Claws of crackling eldritch magic clamped down on Princess Celestia’s aching throat. They hoisted her limp, battered form up from the smoldering wreckage where she’d been cast down in defeat, and high into the smoky darkness swirling above Ponyville. Lightning forked through the billowing clouds of ash, illuminating the vengeful, cackling god who hovered in dark and hazy shadows over the burning town.
At last, Nightmare Moon’s laughter abated, and her slitted eyes locked on Celestia’s own. The grasping force quite suddenly grew stronger, jerking Celestia’s neck, and sending sharp pains shooting down her spine. Celestia battered her weary hooves against the force, and worked her jaw in silent begging, as it brought her a mere hairsbreadth from her conqueror’s predatory countenance.
“What fools we were in ages past,” proclaimed the Nightmare in tones loud enough to overcome both the peals of thunder raging above, and the roaring of the flames engulfing Ponyville. “How often did we leave our foes imprisoned in some ageless purgatory, trusting that their conscience would defeat them for us if we but gave it time?”
Unable to speak, or even to gasp, Celestia continued pleading with her wide eyes and silent muzzle.
Nightmare Moon sneered, then turned her gaze downward and regarded the fearful, fleeing ponies below with equal parts amusement and disdain. “Do you, even now, think yourself wise for choosing not to kill me a millennium ago? Or was your pitiful attempt to harness the sun’s power against me a way of saying you regretted that choice? You can’t imagine all the suffering that I endured in my long exile… or how that suffering shall now be revisited manifold upon your little ponies!”
With that, the Nightmare’s horn flared, her eyes squeezed shut in painful-looking concentration, and from her sides burst two darkling forms wreathed in flickering purple fire. The pair of empty-eyed abominations were at once both equine in shape, yet savagely bestial in their clawed, unfleshed, rictus-grinned detail. Celestia tried fruitlessly to turn away in horror, but found herself powerless to shift within the Nightmare’s clutches.
“Fly forth, shadows of my vengeance,” bade Nightmare Moon. The pair gave wordless, sepulchral snarls of assent, then hurtled down upon translucent wings of black toward the ruins, and those few ponies who dared linger.
“Perhaps your conscience should be tested too,” Nightmare Moon hissed. Screams erupted from below, and Celestia yearned to save her ponies from the nascent massacre, but her face was forced back up toward the Nightmare’s. “Shall I consign your broken body to the moon for a thousand years, and let you lick your wounds while you watch, powerless, as I unmake all that you’ve labored for? And then, if you yet possess the strength to return, do it again?” She chuckled. “Even if I grant you such forbearance, I shall not spare my other enemies. Especially not those whose strength could truly rival ours in their prime. Come; there is one we faced together, you and I, not long before I realized the true power of darkness. I would see us finish what we started.”
Her horn flared again, this time weaving the telltale skeins of a teleportation spell. Celestia’s disorientation multiplied as they burst forth into the elegantly-kept greenery outside of Canterlot Castle. Nearby gardeners bellowed in shock and scattered at a gallop, while a clutch of white-coated guards shouted and charged toward the Nightmare. Tears streamed from Celestia’s eyes as she watched the Nightmare send forth sizzling blasts of violet energy that instantly scoured the lot of their bones clean.
“Ah, here we are,” Nightmare Moon said, stalking closer to one particularly tall and misshapen statue. “Consider the threat that Discord could so easily represent again, once his imprisonment wears off.” She beat her wings, flapped up to eye-level with him, and reached out to grip the sides of his head with her forehooves. “See how he mocks us even now. He knows we cannot truly kill him, for Chaos is fundamental—to destroy him would merely be to cast his essence to the wind, from whence it might return. That is, of course, unless it could be sent elsewhere…”
Nightmare Moon grunted with effort, and her hooves lit up with the channeled magic of a strength-enhancement spell. Cracks spiderwebbed along the Discord-statue’s neck, and Celestia’s eyes went wide as she watched them deepen. At last, with an almighty and sickening crack, Nightmare Moon twisted the stone head free of its body. She held it up, and threw her head back in unrestrained laughter.
“I really must thank you, dear Sister,” Nightmare Moon shouted through her mirth, before raising the Hellshard in her magic and sending a surge of power into it. Sparking electricity danced across its surface as the conjuration of a portal began. “You have gifted me with the perfect place to throw my garbage!”
She flared her horn a third time, lighting-up Discord’s body in a crawling glow of white.
It shattered.
And the Hellshard sent forth a burst of Stygian brimstone as it conjured a portal, into which the Nightmare swept Discord’s remains. Celestia had just enough time to wonder if she might end up in Tartarus as well, before the grasp around her throat clamped down with renewed savagery. Her eyes rolled back, and her thoughts grew sluggish.
There was naught that could be done to save herself, the world, or her ponies.
She could only weep as consciousness was wrested from her.