“Your Majesty?”
Luna could feel moon dust in her mouth. Her eyes were gritty and sore. From somewhere far away she imagined that a friendly voice was calling for her, but the words were indistinct, coming to her slowly through a nebulous grey fog.
Coming gradually back to consciousness, Luna ran her tongue across her dry lips and did not enjoy what she discovered. ‘What is that foul taste in my mouth? It is reminiscent of a wet diamond dog and discarded socks in equal measure.’
“Your Majesty?”
The voice was feminine, insistent and somehow familiar.
“Your Majesty? Please awaken, we are fearful. Some great calamity has befallen this place and we require instruction. Are we under attack?”
With exaggerated caution, Luna lifted her gaze from the stone floor, disturbing several gently fuming bottles scattered about her head. Her eyes gradually came to focus on... a face. A very familiar face, round and grey with pretty ice blue eyes, tufted ears and a flowing silver mane.
Luna was suddenly unsure what millennia she was living in. “Alembic?”
The unicorn curtseyed. “Yes, your Majesty. Retort is here also, he is standing guard by the door in case there are further attempts to intrude upon this place.”
Luna looked groggily towards the entry portal where a stocky gray unicorn was busy inspecting the door wards, his horn flickering with indigo sparks.
“What? How?” Luna took a deep breath and made a valiant attempt to marshal her thoughts. Her mind felt like it had the consistency of a calving glacier. ‘Prioritise. There are a million things I need to know right now. What is most important?’
“Alembic, why am I laying on a filthy floor covered in moon dust? Who has attempted to intrude and how are you and your brother even HERE?”
Alembic blushed with shame and hung her head. “Please your Majesty, we have ourselves only just awoken and have not had time to attend to matters of cleanliness. Our first thought was to ensure the safety of your royal person from intruders. We will set to work restoring your laboratory immediately. Please don’t punish us.”
“Punish you? What kind of pony would..” Luna looked down at her feet. She was shod with thick iron, her
legs were wrapped in greaves laquered a hard deep blue and detailed in silver. Now that she was fully awake she could feel the weight of a heavy peytral around her neck and her old favourite spiked champron was buckled over her head.
She had been that kind of pony, after becoming Nightmare Moon. The kind who would have a servant flogged for not anticipating her wishes. Alembic and Retort were really just toys, moon-pony automatons that had served her as Luna and later as Nightmare Moon. They had served as chambermaids, lab assistants and finally as willing test subjects for Nightmare Moon’s increasingly bizarre experiments.
If any ponies had the earned right to fear her moods, it was these two.
Looking into Alembic’s cowering eyes made it feel so familiar and comfortable, as if not a day had passed since..
It was Luna’s turn to feel ashamed. ‘Since the day I blew both of them to pieces in the vault, trying in vain to build a weapon that could protect me from my own sister.’
Retort had noticed Luna’s attention to her wardrobe. “We found some sets of your armour in storage, Your Majesty and prepared you as best we could. I have sealed the portal and adjusted the cloaking spells. Many seemed to be in bad repair. Celestia’s forces have been searching the upper rooms of the castle, but we believe that they do not have the power to pass through this portal, or even to be aware of it’s existence. The white tyrant herself is another matter however. I detected her presence above us in the courtyard earlier but she did not venture below. Her current whereabouts are unknown.”
Luna was developing a headache and simply could not think straight. ‘White tyrant? Who in Equestria does he mean by that? The windigos were white but they never ventured so far south as to trouble us. When they could no longer profit from our misfortune and discord they were happy to be left to their own affairs.’
Luna felt the armour shift as she laboriously stood. It was a little too large for her current form and felt like it was made from lead. ‘Nightmare could carry this armour as effortlessly as a ball gown, and a lot more besides. Well, upon reflection, I think I can guess who the white tyrant is and why Alembic is so scared of me.’
Luna gathered herself into a rough approximation of her normally regal posture. The room was swaying slightly but she felt that she needed to be convincing without recourse to the Royal Canterlot Voice.
“Both of you, come here.” Luna regarded the two ponies as they fidgeted nervously under her gaze. “Listen carefully. We are NOT at war with Celestia’s forces, Celestia is most certainly NOT a tyrant and I am NOT Nightmare Moon. Nightmare is gone. Forever.”
There was silence as the two moon ponies threw dubious glances to each other.
Luna softened her tone and tried again. “Look at this place. A thousand years have passed since you were last awake. I was exiled, I returned and Nightmare Moon was stripped from me by the Elements of Harmony. I am just Luna now, as I was before.”
Alembic was the first to crack, putting her hooves to her face in wonderment. “Is it true? Is it really true? No more war?”
Luna shucked her armour into an untidy pile and regarded it with distaste. Her headache was worsening and she felt ready to fall asleep on her hooves. “I shall be returning to Canterlot Castle shortly to take breakfast with my sister and there will be no issue more acrimonious between us than who shall eat the last doughnut. The war is not only over, it has been forgotten by most of ponykind. It’s just a legend to them now.”
Both Alembic and Retort were beaming. “It’s true, the princess is back! No more weapons or nasty death rays!”
Luna suddenly found herself at the bottom of an impromptu ponypile. “Princess! We missed you!”
Luna allowed the familiarity. They were not real ponies of course, just moondust and Luna’s magic, but they had served her for hundreds of years and she felt comfortable with them in a way that she could not be amongst flesh and blood ponies. After all, although they were independent, they were technically a part of her own mind, incapable of judging her or turning against her.
‘But I still feel that I have missed something important.’ With a growing sense of unease Luna checked the inside of the vault. The piles of lunar dust were greatly diminished. ‘I must have passed out after rebuilding these two. But such a task is trivial, even in my youth I could assemble moon-ponies by the hoof-full, yet now I am totally exhausted.’
Luna critically regarded her creations, who were conversing animatedly between themselves. ‘That is most curious. Being fragments of my own mind, they rarely needed to talk to each other in the past.’
“Alembic, come here a moment please.”
“Yes my princess.”
Designed when Luna was just an adolescent, Alembic was simply stunning; she was a testament to Luna’s magical ability, artistic eye and what had, at the time, been a rather pressing need to have examples of her historically significant collection of saucy maid outfits on more or less permanent display. Her footfalls were filled with the confident strength of perfect legs, softened by a coquettish sway to her haunches and the playful dance of her tail.
Just watching her breathe was poetry.
‘Wait... Breathe? These ponies are creatures of magic. They only need to breathe when they talk.’
Luna suddenly felt a queasiness in her stomach that had nothing to do with the fuming beverage eating its way through the stone floor behind her. “Oh no. Celestia is going to kill me.”
Alembic was understandably alarmed. “Princess? Do you mean the war isn’t over after all?”
Luna now understood why she was exhausted. “You are alive. Really alive. Both of you. I am going to have to explain to my dear sister casually over breakfast how I just decided on a drunken whim to introduce a new intelligent species to Equestria.”
‘But that isn’t the big problem. There is something else I’m missing. What was Retort saying earlier about Celestia’s soldiers being here? My head feels like it is full of pink fluffy felt.'
Retort chose that moment to speak, an abacus and sextant dancing beside him in an deep blue aura as he made calculations. “You will be a little late for breakfast princess. We may be underground and warded, but the pull of the moon is still strong beneath us. Judging by the declination of the mystic body I would reckon it to be about four in the afternoon.”
With a sigh, Luna closed her tired eyes and reached out for her Moon, feeling it gliding through the aether beneath Equestria like a content whale. The feel of Celestia’s magical signature was all over it.
Luna held the moon in her mind’s grasp, gently nudging it into a closer approximation of a perfect transit. Celestia never could get moonset quite right, but this particular time it felt like she had dunked the moon below the horizon like a basketball player shooting a hoop.
Judging by the position of the moon it was exactly 4.15pm and judging by the mood of Celestia’s magical residue on the celestial object, she had most certainly not been enjoying a relaxing morning when she had caused it to set.
“Oh, buck me. Celly really is going to kill me.”
-- c --
The sunlight was fading, throwing long shadows through the elaborate topiary of the castle gardens as a freshly bathed Luna collapsed onto her lavish bed, exhausted but largely content. A tightly bound scroll bearing Celestia's cutie mark floated by her side, flanked by an elegant cut crystal flask and glass.
Certainly, the day had been a shambles, but upon reflection she felt that there was much to celebrate. After all, her plans were underway. Before leaving, she had given Alembic and Retort their very own prioritised task lists, what little advice she could muster regarding modern Equestria and some bits with which to begin the rebuilding of her laboratory.
Luna could not help rubbing her hooves together with glee. If the procurement of raw materials went smoothly, it could be ready for preliminary work within a day. She would only have an hour or two to sleep, but in the heady days of the second renaissance she had been known for going days without sleep when conducting her magical experiments.
Luna ignored the glass and took a thoughtful swig of amber fluid from the bottle. Things had been a little rough with Celly this afternoon, but it could have been much, much worse.
Announcing her return to Canterlot by simply teleporting right into the anteroom of the day court had seemed like such a wonderful idea at the time. The anteroom was private enough for her to get her mane in order and she could see Celly right away, to set her sister's mind at ease without wasting time in flight or dealing with the guard. Trot right up to the throne wearing Equestria’s best poker face. "Hi sis, sorry I’m a little late. Caught up in things."
All that Luna had succeeded in doing was scaring the life out of a family of petitioning carrot farmers from Ponyville and nearly ensuring the total destruction of the throne room at the hooves of an overexcited contingent of Celestia’s royal guard.
She had been so tired and her headache had been so distracting, under the circumstances Luna felt that it was quite forgivable that she had misjudged her teleport, landing just inside the main doors of the throne room. It was also perfectly understandable given her state of mind that she had also forgotten to remove the incredibly menacing spiked champron.
And how could she possibly have known beforehand that Celly, having called a state of emergency, had stationed twenty of her best and most trusted unicorn guards at the base of her dias, all of them quaking in their armour since attending the secret briefing that had told them Nightmare Moon might be returning to take their beloved Celestia away from them again. Or at the very least, to expect an attack from one of her nasty pets.
The shocked tableau of her arrival had held for almost a full minute. In retrospect, Luna had to chuckle, she could easily picture how it must have looked from her sister’s or the petitioner’s points of view. She poured herself a respectful glass of brandy and settled into the covers as she imagined the events gaudily spread across the front pages of tomorrow’s ‘Equestria Daily’. It would, without doubt, centre on the breathless testimony of the terrified carrot farmers who had been unfortunate enough to have been standing before the throne.
She could just imagine how the interview must have progressed.
The reporter:
“Please, tell me in your own words, what in Equestria happened in there?”
Carrot farmer #1:
"We came here by hoof, all the way to Canterlot, to petition the kind Princess for tax relief, just like we do every year. The Harvest family works hard, but carrot's just don't sell like they used to. I blame all that junk food they force onto the foals these days. Not a-one of them knows what real food tastes like anymore! There ought to be a law. When I was a foal they.."
Carrot farmer #2:
"Dad! That's not what they want to hear. It started with a high pitched whining noise, getting louder and louder. A swirling blue cloud appeared at the end of the room. Then..."
Reporter:
"Yes?"
Carrot farmer #2:
"Bang!"
"Carrot farmer #1:
"Aaagh!" (Checks pacemaker)
"Carrot farmer #2:
"We were bowled over by a huge magical blast. When we came to our senses, we were merciless at the brute’s feet. It was terrible, the beast; a dusty grey-blue atrocity with hock length spikes coming right out of its head. It smelt like nothing blessed by nature and it was glowering at us with horrible bloodshot eyes from inside a choking cloud of nasty grey dust.”
Carrot farmer #1:
“Princess Celestia’s horn was a-glowing like the end of the world, a huge ball of lightning was getting bigger and bigger at the tip. Some of the guards were building up spells of their own, some where making shields. Some of them just fainted! Not at all like the guards in my day. Why, my own brother was a royal guard and he told me..”
Carrot farmer #2:
“Dad!"
"We thought we were done for. The horrible beast lifted it gaze from us to our glorious Princess...”
Reporter:
“And?"
Carrot farmer #2:
“Umm... Then it fell over. They made us all leave after that.”
Things could have become quite nasty, but as luck would have it, Luna had immediately passed out, landing squarely on her face in front of an appalled Celestia.
And that had saved her. An assault from the royal guard was not really that serious a matter, the magical champron itself probably would have been enough protection against ordinary soldiers. More importantly, her undignified collapse had saved Luna from having to deal with an angry and upset Celestia.
She had awoken in the castle infirmary. The doctors told her that Celestia had waited by her bedside for as long as she could spare but had to leave to deal with military matters. Apparently there was some kind of exercise going on.
Celestia had left a scroll on her bedside table, sealed with her sigil, for Luna's eyes only.
My Dear Sister,
I don’t know exactly what you were trying to achieve with your drunken prank earlier today, or where you found that hideous contrivance you were wearing, but I can at least take some comfort in the fact that you are feeling happy enough to want to play tricks on the castle guests, like you did in times past.
I would caution you, however, that these times in which we now live are far removed from those turbulent days you knew before the advent of Nightmare Moon. Dragons have become a rarity, minotaurs and griffins are largely assimilated into society and the gates of Tartarus stay firmly shut. Most of the time. The citizens of Equestria no longer need to deal regularly with conflict or disaster and have become a little soft and effete. Such is the cost of stability. I do think that this current state of affairs is preferable, even if it is a little dull in comparison to the life we have known in more ‘interesting’ times.
I have made a statement to the press, I would expect that you will issue one of your own and follow it up with an apology to the petitioners, and possibly a moderate gratuity at your own discretion.
Most importantly, where in wide green Equestria did you find a bottle of distilled moonbeam? You smelt so strongly of spirit I advised the doctors to keep you away from naked flames. The next time you dig up some of that foul brew you have to share, I have not tasted your speciality for hundreds of years. Please do keep it away from the mortals though. You do remember what happened last time, don't you? I recall it took you a nearly a week to clean off the near surface of the moon.
I have decided to take your warning from yesterday more seriously as I too have felt the signature of Nightmare Moon, from the direction of the Everfree Forest. I don’t want to sound like Mother, but when you did not come home I became worried and launched a search mission. I have told the royal guard that it was an exercise and so have earned myself the tedious task of evaluating their performances this evening and writing reports.
Take the night off and sleep in a little, I’ll raise the moon this time. We can talk over breakfast.
I remember what moonbeam hangovers feel like.
Celly.
‘An exercise? Oh, Clever. Celly was always good at turning the unexpected to her advantage, even the most egregious mistakes. I guess that I can follow her example and do the same. I can allow her to think that I was simply pulling a drunken prank.’
Everything had turned out for the best. Celly had calmed down, Luna’s plans were under way. Even her headache had ceased, once that damnable champron had been removed. Some wag had hung it on the wall at the foot of her bed in place of the ancient portrait of Starswirl that usually occupied that position. None of the servants were so bold, it must have been one of her Night Guard.
‘I do feel bad for the trouble that I caused for Celly. I think I should make it up to her with a gift. Something that shows that, while we may fight and have little misunderstandings, we still love each other.’
Watching through her window as the shadows lengthened in the royal gardens, Luna hummed a lay of lost and redeemed love that had been ancient even at the time of her banishment. She had no trouble at all picturing Lady Twilight Sparkle as the protagonist, in a beautiful brocade and velvet gown as she swooned dramatically into Sir Luna’s armoured embrace, a knight of Equestria doomed by her sworn and deadly quest to rid the east of troublesome dragons.
It suddenly struck Luna as desperately unfair the she should be experiencing the heady joys of a new-found love when her dutiful sister was stuck with administrative duties and boring reports.
‘How long has it been since Celly has had any.. well, action.. at all?’ Luna mused. There had been no mention in historical texts of Celestia having had any consorts at all over the last millennia, official or even just rumoured. There was not even a hint of gossip. It was as if the population were afraid of the idea that their Perfect Celestia may be an ordinary pony with needs of her own.
‘Celly is smart enough to know that too. As the sole ruler of Equestria for a millenia she has taken on all of the responsibility meant to be shared between the both of us. If she believes that the people need to see her as a perfect being devoid of the emotional frailties of mortals, just to have confidence in her rule, then that is the image that she will portray. No matter what it may cost her.’
Luna sipped her brandy and felt a pang of loneliness on behalf of her long-suffering sister. Surely, there must be some way in which she could help break this solitary deadlock. Who in Equestria knew Celly and what Celly really needed better than her loving sister?
Luna’s eyes grew wide as the pieces of a plan fell into place.
‘Oh, I have the perfect idea!’