“But Luna, you must see that improved street lighting would make it safer for everypony, especially now that the nights are drawing in.”
“The light pollution will all but flood out the beautiful artistry of the night sky. As Princess of the Night, I cannot allow it.”
“There are so many trips and falls among the more elderly ponies who venture out when it’s dark and stumble over things in the shadows that they don’t see. We must take some action to help them.”
“Your statistics are but nothing compared with the hurts suffered throughout the year when ponies ‘trip and fall’ because the low sun is too bright at dawn and dusk, yet I see no sign that you are reining in the sun’s excesses to reduce injuries.”
“Please at least try and see it from my side, just for a moment.”
“No, you see it from mine!” barked Luna angrily, slamming both forehooves down forcefully “It is just this same attitude of riding roughshod over the night that caused ‘our little problem’ a thousand years ago. Do not stoke up the flames again Sister; learn from past mistakes before things get out of hoof once more. I forbid it!”
With that, the blue alicorn rose and made towards the large double doors where two unicorns stood guard. Each was powerfully built and hoof-picked for their bravery, but both were clearly intimidated by the venomous rhetoric being exchanged between the two most powerful alicorns in all of Equestria.
“But Luna, please …” came a pleading call from the white alicorn.
Luna turned and fired back her answer:
“Resolve thine own problems before thou lectureth me, Sister!” she spat, resorting to her olden tongue for emphasis.
The two guards could not open the doors quickly enough as the Princess of the Night turned back towards the exit, eyes blazing fiercely as she stormed out.
Celestia got up wearily and collected her papers before walking out through the same doors.
“That could have gone better” she thought to herself and walked off to her private study to consider how best to protect the ponies of Equestria from the night, the very element that was controlled by her sister, whilst minimising further upset. It was an unenviable task and one that she would wrestle with well into the evening.
Luna flapped her wings angrily, beating out the tension she felt inside as she tried to focus on something, anything that took her mind off the fury she felt inside her. She passed over forests, farmsteads and finally to a range of majestic snow-capped mountains, just herself flying free. It had been a long time since she had flown this far, and looked out for old haunts where she had gone in the past to seek solace or enlightenment.
Perhaps she had snapped a little harshly at her sister? Invoking Nightmare Moon had possibly been a step too far, but she had been angry, angry that she was once again being asked to compromise whilst her sister never did. Just because she was the youngest sister, why did it always fall to her to give ground? Surely compromise meant both giving something to meet in the middle, each having undergone a little sacrifice? What had her sister ever given? Nothing as far as she could see. She beat her wings more strongly as the anger flooded through her veins once again.
Having climbed to a high altitude, she locked her wings and entered a swooping glide, performing turns and dives for the fun of it and beginning to giggle, then laughing out loud with joy and exhilaration, at one with the sky.
Next thing, the sky went pink all around her; pink with sparkly lines running through it. It was like nothing she had ever seen before and most certainly wasn’t natural. She looked around for an enemy to direct her magic at, but there was nothing, just a pink beam emanating from so high up she couldn’t see. She tried desperately to break left and break right, but the beam was locked on and followed her every move. Then everything went blank.
***
Her head was fuzzy. The ground was hard and shiny. What had happened?
She looked around. She was in a cylindrical room that she could see through and above, the ceiling was round with holes in it. A quick glace showed that she was not alone; other pegasi lay slumped in other similar prisons around her. It reminded her of something, but couldn’t quite remember what.
Just then, there was a noise outside, amplified and echoed by the unusual prison in which she was held. A strange creature much larger than her came into sight. It looked like one of those mythical creatures she had heard stories about when she was younger, but never believed existed; humans. From all the stories she had ever been told about humans, she had come to the conclusion that they were a little smaller than ponies, but nothing had prepared her for how big they were, or at least how big this one was.
It was clear that their meeting was not destined to be on equal terms, so she dispensed quickly with any idea of a formal introduction and cast an invisibility spell on herself.
The human reached down and picked up her prison, turning the ceiling counter-clockwise and lifting it off. She could fly through if she was quick, but suddenly realised what she was in; it was a giant glass jar!
Her captor made a questioning sound then blew in through the top. The smell of stale breath was fetid and Luna wanted to retch, but she held her composure as the human let out a roar of frustration and thumped the jar back down, clearly believing it to be empty. It had left the lid off and turned away to attend to something else, so Luna took the opportunity to lunge upwards and fly out, suddenly free to take in her new environment.
She flew around, noting where the human sat, hunched over a desk doing something delicate. She flew closer to get a better look and was horrified by what she saw. The human was wielding a stout metal spike which, although big to her, was tiny in its massive hands.
What Luna saw next made her freeze in horror; a pink pegasus mare was laying on her back on a wooden specimen table as the human lined up the spike with the centre of the helpless equine’s body. She had a dreadful feeling what was going to happen next, so she fired of a spell at the human quickly before it could carry out its next act.
As she watched, the spell completely failed to act; the human didn’t even notice it and pressed the metal spike into the victim’s barrel between the forelegs, pushing it further through and impaling her onto the wooden specimen table behind. This time Luna couldn’t hold back and dived behind a box on a shelf to retch. The act had been so gratuitous, so horrible that it filled her with nausea. Worse, she thought she may have even recognised the pink pegasus as a mare from Canterlot.
Once she had recovered, she looked down at what the human was doing next to the impaled mare and was shocked to see that it had set to work underwiring the wings to keep them in an artificially outstretched pose, working with great delicacy so as to avoid damaging the specimen, which was all her former acquaintance now was.
Luna spied another pink pegasus moving around within a jar and knew beyond all doubt what fate awaited unless she could step in and mount a rescue. She tore herself away from the grisly sight on the wooden board and flew down onto the lid of the jar.
She put her mouth to one of the airholes and shrouded it with her foreleg, calling down inside:
“You have got to get out!”
“Who ... who’s there?” came the response from the startled pegasus.
“It is me, Luna” she called urgently “I have been caught too. You must try to get away any chance you get. I am going to try and blast the lid off; shield yourself!”
With this, she focused her magical aura onto the lid and willed it to shatter, but once again nothing happened.
In desperation, she flew up to try and unscrew the lid, but it was fixed tightly. Then she tried to rock the jar over, but it was too big and wouldn’t move.
“Sorry” she said “No luck so far. I am going to cast an invisibility spell on you.”
The pink pegasus was starting to appear agitated and a look of frightened desperation formed in her eyes, but she kept faith in the Princess and waited with as much patience as she could summon for the spell to take effect.
“Am I invisible yet?” she asked, the fear now very evident in her voice.
Luna could see her just as clearly as when she had started, and felt a lump rising in her throat that stopped her answering.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Sugarshine, Princess” answered the nervous sounding pegasus.
“Tell me, Sugarshine, can you see me?”
“No Princess” she answered shakily “It hasn’t worked on me has it?”
“I will try again” reassured Luna “Do not forsake hope.”
Luna tried again and again, but nothing seemed to work. She tried a shrinking spell so she could fly up through the air holes and an incorporeality spell to allow her to pass through the solid walls, but with each failed attempt Luna felt the pressure building on her to carry through one of her spells, any of them, but nothing worked. She was out of ideas and needed time to think.
Just then, the human started advancing on Sugarshine’s jar.
“Princess!” the panicked pony screamed.
“Tis a trap! Take any chance you can to get out!” warned Luna urgently.
The human placed a plastic cover over the jar and connected a pipe. Luna tried to disconnect it, but it was too big. The pink pegasus screamed louder as panic took hold and Luna wept in frustration; this mare believed in her, but there was nothing she could do.
Gradually the screams faded and Sugarshine slumped onto the bottom of the jar. The human then pulled the pipe off and unscrewed the lid, carrying the jar over to the wooden board. The jar was tipped up and the pink pegasus fell out, delicately prodded by a pair of spikes that to the human were as small as fine pins.
Finally, she was placed flat on her back and a spike raised above her body. Luna flew towards the human’s eye and kicked it as hard as an apple farmer during bucking season. It howled and pulled away dropping tools over the floor and rubbing its eye, shouting incomprehensible expressions. Luna took the opportunity of the diversion to drop down beside the pink pegasus.
“Wake up Sugarshine!” she shouted, slapping her across the muzzle to get her attention “You have got to get away, NOW!”
Still nothing. She just lay there, inert.
Luna stood over her unconscious body and grasped her to fly away, but at that precise moment the human came back and banged a book down hard next to the wooden specimen table, jolting Luna and breaking her hold, the draught blowing her off the table. She recovered herself and flew back, just in time to see Sugarshine’s eyes open as the spike was rammed through her body. She screamed and writhed in agony, struggling to free herself from the large spike on which she was impaled, her lifeblood trickling down the spike onto the table beneath. Minutes passed like hours while she twisted herself to get free, bubbles forming in the blood pooling on her chest as her breathing became more laboured. In one last desperate effort she mustered her failing reserves of strength and bucked so violently that her body snapped where the spike had severed her spinal cord.
Luna watched on helplessly as the pink pegasus fought more and more weakly, her lavender eyes wide in terror as she drew her last few breaths. Finally, her struggling ceased and her broken body moved no more. Luna wept with an anger that could never be sated, feeling an unmitigated hatred towards the human and an intense sense of guilt that she could not save the brave pegasus who had believed in her right up until her death. She had let her down. She had failed to protect a pony in her care.
The human could see that his specimen was damaged and so grabbed at it in disgust, pulling one wing so hard that it came off, trailing sinews and tendons that twitched gruesomely with the last dying embers of life. Then it ripped the spike roughly out of her body and crushed Sugarshine’s tortured remains in its fist until it felt a number of the fragile bones snapped and finally threw her into a bin by the side of the table with a growl of disgust.
The human would pay, vowed Luna through a curtain of bitter tasting tears.
Then the lights snapped off and the door banged shut, leaving the stranded blue alicorn to ponder not only her fate but that of the other ponies in this alien dimension. She wanted desperately to mount a rescue mission and return to Equestria with as many of these stranded ponies as could be saved, but how or indeed whether she could do this lay beyond her reach for now.
She took off and flew around the room, noticing for the first time display cases full of completed specimens, some of whom she had known by name, others just by sight, each with wings outstretched in a parody of the grace and beauty these magnificent pegasi had displayed in their natural environment. It was grotesque and utterly revolting, but she knew there was still one more place she had to look before she could rest her conscience.
Luna landed on the desk where the human had been working and with trepidation inched towards the edge and looked over into the bin. The sight that greeted her was even worse than the sight of display cases filled with dead friends; mangled, crumpled and disembodied body parts of different colours bore testament to the fact that the human was not well practiced at its macabre art, and many lives had been lost to fill a single display case. It wasn’t just the sight that shocked her, but the smell rising up made her gag and her stomach responded, bringing up nothing but bile. Luna coughed and her eyes smarted, so she quickly turned away and collapsed onto the desk, sobbing for those who had been sacrificed at the hands of the vile human.
Once she regained her composure, Luna cast around the strange equipment that lined the room, trying to gain an understanding of what it all did. What she needed more than anything was to find the device through which ponies had been transported and use it to get back. Another option existed, and she blanched at the prospect, which was to destroy it so that no more ponies could be drawn through to suffer the same fate, but this would leave her stuck for eternity in this unpleasant world with no prospect of seeing Equestria, or her sister ever again.
Luna mulled over the range of unpalatable options that faced her and flew onto a window sill from where she could see the moon. She reached out to it as she would in Equestria and bade it move, but it did not respond; it sat in the heavens, completely unresponsive to her husbandry. The only spell that seemed to work was the invisibly spell that she had cast on herself; she could no longer call on any other magic in this world and would have to live by her wits alone.
***
Faraway across a void of unknowable dimension, Celestia was looking for her sister. She had thought over what they had discussed and was prepared to concede to her demands. Her sister’s passion had been forcefully presented and genuinely heartfelt. More than that, she had been right; it would be wrong to deny her the night time.
Try as she might, there was no trace of her sister to be found anywhere. Celestia thought back to their last heated exchange and regretted it dearly, wishing that Luna was around so that they could make up. However, before this, there were more pressing matters to attend; the sun was going down but there was no sign of the moon rising. She waited far longer than was astronomically correct as she did not want to spark another heated disagreement, but eventually had to act and risk her sister’s wrath when they next met. Slowly, reluctantly, the moon responded to her magic and started its path across the sky under Celestia’s command.
Where was Luna?
***
Luna had found herself a space on a top shelf between two boxes where she would be able to rest and maybe catch some sleep in the midst of this nightmarish reality. She had reconnoitred the room and knew where everything was, not so much by function, but by size and shape so she would be able to evade trouble and avoid getting trapped when the human returned. She also confirmed that there was no way out.
As the adrenalin dissipated, time began to weigh heavily on her and she suddenly felt overdue pangs of hunger shoot through her stomach as she suddenly realised she hadn’t eaten since before she had been abducted. Worse, she had also brought up the contents of her stomach leaving her hungrier than ever. There was nothing more to do now until the human returned, so she retired to the shelf and closed her eyes, dreaming of her home and her sister.
***
Luna had attempted dream walking, but along with most of her other skills, it had failed and she had fallen asleep in spite of being nocturnal, as the horrors of the day took their toll on her. She awoke with sunlight streaming in through the windows and no sound but the gentle hum of equipment, but surrounded by dead bodies of past friends and acquaintances.
Her stomach demanded breakfast, but her conscience reminded her that she was better off than any other pony in the room and she should accept her comparative good fortune without further complaint. She took off and flew around the room, re-acquainting herself with every inch because the more instinctive her knowledge, the quicker and more decisively she would be able to act when required.
The room appeared to be both a laboratory and specimen preparation area, with many items of technical looking apparatus that she did not understand. It pained her, but she would have to watch the human kidnap another pegasus so she could confirm the mechanism through which he controlled the interdimensional transfer, if she was to stand any chance of developing an escape plan. She also knew that whoever got drawn through from Equestria would be certain to die, and die horribly unless my some miracle her magical powers returned or something else intervened.
Eventually, footsteps from outside could be heard getting closer, then stopping by the door, a large shadow being cast on its frosted glass pane. A metallic rattling indicated key being withdrawn from a pocket, followed by a click as the door opened, revealing the human.
Luna shuddered in revulsion as she regarded the murderer of so many pegasi. It had a bare head with no mane and was carrying too much weight to fly even if it had wings, which it didn’t. It wore many layers of clothes, some of which it removed and hung on a rack, wafting a unique musty and sweaty smell that she would forever link with this dungeon of death. She was unable to confirm whether this giant human was male or female, but reasoned that no mare would ever do anything as evil as this to any living creature, so determined in her own mind that it must be male.
He switched on a machine that hummed into life, different coloured lights flashing in an apparently random sequence, and although the spectacle was beguiling, she doubted that entertainment was its ultimate purpose. Other devices were switched on and soon the room was filled with different noises all competing for supremacy.
The human picked up a flask of colourless liquid an swirled it around, examining it before placing it atop a three legged metal frame, turning on a tap and lighting a stream of gas underneath it. Then he wedged a stopper into the top and Luna noticed that pipes connected through the stopper led off to other undefined destinations around the room.
Once his preparations had been completed, he sat himself in front of a machine piece of equipment that showed an image of scenery as if seen from a pegasus flying over some countryside. Attached to this machine was a stick shaped device which he gripped in his hand and which when he moved it caused the image on the screen in front of him to move in response, like it was some kind of control. Images of countryside flashed across the screen until she spied the unmistakeable shape of a solitary light brown pegasus in flight. He noticed too and gave a grunt of affirmation, making subtle adjustments to his controls as the image zoomed in closer.
Then he pressed a button and a pink ring appeared around the pegasus who suddenly turned sharply to one side, clearly feeling threatened in just the same way as Luna had been, but the pink ring on the screen would not be shaken from maintaining a steady unbroken track on its target. Next the screen froze and the pink ring disappeared leaving an unspoiled view of the countryside once more and the human uttered what sounded like a cheer of jubilation.
He stood up and walked round to the back of the machine and emerged shortly with a glass jar; a glass jar containing a light brown pegasus with white mane and tail. Luna’s mouth hung open in shock at how easy the process had appeared but equally how clearly impossible it would be for her to operate the machine itself, let alone reverse its operation and return back to Equestria.
The human stared at the unconscious pegasus, lifting the jar up and squinting into it to examine his latest specimen from different angles, ensuring its purity to some arbitrary standard of his own choosing. He seemed happy and then screwed a pierced metal top onto the jar, leaving it on his desk. Then he went back to the image on the screen and began traversing it across what Luna now realised was Equestria in search of more targets.
Luna prayed he wouldn’t find any more ponies and for once since this nightmare had begun, her luck held. He grew clearly impatient and in response started flinging the image on the viewer ever faster in random directions, eventually reaching such a speed that he couldn’t have seen a pegasus even if he went right over it. He let out a howl of frustration, then got up and walked out of the door, slamming it behind him.
With a heavy heart, Luna finally knew that she would never be able to go home and that the longer this machine worked, the greater the threat would be to the ponies of Equestria, and knew what she must do.
She flew down to the tripod on which the flask was resting and started biting through the rubber pipe that fed the burner. She knew what this would do and fleetingly considered whether her immortality would prevail in this world, but dismissed the thought as irrelevant. If she could never return to her friends and most of all her sister, then she was happy to forfeit her life now if she knew that it would save those she loved in Equestria.
She bit harder and deeper until a rush of pressurised gas blew hard past her face and the flame from the burner went out. A loud hissing sound persisted from the ruptured pipe as the room started to fill with gas and Luna flew back to her refuge between boxes on the highest shelf. She knew she couldn’t get out of the room and indeed escape had never been an option.
She waited patiently for the final act to play out and took what few seconds she had left to think about her sister, her dear sister. It didn’t matter that she had sent her to the moon; she loved her and in the final reckoning that was all that mattered. Her only regret was that their last meeting had been so confrontational, so bitter; if she had known that she would never see her again then she would have told her how special she was, how much she appreciated her and how much she loved her, but there were no second chances for a last goodbye.
Footsteps appeared outside the door again.
The loud hissing continued.
The door opened.
Luna could see he held something glowing in his hand.
There was a blinding flash.
Both Luna and the human felt the surge of searing heat that engulfed them, but neither heard the massive explosion that followed fractionally afterwards and brought down the building on top of them and the human’s prized collection of misery.
***
Faraway across a dimensional void, Princess Celestia felt a sensation she had never experienced before; something akin to her soul being ripped out. Somehow she knew; she just knew.
She felt herself crumple and collapsed where she stood, two guards rushing to her side as she fell.
Equestria would never be the same again.
Princess Luna who had brought fear to Equestria through Nightmare Moon had bought peace through her sacrifice; a baffling series of random disappearances stopped as abruptly as it had begun, although none would be able to credit her with bringing it to an end.
***
Princess Celestia laid the sun to rest and raised the moon into the night sky. She did her best, but the artistry was at best uninspired, as it had been in the countless decades since Luna had disappeared.
“It doesn’t matter anymore” she said to herself sadly as she walked across a moonlit field with her head hung low, following in the hoofsteps that her sister had trodden so many times in the increasingly distant past.
She raised her head to the moon and tried to imagine the shadow of an alicorn’s head as she had seen every night for a thousand years. All that time, she had never stopped loving her sister, and had drawn comfort from seeing her profile in the night sky.
Now she was alone.
“I love you Luna” she whispered, blowing a kiss to the moon in the hope that her sister would receive it, wherever she was.