As I made my way out of the bowels of Tartarus and closer to the entrance, the constant stream of incoherent babble became somewhat more coherent.
I still couldn't understand the actual words being said—or even if they were words—but the meanings were becoming much clearer to me.
The concepts, emotions, and intent of the whispers, screams, groans, growls, and many other noises the voices conveyed reached me, and through these things, I understood what they spoke of.
The voices told me of their nightmares, their worries, their pain, their misery, their triumphs, their failures, their lives, their deaths, their friends, their allies, and most of all...
Their enemies.
They told me much of who or what had wronged them. They told me of their desire to see justice carried out, no matter how petty or insignificant the slight may have been.
They spoke, and I listened.
They didn't spur me to action exactly, but I felt... compelled to listen to their 'words'. Now more than ever, I felt an obligation to hear them out.
As I listened, I began to get an idea of just what I had become... and I found I didn't mind if my suspicions turned out to be true—on the contrary, I took an odd sort of solace in the possibility.
By the time I neared the exit of the cave leading back to the path Discord had made for me, I could pick out individual voices from the verbal static.
None of them sounded familiar... save for one.
Before I could dwell too much on the matter, the voices began to swell once more into an angry crescendo, and I picked up my pace somewhat as the hunger grew—my skin and fur peeling away to be replaced by pure light.
It was close.
I didn't know exactly where it was, but I knew I would run into it soon. The voices knew it was coming, and as I made my way down the sloped and narrowed pathway leading back to the entrance... it attacked.
The only warning I got was a guttural roar.
I didn't even have time to fully revert back to my true form before something heavy slammed into my barrel and I was thrown completely off the path and into the burning lava below.
The only sensation I felt from landing in the melted rock was some slight resistance as I sank. I felt none of the actual heat, and my form didn't appear to be affected all that much, if at all.
Rather than try to wade through the viscous substance, I chose to take to the sky. With a blinding flash of light, I vanished and reappeared high in the air above where I fell.
By this point, my transformation was complete and the wisps of light coming from my body solidified into makeshift wings that held me aloft.
I swept my gaze across the area and before I could spot what I was looking for, another roar erupted from behind and to the left of me.
I was prepared for it.
As the object from before went to lash out at me again, I whipped around, opened my jaws, and bit down on it... hard. The resulting roar was deafening, but I ignored it and yanked the thing forward.
It turned out the object was a black, star encrusted limb that had been stretched taut as I pulled. The limb ended in a gnarled, but incredibly sharp claw and it was attached to something just out of sight below the lava.
I gave a warbling roar of my own and pulled again, harder this time and with more force in my bite. Rather than pulling whatever was in the lava out, I tore the limb off and devoured it.
I didn't have time to do anything else as three more tentacle like appendages shot out of the lava and wrapped around my ethereal form, desperately trying to pull me in.
I responded in kind, using my own light born tentacles to probe the lava's surface. I felt them wrap around something and immediately began to drag it out of the molten rock.
There was a brief struggle, but eventually the monstrosity was pulled forth from the lava and, with another warbling cry, I brought the monster towards me.
It was a strange and hideous thing.
It had the body of an equine, but the body was black, smoky, and dotted with countless tiny motes of light. Its legs were overlong and spindly—flailing about in a twitchy, jerky motion as I held it in my grip.
What was most disturbing were the countless grotesque tentacle-like appendages sprouting from where its head and neck should've been, each limb ending in vicious looking black claws.
One of its claws raised and in the palm I could see a lone, slitted cerulean eye. Upon closer inspection every claw had an eye in the center.
As I took a moment to observe the thing, it tried to grab me once more. I jerked my head out of reach as it snapped a claw at me, and roared at it before using my own shining limbs to heave it into the cavern below near the entrance.
As soon as it hit the ground I blazed after it, cutting a streak of light across the darkened skies of Tartarus and smashing the monstrosity deeper into the ground as I landed atop it an instant later.
I wasn't waiting anymore.
The voices, my mission, and my hunger were in clear agreement.
It was time to do what needed to be done.
With one last warbling roar, I opened my mouth wide and prepared to feed. The instant before I brought my head down, I stopped.
Something wasn't right.
It took me a second to figure it out, but eventually I realized what was off. One of the voices—that lone, familiar voice spoke out, its tone louder and clearer than any of the others.
It screamed to be heard over the deafening sea of noise, and I heard its cry.
It cried out the innocence of the monster before me. I brought my attention back to the monster in question, only to find a wide and teary eyed midnight blue alicorn in its place.
Upon realizing the Darkness no longer held sway over the alicorn—at least for the moment—the voices begrudgingly calmed themselves and I shrunk back down into my own alicorn form, though I still stood atop the dark blue pony beneath me.
"So you've regained your senses I see," I commented with a tilt of my head, "the Darkness has receded from you, but I can still feel it through my hunger... and though the voices have quieted, they're still restless."
I leaned in close to the shocked mare, staring into her eyes.
"You're hiding something, Luna," I stated flatly, "I don't know what it is you're keeping from me, but you reek of guilt and shame."
Luna winced and looked away.
I could feel her shaking under me, her face strained with the effort of holding something back—something she desperately wanted to remain unknown to anypony.
"Please, Twilight," Luna begged in a quiet, shaky voice, "just consume me and be done with it."
My stoic expression deepened into a slight frown and I raised my head. For several moments, I didn't say or do anything.
She was guilty of something, that much I was certain of. The problem was finding out what it was she was hiding. The voice that had cried out for her innocence had gone conspicuously quiet—even more so than the rest.
It was as though they were all waiting.
With the intent of finding out what Luna knew, I raised a hoof and placed it just above her head, much to the mare's confusion and trepidation.
"Twilight?" she asked, a hint of fear lacing her voice, "w-what are you—"
The hoof lit up with a blinding light and I pressed it to Luna's forehead, just below her horn. She screamed as the hoof shrunk and twisted into a tendril of light that sunk deep into her skull.
In an instant I saw everything.
I saw a sweaty and whimpering Luna, tossing and turning in her bed as a small, formless shadow enveloped her horn and dug itself deep into her mind.
I saw Luna standing atop a cliff overlooking a burning Canterlot. I saw the horror and despair etched on her face—how she turned away from the horrible sight only to be greeted by the tall star filled silhouette of a pony, its outline constantly shifting as though it was made of Luna's very own mane.
I saw more restless nights, more terrible dreams, the lies she told her sister, myself and my friends to keep the truth hidden, and the gradual descent into depression.
I saw Luna as she stood tall next to her sister, both on a balcony overlooking hundreds of thousands of ponies cheering her name.
I saw her pure elation turn to utter horror as she witnessed the pony shaped, star speckled shadow disappear through a tear in the sky.
I watched as the Lunar Princess chased the shadow through countless dreams, desperately pursuing it even as she continued to heap lies upon those closest to her.
I watched her fail to catch the shadow time and time again. I watched as the shadow grew in strength with each dream it corrupted.
As Luna's memories flooded my mind, I began to regain my own memories.
I remembered my own restless nights full of horror and despair. I remember finding out soon after my nightmares began, that my friends had been suffering as well.
It didn't stop there.
In hardly any time at all, the entire town of Ponyville had been affected by horrible nightmares that only grew worse as time went on.
Then one night I got a summons from Celestia.
She herself, along with the rest of the citizens of Canterlot had also been plagued by terrible dreams... and yet it still didn't stop there.
As it turned out, the Nightmare Plague had all but consumed the whole of Equestria, and there were even reports of the plague in other nations across Equus.
Naturally we all turned to Luna for answers and a solution... but she had none to give. She merely told us she was taking care of it and that we shouldn't worry.
We pushed, we begged, we pleaded, but in the end... we couldn't get anything out of her. Eventually we left her alone, trusting her to take care of it.
There was really nothing else we could do, Luna alone had dominion over the Realm of Dreams.
Somewhere far away, I heard a scream... no... it was a plea.
It was Luna.
Her eyes were clenched shut, tears streaming down her face as she cried and screamed and begged me to stop—to look no further... but I didn't stop.
I couldn't stop.
I delved further, looked deeper into the memories she tried to keep hidden even as my own memories continued to emerge.
As the Nightmare Plague wore on, we had all decided enough was enough. At the behest of Celestia, Cadence, my brother, and I made our way to Canterlot.
As I arrived, Celestia's Sun was set to give way to Luna's Moon and Stars. I was already speaking to Celestia by the time Cadence and my brother had arrived in Canterlot.
That was when everything ended.
I had convinced Celestia to let me talk to Luna alone, and went to see her as she raised the Moon, but thanks to the Lunar alicorn's memories, I now knew the truth of what she was actually trying to do.
What she had really wrought.
As I approached Luna, I could see her eyes were closed, and her brow was matted with sweat. At first, I assumed she was having trouble raising the Moon, but the truth was far worse.
It wasn't the Moon she was struggling to raise, it was the the shadow she had finally managed to capture. It was the shadow she was trying to contain.
It was the Tantabus she was trying to seal within her very own Moon... without the Elements.
In the end, she couldn't contain it, and the Tantabus broke free. It was released into the waking world, and the resulting magical backlash from the failed sealing spell wiped out Canterlot and the entire world beyond.
And even that still wasn't the end of Luna's folly.
It was Luna that had awakened first and found the rest of us, still charred black and near dead from the initial blast. It was Luna—completely mad with guilt and despair—that wiped away her own memories of the event, trying and not entirely succeeding to do the same with the rest of us.
I still remembered going to Canterlot to talk to Luna about something, and Cadence still remembered going to Canterlot with Shining Armor for one reason or another.
I didn't know how much Celestia remembered about what happened, but it was clear she had no memory of what Luna had done either.
"They're all gone, and it's my fault."
I snapped out of my thoughts and looked down at Luna. Her face held a wretched expression of guilt and self loathing. She looked away from me as she continued speaking.
"The Tantabus, it... as it invaded my mind in that cave, it made me remember things," she looked back towards me, a lost and broken look in her eyes, "it made me remember what the Elements had done to me, what Celestia had done to me, and worst of all... what I had done."
"You let your stubbornness, fear, guilt, and shame cloud your judgment," I observed dully, causing the mare beneath me to wince and give a slow nod.
"I... had already tarnished my own name as Nightmare Moon," Luna continued, "if I were to tell my sister and the rest of you what had been happening, who knows what you would have done?"
She closed her eyes and slowly shook her head once.
"No, like a fool, I thought it best not to tell any of you what I was going through. I knew not where that shadow came from or why it had decided to invade my own dreams, but I... came to see it as a sort of punishment—a fitting punishment for all the suffering I had caused as Nightmare Moon."
"So you let it fester and grow," I surmised, "feeding it with your negative emotions until it became strong enough to eventually escape into the real world," I tilted my head and frowned, "if you had confided in me and my friends, we could've used the Elements to seal the Tantabus away like you wanted."
"I know," Luna replied, closing her eyes as more tears slipped down her cheeks, "I knew that, but... I didn't want to. The Elements, they're not as pure and innocent a force as you believe them to be, Twilight Sparkle."
"Whether that's true or not, the outcome would have been significantly better had you chosen to use them," I replied flatly, "but I suppose that doesn't matter now."
"No... I suppose it doesn't," Luna agreed, staring up at the ceiling of the cave, "once it was released, the Tantabus gained complete dominion over the Dream Realm and is now using its power to affect reality in a way I never could... or wanted to.
"The giant beast, the eye in the sky, the corruption, its omnipresence, and all of the other horrifying abilities its manifested can be traced back to the innate power of the Dream Realm..."
To my mild surprise, Luna began to chuckle, a vindictive smile playing across her muzzle.
"...but it's getting weaker."
"Weaker?" I replied, creasing my brow slightly, "weaker how?"
"It feeds off of negative emotions, and though it can feed on magic, magic alone cannot sustain it," she explained, "when the magical backlash destroyed Equus and killed off all life, it effectively cut off its source of food."
She finally turned her gaze away from the ceiling to look at me, her smile falling into a serious frown.
"My sister knows far more about what you are than I do," she said before raising her head to look at the ornate door further into the cave, "but I can tell you that you don't have the same problem as the Tantabus."
She looked back to me with pleading eyes.
"You must go, Twilight," she urged, "consume me and my sister, and the Tantabus should have no choice but to reveal itself, though I am not one hundred percent certain of that."
"...Cadence says she forgives you."
Luna blinked and gave me a confused look before realization dawned on her. She smiled and let out a bitter, broken laugh as her eyes teared up once more.
"I don't deserve forgiveness, Twilight," she said after a moment, "it was I that allowed our world to perish at the hooves of that demon, and I refuse to accept anything other than your judgment, so please..."
She trailed off and looked at me with a sad, expectant expression. I stared back at her a moment longer before shedding my alicorn form and standing tall as an ethereal being once more.
Luna closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"I know no words could ever erase the sins I've committed, but know that I am sorry, Twilight... Cadence... sister," she said in a quaking whisper, "I never meant for any of this to happen, but what's done is done, and I accept full responsibility."
Luna fell silent.
I opened my maw and descended upon the Lunar Princess.
A sickening crunch filled the air, and the Princess of the Night was no more.
Tia...