“Aurora!” I hear Moonlight franticly banging on my door. “If you’re in there, we have to evacuate!”
My eyes jolt open, and just as I try to scramble out of my bed but instead get twisted in my sheets and fall on the floor, my door swings open. “They’re ordering the entire city to get underground!” he blurts out as he rushes into my room. “We have to go.”
“You go!” I order as I untangle myself. “Get everypony out of here, but Luna told me I have to go find her. Stay safe.”
He just fidgets there for a few seconds, then turns around. “I’m getting an explanation after all this!” he yells to me as he runs back into the Dreamstrider wing and starts banging on other doors.
I run out into the main wing myself and to the window overlooking the city of Canterlot, and I can see Baku right outside the palace, multiple city blocks just leveled in its carnage. And the worst part is, it just got here. Multiple armored pegasi and bat ponies are swarming around it in formation, and I can see lots of similarly-armored unicorns on the ground trying to shoot spells at it to no avail. One flyer catches my eye, however, and I can see that it’s Luna. She’s not fighting, though. She appears to almost be looking for something.
I try to go and open one of the panes on my window, and for some reason, I’m losing all memory of how to do this despite having done this a million times when it gets hot in the summer. Instead of trying to fight this, I power up my horn and blast a hole in the glass, then poke my head out. “Luna!” I yell as loud as I can.
She hears that, then flies over to me quicker than I’ve ever seen her move. “Go to my quarters,” she instructs. “There shall be a jar there, filled with the liquid from the Avenues. I am going to need to chain all of Baku’s legs, then you will need to get that liquid onto it and cast a devourer demon banishing spell on the water. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I frantically nod.
“That jar is the only opportunity we have,” she states. “I cannot stress how important it is that you get that onto Baku. Now go, my faithful student. Go!”
I turn around and start running only to forget that my desk exists and topple over it, sending paperwork and quills flying everywhere. A bottle of ink whacks me on the forehead and starts spilling down my face, but thankfully it didn’t get in my eyes so I can still see. As quickly as possible, I jump back onto my hooves and start running as fast as I can towards the door.
Once I get out into the hallway, an earth pony Royal Guard grabs me and pulls me back to him. “We have to get you underground!” he yells as I start trying to squirm out of his grasp. “This is for your own safety!”
“Luna needs me!” I yell back. “I have to get to her quarters!”
“All civilians are required to evacuate,” he grunts, beginning to pull me towards the stairs. “You could die if you stay up here!”
Without even thinking, I shoot a paralyzing curse at him, and as his stiff body starts falling to the ground, I manage to wriggle out of his hooves and start running. Maybe I could’ve talked to him and maybe I’ll be facing some serious repercussions for attacking a member of the military, but all those thoughts get shoved out of my head as I’m just giving my all into sprinting towards Luna’s personal wing.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of stairs leading up to where Luna lives, and before I can even get there, I collapse. I try to move my legs up, but they just feel so heavy now. But I have to keep going, so I force myself to move through the pain. It’s slow, but I’m getting there.
Before long, a group of bat ponies starts coming down and passing me, with some flying and some just walking down the stairs and stepping over or around me. When Sveta comes down and sees me, she meets my eyes and then looks up.
“Aparator!” she calls, causing one of the stallions to stop and look at her. “We need to get her to the Princess’ room!”
He nods, then flies down and puts me on his back like I weigh nothing. I can feel a pair of hooves placed around my stomach, and I can see that Sveta is flying over me and making sure I don’t fall off of him.
As soon as we get to the door to Luna’s private quarters, the stallion I’m on drops me off before turning around and flying downstairs. Sveta helps me up, then looks me in the eye. “You need anything else?” she asks.
“I think I’m good,” I pant. “Just gotta keep going.”
“Niciodată nu vei trece oceanul până când nu vei avea curajul să pierzi din vedere malul,” she says with a pat on my shoulder. “Whatever it is you need to do, just go and do it!”
I’m not even sure what she just told me, but she too turns around and starts flying down the stairs. The door to her chambers is still open, so I run through it and start scanning but don’t find anything that looks like the water from the Avenues. The door to her room is open and while I feel like that might be an invasion of her privacy to go in there, but it’s a desperate time. She’ll understand.
As soon as I walk inside, I see the small jar resting on her bed in the shape of a half moon. I almost feel bad with every passing second I’m in here, so I just grab the jar in my magic and bring it over to me, cradling it close so it doesn’t break. Carefully as to not jostle this too much and potentially have it fall out of my hooves, I trot over to the door and exit her room, then very carefully watch my three free hooves as I begin descending the stairs.
Before I can even process what’s happening, the tower around me erupts in a shower of dust and pebbles, and my stomach starts lurching up further in my chest as I begin a straight freefall towards the palace courtyard.
My mind starts going a million miles an hour trying to figure out what I can do, but there’s so much going on that I can’t stick with any one thought for longer than just a quick passing second. Should I teleport? Try to envelop myself in magic and guide myself to the ground softer? Start crying?
Well, regardless, I’m doing that last one.
I don’t want to die. Not yet, not ever. But especially not yet.
I’m not sure how long the next events last for, but I think my body is being pumped with so much adrenaline that the very essence of time itself begins slowing down.
I can’t exactly see much through my tear-stained eyes, but I can feel a body whose coat I can only describe as having the warmth of the sun itself wrap itself around me and put its hooves in my chest. There’s a flash of bright yellow light, and then all I can see if water rapidly approaching me. I hang onto the jar for dear life as I go under, and as soon as I do, I feel the other body let go of me. Swimming is difficult with only three free hooves, but I manage to surface and tread water well enough to keep my head above the surface.
“Aurora!” Princess Celestia calls from nearby. Looking around to find her is difficult while treading water, but I find her along with me in what I can now see is the palace moat. “Are you alright?”
“Freaked out but yes,” I call back as I begin swimming towards the shore. “Did you just save my life?”
“You need to evacuate,” she states while swimming up next to me. “We don’t even know what this thing is or where it came from, much less how to defeat it.”
“Long story short, it’s a demon,” I tell her as I walk out of the water and onto the banks of the moat. “Luna needs to chain its legs, then I need to get the contents of this jar onto it and banish it back to the dream world.”
“I shall never understand anything my sister does,” she sighs. “I will order the Royal Guard to keep you and Princess Luna safe. Hopefully when all of this is over, you two can fill me in on everything.” With that, she disappears in another flash of bright yellow light as she teleports somewhere else.
By the time I get onto the road, I look over to Baku and see that three of its legs are already chained to the ground. It appears to be struggling to try and rip them up, but the combination of the thick Canterlot streets along with the fact that it no longer has momentum from running means that it’s staying right where it is. The Royal Guard seem to almost know what Luna’s doing, since unlike when we started, they don’t seem to be attacking it but rather trying to distract it. It seems to be working because Luna very quickly gets another two of its legs chained to the ground seemingly without it noticing. It is learning, however, because now it is doing everything it can to try and focus on Luna. While having now over half of its legs chained to the ground is definitely restricting its movement, it is still managing to get a few good swipes in at her.
I’m definitely too far away from Baku to get this jar on it, so I’m going to have to get closer to this monstrosity if I want to be effective. Ponies and Guards are running in all different directions, and it’s hard to really tell which way is forward because of all the commotion. It’s not very far away from the castle thankfully, and I think that if I make it to Princess Celestia’s School, I should be able to hide and then levitate the water onto it once the time comes.
The closer I get to the school, the less hectic it gets since everypony is running away from the enormous demon in the middle of Canterlot instead of towards it like me. Luna even gets one of its legs chained before I can get there, meaning there are only two to go before we can send it back to wherever in the dream world it came from.
It’s pretty much just Royal Guards by the time I get to hide behind the fillies’ dormitories, and either they’ve stopped trying to get me to evacuate or they realize I must belong if I’m crazy enough to start running right towards a demon.
I peek out around the corner, and can see Luna flying on the side further from me, dodging Baku’s swipes as she tries to get close enough to chain its leg. In some weird way, it looks even harder now that it’s almost completely tethered since it only has two legs it needs to watch out for. They also appear to need to be on the ground for the spell to work, so now she’s needing to trick it to put its leg down as opposed to just going for the ones that are already there.
As she dives down mere inches from the ground, Baku attempts to pin her, but a teleport at the last second moves her out of the way of its massive leg. Before it can reach by pulling it back up, she launches the spell at it and brings it down to just one free leg.
At this point, though, it seems to know that she’s just trying to completely ground all of its legs, so it brings up its one free leg and very carefully avoids touching the ground with it. Even when she tempts it like she was earlier by flying close and then going into nosedives, it’s not going for what it knows is an obvious trap. It’s even now completely ignoring the Royal Guards, and their spells and attacks seem to be doing absolutely nothing. After a few minutes, Luna just flies below its free leg and powers up its horn before just flying in place.
“Art thou such a coward?” she speaks in her Royal Canterlot Voice, which is very strange because I’ve never even heard Demon spoken at a loud volume before. “Attack me right here, right now! Thine cowardice would not allow it!”
Baku screeches, then thrusts its leg down right on top of Luna. She tries to fly out of the way, but it comes down too quickly and I can see her get knocked off to the side. Somehow, however, a beam of magic comes from her horn as its leg lands on the ground, the final chain needed before I can go and do what it is I need to do.
My heart now pounding through my chest and banging like a drum in my head, I grab the jar in my magic and start just booking it towards Baku. I don’t know if it even can break out of those chains, but I don’t want to hesitate nonetheless. As I get closer and closer, I move the jar towards it and as soon as I get close enough to where I could confidently pour all of the water on it, I open the jar and just turn it over so it all spills out onto it. I charge up my horn with a devourer demon banishing spell which I never thought I’d ever need to use in the awakened world and let it loose. As soon as it hits where I poured the Avenues all over it, what looks like a massive pool of gray mist opens below it. It shrieks just like it did in the dream world, then gets sucked into the pool. Once it’s completely developed by it, the pool just dissipates, as if there was just nothing there to begin with.
Now that the entire city is no longer in mortal peril, my heart stops toying with the idea of exploding and my muscles relax, to the point where my back legs just turn to jelly and I just fall down and sit there. I know what just happened because I saw it with my own two eyes, but I can hardly even believe it. An hour ago I was up to my neck in paperwork, and now a significant portion of the city is in ruins, including Luna’s personal tower.
Wait.
I never saw Luna get back up.
Almost as if I’m not even controlling my body, I get up and just start walking towards where I saw her get knocked to. I’m so lightheaded though, so I can hardly even focus on what I’m doing.
“Ma’am!” an earth pony Royal Guard yells as he runs up to me and puts his hooves on my shoulders. “You need to get back home, for your own safety.”
“She got hurt,” is all I can say.
“You need to go home,” he orders again. “It might still be dangerous out here.”
“But she’s hurt.”
“Who’s hurt?” he asks.
“Luna. I need to check on her.”
“Who’s Luna? A friend, a sister, a daughter?”
“Princess Luna,” I clarify. “Baku attacked her, and she hasn’t gotten up. I need to make sure she’s safe.”
“We’ll be checking on her and making sure she gets any medical attention she needs,” he reassures me. “Do you need me to bring you home?”
“No, I can get home.” He takes his hooves off of me, but just stands there and looks at me for a few moments. Eventually, he just takes my hoof in his.
“Where do you live?” he asks.
“The castle.”
I swear I can hear him sigh a little bit. “What’s your address?”
“I’m in the castle,” I repeat. “Dreamstrider wing.”
“Well, come on.” He starts leading me back to the castle, and the entire walk back and even when he makes sure I get into my room and onto my couch before leaving, I’m just staring blankly ahead with one question:
Is Luna okay?