Fate has been cruel and order unkind
How can I have sent you away?
The sweet slow strains of the thousand year old lullaby drifted from a gramophone and caressed the Princess of the Night. She lay sprawled across deep purple sheets in a room sumptuously decorated in the rich colors of midnight. Her eye were closed and only a faint wrinkle of her brow indicated that she was still awake. Behind her the golden door to her chambers, engraved with the moon and stars, creaked open and the soft clip-clop of hoofsteps could be heard.
“Good evening, sister.” Luna spoke without opening her eyes. Who else would dare disturb her in her private chambers? “What brings you here?”
Upon hearing the song Celestia hesitated in the doorway. “Do you… Do you like the song?” she asked hesitantly.
At the uncharacteristic trace of vulnerability in Celestia’s voice, Luna sat up and turned to face her sister squarely. “Why do you want to know?”
The blame was my own; the punishment, yours
The harmony's silent today
Before Celestia could speak understanding dawned in Luna’s eyes. “Of course. It was you. No wonder it’s lasted this long.”
“It wasn’t hard,” Celestia chuckled wryly. “Familial problems and regret are familiar to most ponies after all. I did not mean to intrude, music was your domain not mine. I just-” she paused, searching for the right words. “I needed to remember you. To show that, no matter what had happened, you were still my little sister and I still loved you.”
But into the stillness I'll bring you a song
And I will your company keep
Luna cocked her head, listening to the song again though she’d already heard it hundreds of times. “You poured your love for me into a song that, for the entire duration of my imprisonment, was sung by mothers to their children as they rocked them to sleep. Yes, I feel your care and devotion, your sorrow at what transpired. The song was a fitting cenotaph while my body languished on the moon. And yet…” she trailed off.
Till your tired eyes and my lullabies
Have carried you softly to sleep
“And yet?” Celestia prompted. Luna held up a hoof, waiting.
Once did a pony who shone like the sun
Look out on her kingdom and sigh
“And there it is.” Luna’s horn glowed blue and the needle lifted off the record, silencing the song.
“There what is?” Celestia shook her head. “Luna, I don’t understand.”
“Her kingdom.” There was the bitterness of a wound reopened in Luna’s voice now. “Not their kingdom, not the kingdom of the sisters. The kingdom of the sun and perhaps, if we are kind, the kingdom of the sun and adjunct. Even your labor of love conceals the same dagger that drove me to the nightmare.”
Celestia opened her mouth to respond then closed it and very deliberately took a deep breath. “Luna, I-“
“No no sister mine,” Luna interrupted. “No carefully considered half-truths. Full moon full truths. Speak without restraint or leave me be!”
“Fine.” Celestia released her breath and with it flowed the self-control of a millennium. Her shoulders slumped and where once had stood the avatar of the eternal sun there now stood an incensed older sister. “Why in Tartarus didn’t you talk to me? About any of it! The advent of the nightmare could not have been sudden. It must have built slowly, over decades, centuries even. I’m your big sister, I’m here to help you. Why couldn’t you find it in your heart to trust me just once in all those centuries?”
“Trust? Ha.” Luna snorted in grim amusement. “What exactly do you think caused the nightmare, dear sister?”
Celestia hesitated. “Envy of the adoration I received from those I led?” she hazarded.
“You don’t know.” Luna stared at her sister, disbelieving. “After all these years you really don’t know.”
“So tell me,” Celestia pleaded. “Full moon full truths as you said, right? Tell me what hurt you so dearly.”
Luna grimaced at having her words thrown back in her face. She was quiet for a moment, finding the right words, then she began. “I am the youngest of the immortals. There are not many of us; you, Discord, Aquila of the griffons, Tiamat of the dragons, Yggdrasil of the ents, and some few others. But of all of us I am the youngest, eternally the youngest. I have lived thousands of mortal lives and yet,” she shrugged helplessly, “you still expect me to come running to you when I have a problem.”
“Luna that’s not-“
“No!” Luna snapped. “You wanted to understand so listen. Equestria is your kingdom. It has always been your kingdom and I have been at best tolerated and at worst exiled. And when I return from my exile what do I find? In my absence the moon and stars have followed their tracked paths without qualm. Art and music have flourished and my own sister, once regarded as goddess of all things logical and ordered, has penned a song of love so moving it has lasted a thousand years. In short, I find myself bereft of purpose.”
Luna was breathing heavily when she finished speaking. Celestia immediately jumped in. “Luna, I had no idea you felt that way.” She stepped forward and opened her wings for a hug. “But I’m so glad you told me. Together we can solve this.”
“No. No.” Luna flinched back. Her wing hit the gramophone, the needle dropped and the lullaby resumed.
So great was her reign and so brilliant her glory
That long was the shadow she cast
“A long shadow indeed, sister!” Luna spat. She spun and dove out the window, plummeting toward the ground.
At the last moment her wings snapped open and up she soared. Away fled the princess of the night, followed only by her sister’s forlorn call, “come back, Luna. Please!”
Not for a single instant did she glance backward, nor was a tear shed from her eye. No outward sign was given of regret or sorrow lurking in the heart of the princess. High she flew, above the clouds. Where scintillating diamonds sparkled below, as the cloud-stuff caught the scattered moonlight. Mirrored above by the spears of pale light cast by stars that, for all their nearness and familiarity, seemed infinitely far away. The landscape was beautifully barren, comfortingly reminiscent of the empty moonscape Luna had so recently left.
The Princess of the Night flew swiftly and behind her a contrail of star-strewn midnight began to form. Her teeth gritted, she gave herself over to the exertion of flying, striving to claim every bit of speed her powerful alicorn wings could muster. An elastic cone of resistance formed before her, one that a certain rainbow-maned pegasus would have recognized. For a moment, she feared the resistance was too much, that she would be cast backward in a dangerous and ignominious fall.
But no, whatever her inner turmoil Luna was still a princess. And so, with a mighty shout, she snapped through the sound barrier. Concentric rings of silver stars interspersed with rings of the iridescent aurora borealis spread from her speeding body, crashing through the heavy cloud cover which had so recently comforted her and scattering it to the four winds. A great crack filled the air and the rumble was heard as far away as Ponyville.
Luna rode the burst of speed, reveling in the reckless hedonism of rapid flight. Her laughter, true and unfettered rang from the heavens and echoed all the way down to the land below. She glided on the winds, resting as the air resistance slowed her to more manageable speeds. Great breaths of cold clean air filled her lungs, reviving and refreshing her after the stultifying air of her sister’s castle.
Ever so slowly, the calm after the storm found her and she searched the land below for a spot to land and think. Beneath her the ground was coated with snow and in the distance she saw a clear pillar of ice rising like a fountain from a pool. It was the work of minutes to fly there and upon reaching the spire she found the base hollow. The entire structure was held up by four supports corresponding to the four points of a compass.
Curious, Luna stepped up to the southernmost support, peering at it closely. Beneath the outer coating of ice there appeared to be a door of all things. Luna’s mouth quirked upward. I suppose adventure is preferable to maudlin introspection, she thought. A quick warming spell melted the ice. A quick kick and it opened. She was inside.
Luna stood at the top of a very long spiral staircase that descended indefinitely into the earth. Barely any light made it through the structure so the princess of the night found herself in near total darkness, a situation with which she was unsurprisingly rather comfortable.
The first two hundred steps went quickly. The second two hundred were somewhat more onerous and by the third set of two hundred Luna was beginning to wonder if the owner of the structure had had an unhealthy fascination with staircases. After a thousand steps Luna decided that enough was enough and, despite the danger, jumped into the open air in the center of the staircase and allowed herself to float down on her wings.
A small rotunda rested at the bottom of the staircase with three corridors leading off in different directions. Luna hesitated, uncertain of whether or not she wanted to risk picking a passage and being unable to find her way back out. As she thought, she noticed a green light, dim at first but slowly growing brighter, approaching from the passage on her right. Reflections bounced through the walls as the light grew stronger, bathing the entire rotunda and Luna herself in an unearthly lurid light.
The source of the light entered the rotunda. A small green orb floated in space, with a hint of red coloring its center. It bobbed twice in front of Luna and then returned to the opening from which it had come and bobbed twice more. I am to follow then, it seems, Luna thought, strange though this thing may be I will not learn its identity by standing here. And a poor adventure this would be if all I did was float down a staircase and fly back up. Out loud she said, “Very well, lead on will-o’-the-wisp. But be warned, should you lead me false, you’ll know the wrath of a princess.” The wisp bobbed once more and set off down the corridor at an easy trot, with Luna following close behind.
Eventually, the corridor expanded into a wide room with a statue in the center of a unicorn clad in mail with a heavy woven coat hanging over his back. The wisp darted forward and sunk through the statue’s eye. At once a deep voice rumbled out from the statue. “A visitor. How refreshing. Visitors are so rare. Why in fact, I think you’re the first I’ve ever had, Princess Luna. A pleasure to meet you once again. Forgive me for not bowing but I’m afraid I’m rather stiff at the moment.”
Though unable to place the voice Luna knew she had heard it before and she knew too that it belonged to an enemy. “Who might you be?” she asked, keeping her distance.
The voice chuckled. “Do you truly not remember? Then approach my prison and find out.”
Cautiously, Luna stepped up to the statue and raised a werelight. As light spread through the chamber she gazed at the face frozen in a rictus of anger. “King Sombra!” she gasped, stumbling back from the statue. “The prison’s weakening, I must tell my sister!” She turned to flee.
“Hold!” His voice rang out with command and despite her will Luna found her flight arrested. “My prison is as strong as ever it was. You of all ponies should know the strength of your sister’s prisons. It is a peculiar talent of hers, wouldn’t you agree, Nightmare Moon?”
“I am not Nightmare Moon,” she growled, stamping her hoof.
“Hmm, no I suppose not,” he said contemplatively. “For that one brief instant you were her equal. Now, though? Now you’re back to being her inferior, least among equals of the immortals. What was the line? Ah yes, ‘long was the shadow she cast.’ Isn’t that so, little shadow?”
Luna flinched at the words that had so recently sent her fleeing into the night. “That’s not… wait.” She paused, struck by a terrible realization. “How can you have heard that? There was no pony else there.”
“You arrogant immortals, so certain you know all there is to know of magic and power,” he snarled. Though he could not move Luna still sensed his power gathering, lunging against his restraints. “I delved deeper into the forbidden secrets of magic than any other. I gained the power to enslave a nation. I and I alone in the history of Equestria have held the title of king by right of power! Even here, chained by harmony’s goddess, I can still cast my will upon the world. And I nudged at your mind, dear Luna, to bring you here tonight to make you an offer.”
“I want no part of any offer you care to make,” Luna growled.
“Oh I think you do. You see we have within ourselves the solutions to one another’s problems.” His words were quiet now, seductive and intimate in their intonation. “I was first among mortals and found it lacking. You are least among immortals and found the same. Imagine our places exchanged. You, with all your millennia of knowledge and experience, the greatest mortal that ever lived. Finally, you would be given the respect and the acknowledgment you crave from your peers. Something you could never receive from the other immortals. Luna: the leading light of her age. A true renaissance pony, master of all arts and sciences.”
Intellectually, Luna knew not to listen. Only a fool would trade immortality for a mortal life, trade a lonely empty immortality for prestige, honor, and the companionship of other mortals. Who would… who would make that trade? Luna wondered, her head growing fuzzy. Mortality, immortality, what did it matter anyway?
Luna strove to pull herself together. Sombra’s words had the consistency of poisoned honey. So blatantly a trap and yet it was so hard to tune him out. A part of her desperately wanted the vision of belonging he painted, a chance to achieve something more than merely being the last and least of the goddess, destined by birth. She found herself almost floating toward the statute, each step taken as if moving through liquid or as in a dream. Almost, she agreed to his deal and passed to him her immortal magic.
And then the sun descended.
True sunlight burned away the chamber’s shadows and revealed the terrible black tentacles that emanated from the statute and had encircled the princess. Each ended in a mouth with a forked tongue that whispered lies into her ears. “You will never be acknowledged,” declared one. “The Nightmare was you as you were meant to be,” hissed another.
Even as Luna perceived them they burned in the cleansing light of the sun. It wasn’t enough. The sheer colossal energy of the sun pounded in her veins, melding with her own rage at the attempted manipulation. Luna screamed as she grasped the sun itself and wove its essence. She coated the statute in an aura of gold, reinforcing the prison of King Sombra with layer upon layer of sunfire. The despairing cries of the newly bound king were music to her ears and she continued until even his screams were cloaked by the sun’s fury.
Her anger satiated at last she realized that there was light in the chamber emanating from behind her. Confused, she glanced back and gasped in shock. The mane of the Princess of Night had changed. No longer was it merely the constellations, now the moon itself glowed in a halo around her head. The very tips of her ethereal dark blue mane had lightened and the faintest hint of a rosy sunrise tinted the tips.
The manes of the royal sisters reflected the power they wielded. When first Celestia had to raise the moon and stars her mane had changed from the delicate pink of dawn to a pastel rainbow representing all times and all lights. For Luna’s mane to change in this way there could be only one explanation. Luna closed her eyes and reached inside herself for the source of her magic. There, nestled next to the familiar power of moon and stars was the mantle of the sun, the right and the power to access and control that heavenly body. If that power now rested with her…
Luna’s eyes snapped open and she thrust her power into a teleport, desperately straining to reach Canterlot. With an audible twang, the wards on King Sombra’s prison prevented her teleport and sent her crashing to the floor. She shook it off and dashed towards the stairwell. Please be well, my sister, she begged of any that might have the power to help. I can’t lose you. Not again!
Reaching the rotunda she bent her legs and jumped, cracking the stones beneath her and sending her rocketing to the top of the shaft. She tore through the door, already casting another teleportation spell. This time it worked, partially. The familiar sensation of being squeezed in four directions at once took hold. Miles were crossed in the space between heart beats until Luna smashed into the teleportation wards around Canterlot. Once more she shook it off and spread her wings, flying desperately towards her sister’s chambers.
Bursting through the balcony windows Luna shouted, “Sister! Where are you? Please, please be here.” Silence was the only answer as Luna’s voice trailed off and traces of tears began to form in her eyes. “Oh Tia, what has happened to you?” she wept.
Before Luna could truly give in to despair a glimmer of her sister’s magic caught her eye. Her heart leapt into her chest. “Sister?” she asked, daring to hope that there have been some mistake. The glimmer led her to a scroll tied with a red ribbon and sealed with the royal seal resting on Celestia’s desk. Luna broke the seal and unfurled the scroll to read its contents.
Dear Princess Luna,
It’s true that I did not know exactly the cause of the Nightmare. But I am, after all, a goddess of logic and I had a lot of time to think on it. I came up with 37 different possible causes of the Nightmare and for each I devised an appropriate reaction.
Goodness! It sounds so clinical when I put it that way. What I mean to say is that I love you, Luna. And I spent a long time trying to think of ways to put things right between us. After our… conversation earlier I put one of those plans into action. As you have probably already noticed, I have bequeathed to you the mantle of the sun. Additionally, I have renounced my own immortal nature and used that power to cast a spell, erasing all memory of Princess Celestia from everypony except you and me. As far as the rest of Equestria remembers there has only ever been Princess Luna and there was no Nightmare.
I do this for you Luna because you were right. As the youngest of the immortals and as my younger sister you were never given the space the rest of us had. Because of that I think we never, no, I never came to treat you as an equal. That changes now. I am trusting you with the work of my life, Equestria itself. I leave you no guide to my plans nor outline to follow. You will make your own choices and they will be different from and even opposed to mine. That is to be expected. There is no limit to your rule. If you wished it you could bring about eternal night and I would not stop you, this I swear.
But I know you Luna, and I know you will rule with wisdom and grace.
We were meant to rule together, little sister. I have had my turn at the wheel. Now let’s see what you can do.
Love
Tia