppose, she meant me. Which is flattering. She always told me I was beautiful, though I could not see it in myself. Mayhaps, had I lived longer, I might have learned to see it. In any case, I can be quite sure that she did not mean to kill me, since I was already dead.
She spared one more moment of attention for the baker-Ponies. Looking directly at Lily, her expression softened, and she said "Ye trio might wish to run, far from this hamlet." Then she scowled, so that Lily shrank back, and said "They did bake her like ... a loaf of bread! Thou wouldst warn them?"
Lily gaped at her in fear and confusion.
Luna paid her no further attention, but sprang back up into the sky, beating her mighty wings, and in almsot the next instant descending upon the main square of Sunney Towne.
Now in that place, confusion had reigned ever since Luna's brief initial appearance. Some argued that Grey Hoof must confess forthwith, and others that the villagers should flee, though that last seemed not practical, since how could they flee an Alicorn? And even if they could, where in Equestria would they be safe from the wrath of the junior Ruling Princess?
By which ye may ken that they had a short, but very hot, village-moot. That moot came to no real concusion but that they were like to be in very real trouble. In which belief, they were quite right; more right than they dreamed.
In the next moment, Luna was descending on them, and they were all hushed in awful fear. And the next after that, Luna landed before Grey Hoof and his companions, her expression cold and pitiless.
"I have seen my friend, thine own dead daughter," the Moon Princess said, without preamble, "For one dead of the Mark-Pox, she was most curious unmarred, save for two hoof-blows to the head. There may have been more to see, and I might have seen it, were it not for thine odd decision to bake her, as if she were some horrid pastry."
"The Pox ..." began Three Leaf.
Like lightning, Luna stood directly before the heaer, putting her muzzle almost direct on Three Leaf's and glaring into her eyes point-blank.
"There was no Pox!" Luna shouted at her, loudly enough that Three Leaf fell off her seat, hooves over her ears, crying out in pain. "Dost thou mistake me for some especial-simple foal? The Pox leaves many Marks, not one. The Pox does not bash in a filly's head! Were the Pox in truth abroad in Sunney Towne, would ye all be feasting together, the better to assure its spread? Where are the medical preparations? The quarantines? Dost thou mean to convince me that thou'rt the most numb-skulled Healer in the whole equine history of medicine?!!"
Luna paused, and eyed the multitude.
"Nay," Luna said by way of answer to her own question. "Were she so stupid, not a one of ye would now survive, given that I know one plague after the other hath ravaged this town. Aye!" she said, to those who blinked at her in surprise. "I do know all about Sunney Towne. Before ye slew her, Ruby did discourse to me at length." Luna laughed, and I am told 'twas cruel laughter, quite unlike the customary mirth of the Moon Princess I had come to know. "I do know all the secrets of your village." And, as she so spoke, she looked at the villagers, in such a wise that each thought that 'twas her or him alone to whom she spoke.
"Nay!" cried Gadstone. "I did not slay her!" And he threw his face down on the table, as if he meant to burrow into the solid wood like some bizarre giant mole.
Luna stepped over to him, and regarded him narrowly. "I did not say that thou, in thy own person, hadst done the deed. Thou seemest remarkable-quick to proclaim an innocence I have not yet challenged. This is the second time that thou hast done so. Whyfor should I assume thee a murtherer?"
"I ... I ..." whimpered Gladstone. "I did not slay Ruby Gift!" He almost shrieked the latter denial.
"Perhaps not," said Luna, "Yet my friend has in truth been slain. So the question is: who has slain her? And why? Her continued good health was in the interests of all ye villagers, as she would have risen in my service. This does narrow the probable motives ..."
She looked over the multitude. "Who amongst you saw her success as a threat to thine own? Who envied her? Who slew her? And, of course -- who saw her slain?" She peered deeply into one after another of the crowd, and said again "Who saw her slain?"
Then she flinched.
"Ye ... ye all did? She was done to death right before ye, and ye did naught to stop it? Or to punish the slayer? What ... what are ye? What monsters?"
She looked back down at the trembling Gladstone, reached out, forced his head up with one hoof and her aura, and glared into his eyes. "Thou ... hast thou slain?"
Gladstone shook in fear, mutely nodded. "But not Ruby!" he said hastily. "I never laid a hoof on her!"
"Indeed?" asked Luna. "Who then, hast thou slain?"
"Only two peddlers who may have had the Pox so we did not let them into the village but they fought so I had to slay two of them!" Gladstone babbled the conession. "But we had to! They would have brought the Pox!"
"Peddlers? When did this befall?"
"One week agone," replied Gladstone. "They were only peddlers!"
"I remember report of three peddlers gone missing at Riverbridge about that time," Luna said, stroking her chin with one hoof. "A fasted couple and their son. I thought that brigands had returned to ..." Her whole frame shook with a sudden horrid surmise. "Oh. Oh."
"'Twas brigands!" said Gladstone eagerly. "'Twas brigands who slew Ruby!"
"Worm!" shouted Luna, and Gladstone tumbled to the dirt. "Thou and thy cronies were the only brigands on that road! Thou hast confessed thou didst slay two of them -- and the third?" She looked through the crowd. "Shall I slay thee one at a time to be sure of punishing the guilty? I should ... nay, 'tis not just ... but they must be punished ..." Her words trailed off into a strange incoherence.
"Nay!" cried Grey Hoof, getting to his hooves. His legs were trembling, but he faced Luna directly, bowed to her, then looked at her direct. "Nay, Thy Grace! 'Twas I, none other, who slew the peddler stallion. And 'twas I who slew mine own daughter, Ruby Gift."
Luna's eyes widened in horror. "Thine own daughter? But ... of course ..."
Grey Hoof tried to say something, but Luna shouted him down.
"SILENCE!!!" The tables trembled and Ponies moaned in pain and fear at the full volume of the Royal Voice. "I see it now!" Luna cried at a considerable but less destructive level of loudness. "Ruby ... she must have suspected something was wrong when she came home from the City last week. She was ever intelligent ... curious ... she would have asked questions. Searched for answers. And found them ... she was ever good at finding things ... I saw her Mark on her poor burned body, 'twas as I expected, a Finding Mark. She would have made such a good Finder ... a Pony of worth ... worth more than your whole damned little huddle of huts ... ye destroy the best ..." Again, her speech broke into fragments.
"And," Luna continued, "no doubt she felt a duty to tell me. I was her patron, her Princess, her friend. She was Loyal to me. She knew I hated brigands ... 'twas a sentiment we shared ... how it must have hurt her to find that her own family had taken to brigandage their own selves ... she had such high ideals ... such a beautiful heart ...
"But she was also Loyal to ye. To her family, her brother, her father. She loved ye, one and all. How it must have hurt her to have to choose between loyalty to me and to ye, to her Princess and to her own kith and kin. She would have known how much it would have hurt ye had she informed on ye -- nothing hurts as much as to be betrayed by one's own kin.
"What did she choose in the end? It matters not, not any more, for ye curs assumed she would choose me, for I had greater gifts to bestow, because it is what any of ye would have done. Though I think she would have chosen ye over me, and endured the pain of the Lie, so as to serve both of us as best she could. She was like that.
"But ye slew her. Destroyed all she could have been, so that ye might be safe in your miserable, worthless lives. Crushed a true jewel, that the muck might look the better by comparison. That is really why ye did it, is it not?" She looked at Gladstone. "For the cause that she so far outshone you?" She must have seen something in his face, for she nodded. Her own expression grew very strange.
"Destroying the best ... murdering beauty and passion ... 'tis the way of the world ... well, NO MORE!" That last was almost a shriek. Luna flared her wings, reared as if about to stamp, closed her eyes.
Three Leaf felt something very strange, a sort of calling, though she could not see or hear it, or indeed detect it by her normal senses. It came though the ways she sensed illness and the properties of plants, the way she Lifewove, and it was a deep and nauseating wrongness, an anti-Life. She cringed before this as much as she did from Luna's obvious fury ...
... In the back of Three Leaf's mind, there was a sudden image of hateful, hungry yellow eyes opening in answer to the call of the Moon Princess ...
... Luna rose into the air, not with her wings nor even a normal levitation on her flightfield, but her wings held out and absolutely rigid, a look on her face of monstrous ecstasy, tinged with momentary fear. A sphere of light whirled around and obscured her, becoming a sphere of darkness that swallowed the firelight, and seemed to draw into itself tendrils of shadow from the empty air.
The shadow flared away, leaving Luna, but a Luna who was an outline of light, almost too dazzling to behold. The silhouette shifted ... grew.. Legs, neck, barrel and wings lengthened. The horn extended and sharpened. As the light receded, Luna's features began to emerge, but ... changed. The muzzle was longer and sharper, the features subtly distorted. As Three Leaf watched, Luna's teeth sharpened and grew into dentition never seen on any normal mare, Alicorn or mortal; they were more like those of some great beast of prey. Her coat was black, the stars in her new mane glared like the gates of hell. The new Luna opened her eyes; they were now sickly green and slitted.
The Alicorn gazed down at Grey Hoof and bared her teeth at him. 'Twas no smile, but rather a vicious snarl.
"So, villein, thou didst slay my servant," she said. Her voice was wicked, the tones deeper and harsher than Luna's own normal ones. "What hast thou to say for thine own self, before I punish thee?"
Grey Hoof bowed again, then spoke.
"Aye, Thy Grace. I did slay her. But 'twas for the cause that I thought she was dying of the Pox." He swallowed hard, continued. "I willingly accept thy punishment. I ask but one boon."
The Alicorn laughed -- the laughter of a cruel child about to destroy an insect. 'What boon be that?" she asked.
"Let mine own punishment appease thy wrath," said Grey Hoof. "Please, for the sake of mercy, spare my Ponies."
"A brave speech," the Aiicorn said. "Thou showest spirit. Thou dost display courage. Princess Luna loves courage. She would spare thy village for that. Aye, and thine own self. Why, she might even forgive thee for thine error ..."
Grey Hoof, and everypony else in earshot, began to relax at this. Though she was stark, Luna's fundamental equinity was well-known to them.
Then the Alicorn began to laugh, and it was a laugh even crueller than before. If that had been the laughter of a cruel child, this was the dark mirth of a mare who had never known any state as innocent as childhood.
"There be but one flaw in thy hopes, headpony," the Alicorn said. "Princess Luna was, indeed, weak and soft and sentimental." She began to rise back up into the air. Lightning flashed from the dark sky, called to her and bathing her as if 'twere but the gentlest raindrops. A blazing radiance began to build up around her , the smell in the air like a coming thunderstorm. "But I am not Princess Luna ..."
Grey Hoof cringed from her words, but held his ground. He was prepared to die.
Three Leaf rose to her hooves, and took the first shaky step toward her lifelong love.
Gladstone whimpered and hid under a table ...
Roneo embraced Starlet, trying to shelter her behind his own barrel ...
Mitta broke out from the warehouse, galloping full for Grey Hoof ...
Everypony else in Sunney Towne did this or that as they wished or could, aware on some level that 'twas like to be the last things they did in their lives.
"I am Nightmare Moon! And Nightmare Moon DOES NOT FORGIVE!"
Lightning erupted from Nightmare Moon, lashing out in many directions at once.
It struck the houses, and they exploded, flaming wood and thatching spraying in all directions. It struck the Ponies of Sunney Towne, blackening and blasting flesh and bone, striking them down like flies.
Grey Hoof, who had never taken his eyes off Nightmare Moon, took one straight to the face and died without time to feel pain. Three Leaf, standing bravely beside her lover, was likewise felled in an instant. Mitta was caught in mid-gallop; the bolt discharged through her right hoof to the ground and almost immediately destroyed her. Roneo and Starlet, embracing in their last act of living love, conducted the electricity through each other, and their hearts stopped at the same moment, though Roneo took worse burns, as he was the one to receive the brunt of the blast.
Some lived a little longer, but they all died. Gladstone has never plainly admitted how he perished, but some others said that Nightmare Moon blasted the table to bits right over him and then cut him down as he pleaded for his life. Some tried to flee, some saw it was pointless; some were too drunk to react at all. A few fortunate ones were in such an alcoholic stupor that they had no clear idea what was happening; at least one claims to have slept through it all, including the full-throated Royal Voice. Whatever they did, they perished.
Some stone houses were too sturdy for Nightmare Moon to destroy with but her lightnings. These no more survived than their flimsier wooden mates. For when Nightmare Moon saw these still standing, she projected ebon beams of force which she swung in short arcs. These cut through solid blocks of masonry as if they had been heated knives shearing through pats of butter. Such were the very same gravity lances with which Luna had slain Great Dragons and toppled mighty castles; unleashed upon the humble houses of a mere rustic village, they uttery devastated.
By the bake-house, several hundred hoofs from the main square, Mouse Baker and Lily and Melon could hear some of what Nightmare Moon was saying. Lily and Melon tried to urge Mouse to rise and flee, but he could do naught but gibber in terror as she pronounced their doom. At the last moment, Melon bolted and ran.
Lightning caught Melon in the open and cut her down in an instant. Lily did not see this, for she was desperately trying to get her husband to get away from the mad Alicorn. A gravity lance cut the bake-house in half and brought it sliding down. As Mouse and Lily stared in horror at the destruction of their home, more lightning lashed out and slew the harmless baker and his sweet wife.
And Sunney Towne was dead.
Its dead tried to leave their own ruined flesh for whatever awaited them beyond. They felt mortality slip away ... they began to depart this world.
"Nay!" cried the cruel voice of Nightmare Moon. "Ye shalt not so easy escape my vengeance! Worthless spirits, to me!"
One and all, houseless and disembodied, they were drawn back before the dark Alicorn. She looked subtly different to them. They could see beyond the green slitted eyes and the black coat; even the stars in her mane had changed. Behind the semblance of Luna, or even Nightmare Moon, countless hateful yellow eyes glared at them, and the stars in her mane were the dead husks of a firmament long-damned.
"The fate ye deserve is terrible beyond even my power to inflict in the time I have right now," Nightmare Moon told them. "So I hereby conjure and bind ye condemned and ruined souls to your condemned and ruined town." Her horn glowed, her wings flared, her mane whipped about wildly. "I use this pattern that ye wove yourselves, doubtless without your understanding."
And she reached out and gathered something which is hard to describe, even though I feel it brush about me even now, something which had been somehow made of mine own sacrifice. "Twas a net of intangible chains, and by those chains each of my kin and kith felt themselves shackled. Though intangible, stronger than steel were these shackles, which may be stretched but never broken.
"Bound ye are, bound ye shall remain, until I return to meet with thee again," said Nightmare Moon. "Await my return, and tremble: in the mean-time, I have business with my Sister."
With that, she leaped up into the sky with a scream of rage and hate and triumph.
And at that moment I did emerge from my conference with Starlight the Greeter. I did leave the Cosmic Level, afire with my new mission, back into the World.
At first I did scarce recognize where I was. A ruined village, its buildings felled by immense forces, all collapsed and burning. Heaped here and there the pathetic blackened forms of Ponies, plainly felled by the same weapons that had destroyed the town. Above, a demon shrieked, a creature larger than any normal Pony beat its ebon wings and flew off to the southeast.
Then I recognized the houses, recognized the corpses, and realized to my dismay that this was Sunney Towne; I had lingered too long in the realm beyond; my kin were dead.
And then the other Ponies, ones I recognized even though some were transparent and some hideously marred, turned to regard me with looks of hopeless despair.
'Twas the first Waking after the Party of my new existence.