//------------------------------// // Full Moon on the loose // Story: Getting out of Hell // by Draco Rex Solis //------------------------------// Narrator 1000 years ago, Celestia used the Elements of Harmony tobanish her little sister, Luna, to the Moon because her jealousy transformed her on a monster called Nightmare Moon. For a thousand years, she suffered with solitude despite being surrounded by thousands of ponies who idolized her as the goddess of the Sun and, after a few generations, the Moon. For a thousand years she wept on the darkest part of her castle, so that nopony could see her on her weakest. Celestia went as far as label their old castle as a dangerous and haunted place, made by a mad pony whose spirit still lives in the castle, “The Everfree Castle” was the named that she gave to it. But of course there were some who knew what was this castle true name, the followers of Nightmare Moon, the ones who followed her on the 10 years of war that occurred after her transformation, the Thestrals. After her banishment, they too were banished from Equestria, or at least from the area near Mount Canterhorn, but, a few days per year, they went there to mourn the loss of the night queen, and pray for her return, a practice that was passed from generation to generation. Little did they know that she never went. Narrator – Nightmare 3rd POV While the Elements worked and banished her, her body entered a stasis state and was sent to the moon, while her spirit remained on Equus. After the Elements rainbow hit her, she thought that they failed and tried to attack Celestia, only to phase through her, but she tried again and again, but she always passed through her, only then she noticed that the Elements worked, and how they worked, and once she noticed this, she wept. For a thousand years, she saw what Celestia did, the banishment of the Thestrals, abandonment of their old castle because the forest became too much dangerous, and its subsequent renaming, she saw the construction of Canterlord, and she saw how her followers mourned her banishment. She saw so many things that many she forgot, but the one who stuck with her the most, was when she noticed that the ponies, encouraged by Celestia ( AKA changing books and notes ) forgot about her, idolizing Celestia as the princess of the sun and the moon, and for a thousand years she wept in solitude, much like her sister. But while one of them wept for her lost sister, the other, fueled by her own jealousy, wept for revenge, for the lost chance to defeat her sister. Both mourned in solitude, but for very different motives. For a thousand years, Nightmare waited for her magic to regenerate enough so that she could bring her body and spirit together once again, and while she waited, she schemed. 10 years ago, she gathered enough magic to be able to manifest herself as a mist, and through this mist, she talked to her followers, saying that her return was near, but also said that this time she would engage her sister on her own, she knew how much Celestia mourned what she did, and she knew that she would not be able to attack her own sister. But still there was one hole in her plans, the Elements were deactivated because they lost their tune with them, but like last time, they didn’t took the Elements, the Elements chose them as their bearers, this wouldn’t be bad, she would simply use her mist to move then, but she noticed that, despite her using all her strength and magic, the Elements wouldn't budge, she would need something more physical to move them, and Celestia had already banned the thestrals from entering the castle, fearing that they would grab the Elements. But everything would change exactly 3 months before she could gather enough power to return her body, when an event that would give most scientists a headache happened. An event that was prophesied by Queen Faust over a thousand years ago. Nightmare Moon POV – Castle of the Two Sisters For the past decades we have been stalking the area near our old castle, especially Canterlord and that Ponyville, for any being that didn't flee when they saw us, but to little gain. Celestia, with her oh so bright brain, had transformed us into a monster on a children's tale, one who would devour them if they didn't respected us, she didn't hid our existence, she only changed how the events that had led to our banishment happened. Little did we knew, that destiny itself was helping us. We were once again pacing back and forth in front of the stone tree that held the Elements breaking our minds trying to discover how to move the Elements on our own, when a bright red light covered the entire castle, blinding us. We closed our spiritual eyes as hard as we could while we waited for the light show to end, we could see the light dimming through my eyelids. When it reduced to an acceptable brightness, we opened them and saw that they came from the hallway. While we were making my way over there, we felt something that we didn’t recognize, something old but powerful, probably on the same power level of an alicorn or stronger, but despite that it seemed to be suppressed, because if Celestia felt something that had this power she would be here in a matter of seconds, that only made us more eager to see what could make a light so bright that it encompassed the entire castle. We noticed that the light was emanating from somewhere inside the throne room, phasing through the wall, we saw something that could only be described as aberrations. Lying there on the ground were 3 pony like beings that were as tall as alicorns, but that’s where the similarities ended, because what was lying in front of me, had scales, sharp teeth, dragon like tails and claws, they looked like Kirins of the legends, but the legends never mentioned that they had claws, and they certainly didn't mention that they were this big. Moving closer to them we could see them clearer, there was a big red one which looked to be a male, that was one to two heads taller than me, and the other, which seemed to be female and male, respectively, were purple and orange, and were slight bigger than us when we were Luna. All three of them were similar, same 4 front facing horns, same amount of claws on each hoof and even their manes, which connected to their tail fur, looked like fire. Looking to the wall that emanated the light and the energy that we felt, we saw a fading heptagram, 7 used runes on each point,. We was moving closer to inspect the strange language that felt familiar for some reason, when the big red jumped to his feet faster than a scared cat, startling me so much that we nearly jumped through the roof. Floating down, we could see that he was scared of something, heavy breathing, looking around for foes, muscles tensed… Big, strong muscles… “COMPOSE YOURSELF!!!" My inner voice yelled at me. Shaking our head, we tried to clear my mind of that strange thought, we were so distracted with it, that we only saw that the red one fell when the purple one snickered, we heard them say something, but we couldn’t make head or tails of what they were saying, the smaller ones were quick to make to their hoofs, but the big one had some trouble before he managed to stand, wobbling a bit. “Strange, it looks like he never stood up before, even though he clearly looks like an adult.” While the orange one was talking, the 3 suddenly tensed and looked to the door, we was expecting Celestia to appear there, but we didn’t felt her signature, instead, they ran out of the room. A few minutes later To say that we were impressed would be an understatement, the 3 Kirins defended that little yellow pegasus from a pack of timberwolves without even breaking a sweat, of course, there are far more dangerous beings here on the Everfree, but we’ve never seen magic used like that, it was more brutal and raw than most unicorns used, they even used it on their horns and claws to extend them! And like a unicorn, each one had a different aura, the big red kirin was a fiery red with a bit of golden on the edges, the purple kirin had a bright purple aura and the orange kirin had an bright orange aura. And despite being so similar in body and even in brutality, each had a different style, the big kirin was the more brutish of the trio, preferring fighting with his claws and horns, throwing one on ravine with his horns and bucking the other against a tree the purple kirin somehow condensed her magic into dual spiked whips, which she used to traverse the distance between her and the timberwolves, crushing one with her hind claws and dismembering the other with her jaws, and the orange kirin was a mix between a fighter and a mage, using his magic to attack the timberwolves from affair, burning one to ashes and grabbing the other one, pulling it to him and ripping it in half with his fore claws. To our surprise, they didn’t even got scared when the timberwolves ( the ones who didn’t burned to ashes ) merged into a king timberwolf, only a little startled and I could see a bit of curiosity on their eyes. The big one moved forwards, stopping a few meters from the king timberwolf … and went biped. Our eyes became as wide as dinner plates as he became 2 to 3 times taller than his quadruped size, I could even hear his bones popping as they readjusted themselves, the other 2 weren’t even phased by this sudden transformation. Did we missed anything? We are pretty sure that we were with them the whole time. Then they charged. This was one of the quickest battles, if not THE quickest battle, with a king timberwolf that I had ever seen, first, the red kirin dodged the charge of the king timberwolf, sinking his claws deep on the wooden flesh of the beast, throwing it against a tree with a nasty, burning cut on his side. Unfazed, the king timberwolf got to its feet and got ready to charge again, but the red kirin moved his head back and am orange glow appeared on his throat. The king timberwolf finished its wind up and charged, but got reduced to ashes together with a 20 meters area behind it, as the fire breath from the red kirin blasted him, if our jaw could get any lower it would unhinge itself. After the quick battle, the red kirin got back to his quadruped form and went back to the others who were tending to the yellow pegasus and the purple one talking to a rabbit, they discussed something, the purple one looked distressed and the red one was audibly sighing. After a few minutes he nodded, picked both the pegasus and the rabbit, put both of them on his back, and together with the purple and the orange kirins, started running on the direction of Ponyville faster than anything that we had ever seen, and we were left to our thoughts. “They could help us,” We started to talk to ourselves. "If we manage to find a way to talk to them, they could help us not only hide, but if they use that strange magic, they could possibly destroy the Elements!" After this little brainstorm, we floated back to the Elements room to think about this little hindrance in our plans, the damned day of our sister slowly making itself know on the horizon. Narrator While these events were happening at the Everfree forest, a sealed tomb underneath a lava lake started to crack, on the outside, dragons flied and swan on the lava, playing with each other ( wrestling, fighting, etc ), unaware of the danger that was awakening below the surface…