"Of course, me! Who better to teach the subtle art of misdirection and manipulation than the Grrrreat and Powerful—"
"No, but—and please don't take this the wrong way—we can't stand each other."
"Hmph! Such pettiness is beneath Trixie! She is willing to tolerate the presence of the common pony—"
"Trixie."
"Ugh. Fine, Starlight twisted my ear. Happy, Princess?"
"Well, I can believe that at least. Let's just get this over with, okay? This is as uncomfortable for me as it is for you."
"Trixie suffers from no such discomf—ahem, right. Look, you've got a problem with a vain and petty tyrant, right?"
"What?! That's a terrible thing to say!"
"She got herself banished for a thousand years by Celestia, the paragon of virtue and second chances, because she wanted people to like her and think the things she made were pretty. Then, the second she comes back, retaliates by banishing Celestia and stealing the Equestrian throne, and plunges the world into eternal night to prove a point."
"…okay, so maybe a tiny bit petty and tyrannical. Why does it matter?"
"Because the only way to get a personality like that to trust you is to make her respect you first. To do that, you're not going to be able to do your usual…friendshippy…thing."
"Okay, I'll bite. What do I have to do instead?"
"Instead, Sparkle, you've got to beat her at her own game."
Nightmare stood over the dazed Twilight Sparkle, sneering triumphantly. This was her domain, and she had no intention of letting some upstart dimensional interloper mock her.
Twilight groaned soundlessly, the purple haze around her having resolved to a coat-tight shielding spell that distorted her features slightly and rippled and wavered slowly. At length, the younger alicorn regained her bearings, and her eyes focused on Nightmare. To Nightmare's immense irritation, the expression on Twilight Sparkle's face was not that of abject terror, but rather the same sunny smile from several nights ago.
Then, to Nightmare's confusion, Twilight Sparkle held up a hoof, in the universal sign for 'just a moment'. Then, she screwed up her face in concentration, her horn glowed briefly, and before Nightmare could react, her ears popped.
"—llo? Can you hear me? This should be coming through now," came Twilight Sparkle's voice, inches from Nightmare's ears.
Nightmare started and jerked away from the other alicorn. Her voice had a faint, tinny quality, as though it were coming from the other end of a long tunnel, but the sound itself was close enough that Nightmare would have sworn the speaker was standing directly behind her.
"Oh! It's not too loud is it? I can turn it down," said Twilight Sparkle, her tinny voice somehow bridging the airless void between them.
Nightmare scowled and shook her head, stepping back and allowing the other alicorn to stand. The moment of fiery rage at the invasion into her domain had cooled, to be replaced with weary resignation. Being angry at Twilight Sparkle was like being angry at a large bowl of pudding—unsatisfying, unlikely to have any effect other than dirtying one's coat, and quite ineffective at making any impression on the pudding. It was clear that Twilight Sparkle was both impossible to intimidate by traditional means and oblivious at any attempts to do so. Nightmare sighed silently, allowing the airless void to swallow the sound, and settled back onto her haunches.
"Oh, good! And it's working on my end too! Could you say something again? I don't think I quite got that just now," Twilight Sparkle chirped.
Or perhaps her sigh hadn't been quite so silent. Nightmare eyed the younger alicorn for a long moment. "You've devised a spell for communicating in airless environments, haven't you." It was not a question.
Twilight Sparkle's brilliant smile returned. "I have! The hardest part was figuring out a medium to carry the sound, but I came across Aural Calcium's research into bone conduction and everything fell into place after that! The synchronization weakens if we get too far from each other, but it should be at least functional up to about fifty meters, though after more than about twenty, we'll start getting delays."
Nightmare closed her eyes and gently rubbed a temple with a hooftip. She could feel the beginnings of a headache pulsing at the base of her skull. "Why are you here, Sparkle?" Nightmare asked. It was clear that Twilight Sparkle had intentionally lured her here by using the bell, and her sister's old codes. "It is late, I am tired, and you are impossible. If you are quite done showing off, I would like to get to the point."
Twilight Sparkle's expression grew determined. "Right! Tonight, I'm here to offer you something tangible."
"And why, Sparkle," Nightmare sighed, "should I deal with you?"
"Because," she said brightly, "I have information that will let you secure your power, and safeguard Equestria."
"And why," Nightmare replied flatly, "should I not just rip the knowledge from you by force?"
"Well," Twilight Sparkle said, "I lured you to the very heart of your power, alone, using a signal that only one other pony alive knows, and am standing in space despite no connection to a cosmological body, unharmed and apparently unafraid. And let's not forget that I was confident enough to let you shackle my magic the first time we met!
"So," she finished, her smile notably sharper, "you're welcome to try."
Nightmare blinked. Then, she found herself reevaluating Twilight Sparkle. Over the course of her two—three if she counted the original, she supposed—encounters with the younger alicorn, she had begun to think of Twilight Sparkle as soft and weak, if not in raw strength, then in spirit. It seemed, however, that the girl had a core of buried steel after all.
"Fine," she said, "Speak your piece. What do you propose?"
"I'm going to offer you two pieces of information. The first I'll give you for free, but you'll need to earn the second. The first piece of information is everything I know about Chrysalis, one of the threats I mentioned. I have reason to believe that she's the most likely to attack you in the near future, and that her plans haven't diverged too far from my own timeline."
"And the second piece of information?" Nightmare asked, raising an eyebrow.
"How to activate the Elements of Harmony. And you're missing the Element of Magic entirely, aren't you?"
Nightmare carefully said nothing.
"I know how to find it. And," she said, stressing the word, "I'm willing to share."
"And what concessions would you require from me before you do so?"
Twilight Sparkle held up her hoof. "Before I tell you, you need to know that this is a package deal. If you refuse to attempt what I demand in exchange for information about the Elements, I won't tell you anything about Chrysalis either. However, I'll give you two options to earn the Elements information. The first option is very simple—defeat me, here and now, in a magical duel. No lethal force, but anything goes otherwise." Twilight Sparkle paused and waited.
"An astonishingly arrogant claim to make when you stand upon my moon," Nightmare said. Privately, however, she was nervous. Either Twilight Sparkle was a supremely talented actress, or she was very confident that she could match Nightmare in a duel. Given what she had seen of the other alicorn so far, Nightmare was beginning to think that underestimating her would be foolish in the extreme. "I assume that if I lose, the information about the Elements would be forfeit?"
"Correct," Twilight Sparkle nodded. "I would, however, still tell you about Chrysalis."
"And the second option?" Nightmare asked.
Twilight Sparkle lowered her hoof and smiled. "The second option is even simpler! All you would have to do is speak with you sister."
There were several long moments of silence. Twilight Sparkle's smile remained, unwavering as the mountains.
"What," said Nightmare Moon.
"Option two is having a nice, peaceful chat with your sister. You know, Celestia? Princess of the Sun?"
"Sparkle. Perhaps I have not been clear," Nightmare spat. "My sister is sealed in the moon. She is incorporeal. She is not conscious, aware, or even truly on this plane of existence. Even were I inclined to take you up on your offer, she is not available for tea and biscuits," she finished with a huff.
Twilight Sparkle's grin grew a touch nervous, and she looked away. "We-ell…funny thing about prisons. They're pretty good at keeping things in, but not so great at keeping things out."
Nightmare groaned and rubbed her temple with her hooftip more vigorously. Her headache had apparently redoubled its efforts. "Next you will tell me that you've already discovered a way to free her and are simply waiting for the dramatically appropriate moment to do so."
Twilight Sparkle's grin faded, and her expression grew serious. "No. The moon is still yours. Even if I wanted to, I don't think there's anypony who could free your sister while you still control the moon. I can just… bend the rules a little." She began and lit up her horn. "You see, all it takes is a dash of portal magic," she said. A small, vertically-oriented disk of magenta magic appeared floating next to her, opaque, gently swirling and about the size of her head. "Then, a touch of dimensional phase shifting, aligned just so," she continued. The disc rippled, and the interior grey hazy and indistinct. "And finally, a touch of dream magic to make the connection," she said, and lit her horn one final time. Instead of the usual magenta color, this time her magic was a deep, late-sunset blue.
The surface of the portal rippled and crackled, and then the image in its center flashed white, before slowly resolving into a recognizable shape.
It was her sister.
Not the half-imagined specter of Celestia that had haunted her dreams and waking moments alike. Her pure-white coat, her multicolored mane and tail, her large, graceful frame. Confronted directly with her sister, Nightmare wondered how she had ever mistaken Twilight Sparkle for her. Celestia was facing away from the portal and laying on her side, staring into the indistinct distance. Nightmare approached the portal, drawn inexorably toward the window into her sister's existence.
Nightmare noticed that Twilight Sparkle was completely hidden from the portal's line of sight. If Celestia were to turn around, she would only see Nightmare. Movement from within the portal drew Nightmare's eye back to it.
At first, it just appeared to be the gentle rise and fall of her sister's chest and shoulders as she breathed. But as Nightmare continued watching, she saw that at the peak of each inhalation and valley of each exhalation, her sister's shoulders shook. It took her several long repetitions of this before she realized what she was seeing.
Her sister was crying.
Not the huge, wracking, shuddering heaves of heartbreak. Not the desperate weeping of fury or helplessness. Instead, they were the quiet, breathless, hopeless sobs of surrender. The sounds of a creature with an infinite reservoir of misery, and the bitter understanding that there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
Nightmare stepped back, eyes wide, and for just a moment, she was a thousand years younger. She had retreated to her room, furious and ashamed at some public slight. She had curled up alone, whimpering and sobbing for hours. The entire time, she had miserably entertained beautiful fantasies of somepony, anypony, hearing her sounds of anguish, and coming in to comfort her.
But no one had come. No one ever came. She was alone.
Just like her sister.
She stumbled back, shaking her head, and without conscious thought, she lit her horn and fired a beam of tightly-focused magic at the portal. The beam lanced through the portal, passing through it and out the other side, continuing into the starry void. The influx of extra magic disturbed the delicate matrices holding the spell together, and the portal swirled and warped like water meeting oil, then tore apart into magical sparks.
"No. No. No, no, no, no! We will duel, Twilight Sparkle, and the void will tear the secrets from your flesh!"
Twilight Sparkle only sighed and adopted an expression of resignation. "I'm disappointed in you Luna. It's your choice, though. Remember, nothing lethal."
"Do not call me that!" Nightmare roared and fired her opening salvo—a blast of teal magic as tall and wide around as she was.
Twilight Sparkle disappeared with a flash of magenta magic and reappeared several feet away. Nightmare swung her horn around, still spewing the enormous beam of magic. Twilight Sparkle teleported again and disappeared this time. Nightmare cut off the flood of magic just in time to feel something charging behind her. Reflexively, she raised a shield just in time to feel it repel several lances of magical energy.
With a single flap of her enormous wings, Nightmare took to the heavens, blending in with the starry void behind her. She reduced the strength of her shield until it was nearly invisible. It would stop most minor attacks, without illuminating her against dark backdrop.
Twilight Sparkle planted her hooves and ran her horn through the motions of an energy siphoning spell, before launching it on a pulse of magenta magic. Nightmare knocked it aside with a contemptuous sweep of her horn and countered with a localized gravitational increase, centered on Twilight Sparkle. Nightmare heard the other alicorn's grunt of pain and smirked; the communication spell was still active.
The ground beneath Twilight Sparkle began to collapse in a perfectly circular pattern under the force of Nightmare's spell. With a shout of effort, Twilight Sparkle disappeared into another teleport. The colorful cascade of magenta sparks left behind belied its hasty inefficiency—Twilight Sparkle was getting sloppy under pressure.
Nightmare stopped channeling the gravity spell and peered around, looking for any sign of her opponent. For several long moments, she was unable to sense anything, before she detected a faint twinge of something directly above her. She looked up in time to see Twilight Sparkle angled directly downward, horn-first and approaching fast.
Nightmare grimaced and fired several rapid bursts of magic that Twilight Sparkle easily rolled away from. Nightmare took a single silent moment to focus before reorienting on the rapidly approaching alicorn. She was so close now, there was no way Nightmare could miss.
Nightmare narrowed her eyes and realized she had an opportunity to end the fight right here. However, the instant she began charging her horn, Twilight Sparkle's expression changed to one of triumph. The younger alicorn gave an enormous, magically-aided flap of her wings, and poured on the speed. Nightmare's eyes widened, and she fired her beam early, half-charged and still unfocused. It caught Twilight Sparkle in the upper chest but was unable to arrest her terrible momentum. In the instant before the two collided, Nightmare's eyes caught a glint of silver, and the flash of magenta.
Then, collision. The world became a spinning blur of silvery moon, blue-green Equestrian jewel, and starry void. Nightmare bit, kicked, and spat the entire way down, and then the mass of entangled alicorn crashed into the moon with an enormous puff of silvery moondust. Nightmare surged to her hooves, and dropped the tattered remnants of her shield so she could—
PAIN
COLD
She barely felt herself fall. All she knew was that suddenly everything was sideways, and the surface of the moon was pressing against her barrel and the side of her face. She gasped ineffectually, her lungs suddenly feeling too empty, like shriveled balloons. There was pain, like hundreds of tiny pinpricks across every inch of her body. Tears gathered in her eyes, only to boil away into thousands of particles that drifted away from her eyes before freezing into tiny crystalline stars of ice. Her hooves scrabbled uselessly as she attempted to regain her bearings, but another lance of pain crackled through her. She attempted to gasp again, only to choke uselessly on the vacuum around her.
A purple hoof entered her field of vision, and her head was gently lifted. Through her blurring vision, she could vaguely make out a purple blob, and twinkling in front of it were, blazingly bright, five letters spelling a single word in magical light.
YIELD
She shook her head and jerked away, swinging her hoof wildly, blindly. She gasped and choked again, and the pain screamed through her again. Her legs were beginning to stiffen, and she could no longer feel her hooves. Her head was lifted again, more forcefully this time, and the words blazed in front of her dimming vision once more.
YIELD!
Her ever-feebler struggles ceased, and she shut her eyes. Defeated, she nodded once.
The cold vanished, and a final wave of pain blasted through her. She shuddered, and her chest heaved, and she took in great gasping breaths. There was still no air to breathe, but her lungs no longer seemed to mind, and the horrible empty feeling began to dissipate. Slowly, her vision began to resolve back into coherent shapes, and sensation returned to her hooves.
Standing over her and wearing a concerned expression, was Twilight Sparkle, looking the worse for wear. A huge, scorched star stood upon her chest, still smoldering slightly, and she was covered from horn to hoof in moon dust. Floating in her telekinetic grasp was the magical suppression ring that she had worn on her first visit to Nightmare's chambers. Nightmare shuddered—it hadn't just suppressed her magic; it had completely severed her connection to the moon. "Just a little sleight of hoof," Twilight Sparkle said. "You were so busy watching me, you didn't look at what I was holding."
"Thought…" Nightmare gasped, "said…nothing lethal…"
"Unprotected vacuum exposure isn't," Twilight Sparkle said, guilt evident in her tone and expression both. "Not to an alicorn. I tested it on myself first. I had my Luna take me to the moon and put the ring on me." She shuddered. "I'd hoped I wouldn't have to use it against you. I know it's horrible. But, well, you do kind of have an advantage here," she finished with a halfhearted smile, and looked away.
Nightmare gaped at Twilight Sparkle, speechless. And then she gasped out a wheezing laugh. "Of course. Of course you did," she managed, before devolving into hacking coughs.
Twilight Sparkle waited for Nightmare to recover before continuing. "So. You chose the hard option, and you lost. I'm sorry, but that means I can only give you the information about Chrysalis." Twilight Sparkle said, levitating her saddlebag out of a distant crater, and retrieving a scroll from it. She carefully moved the scroll over to Nightmare before gently setting it on the ground in front of her, kicking up a gentle puff of moondust.
Nightmare stared at the scroll for a moment. "If I had rejected your offer entirely. Decided not to play your little game. What would you have done?" She staggered upright, picked up the scroll in her right hoof, and spent a moment inspecting it. "You clearly feel this Chrysalis is a threat, and seek to protect Equestria from her."
Twilight bent down and began rummaging in her saddlebag. "You're not the only one capable of protecting Equestria. Believe it or not, I came to you first because I wanted to help you, not just Equestria. I think it would be good for you to do something in service of your kingdom instead of the other way around, that's all."
Nightmare raised an eyebrow at the scroll held in her hoof. "This...is a public relations tool," she said flatly. "So that I can be seen to defeat an obvious threat and look good doing it."
"That's kind of cynical," Twilight Sparkle said frowning. "Think of it more as a chance to do some good," she said, finally retrieving a second scroll from her saddlebag. "Now," she said, "We're pretty much out of time." And sure enough, purple motes of light had begun to drift from her horn once again, "So I'm going to leave you with one last thing. Call it a show of good faith. Instructions for the spell I used to contact your sister," Twilight Sparkle said, levitating the second scroll over.
Nightmare transferred the scroll she was holding into her telekinesis, satisfied to note its steadiness. She took the new scroll and peered at it closely for a moment. She looked up again and was surprised to find that Twilight Sparkle was now scarce inches away from her and looking at her soulfully.
"Please consider it. You're very important to her," Twilight Sparkle said, drawing back and looking her in the eye. "And I think that she is to you, too. Even if you can't admit it." She retreated, slung her saddlebag across her back, and in a rush of purple sparks, was gone, whisked away to her own universe once more.
Nightmare Moon spent several long moments staring at nothing, before shifting her gaze to the scroll levitating in her telekinetic grasp. She eyed it carefully, and held it at a distance, the way one might a volatile magical experiment. A way to contact her sister without risking breaching containment. A way to…what? Make amends? To demand apologies? To berate her sister for abandoning her?
No one ever came.
No. The time for that had passed. She had done things that her sister could never forgive. Better to just burn it. Better to close that chapter in her life for good.
Resolute, she lit her horn.