Sunny wanted to avoid having an incident with the food after the first day of teaching. Nightmare Moon had snatched up one of the soldiers and threatened to eat them if she wasn't treated to food at regular intervals as befit her status. She was taken seriously and the soldiers themselves rushed back to the city to come back with an assortment of fruits and raw vegetables. It wasn't a rich meal, but food was food, and Dimples could see that every bite pleased the alicorn greatly. After all, a legendary being was in their midst, so even if she didn't act upon her threats, no pony wanted to throw those dice. Worst of all was the moon losing the figure upon it. The moon itself had come upon the land, and no pony could understand it. Only the citizens of Snowfege knew, and the mayor informed them all the next morning to keep the event a secret and that he had everything under control.
Obviously, many didn't believe him, but since the alicorn had done nothing since her appearance and hadn't actively tried to destroy anything, they didn't have much reason to doubt his words. Still, the mayor was certainly trying to find a solution to house the alicorn temporarily.
"I wonder if I should tell the mayor that this alicorn should remain here in the castle," Sunny Dimple thought to himself. He watched the alicorn write a few of the forty-eight letters of their alphabet multiple times along a straight line. She had an embarrassed scowl on her face and the stallion could see a faint tint of red covering her muzzle. Whether it was from embarrassment or rage, he didn't want to prod her to learn of it. "She seems to enjoy this place at least. I wonder if I can get the engineers to work alongside her."
Sunny Dimples pulled up a notebook filled with three hundred pieces of paper. All the size of an A5 sheet, and every single one of them had been covered -front to back- in notes and corrections. Staying with the alicorn had helped fix decades of incorrect conclusions and information that were considered correct. Several ponies had received awards for their discoveries. Famous names ridiculed in a week. It was an absurd thought in of itself. Did she know any other languages? He could write them down too in the fut--No. The stallion mentally slapped himself on both sides of his head. Greed was overcoming him. He didn't need that right now.
The sounds of engines started echoing across the castle ground, and Nightmare Moon bolted up almost instantly, her horn sparkling with intense amounts of magic, ready to cast a spell, or multiple of them at the same time.
"That is...upships!" Sunny declared. He might've already filled up the equivalent of six hundred pages by using the front and back of his notebook, but that didn't mean he was going to magically absorb everything. He was annoyed at that, but that's how reality worked. He just had an advantage over the alicorn.
"Upships?" Moon repeated. "You mean airships?"
"Yes, that it. Airships."
"So I didn't hallucinate those," Moon thought aloud. "Let's go see the ideas made form; My future air force."
They left the keep to several dozen airships floating in the air. Two had already landed and Nightmare Moon could hear ponies exchanging words. They had to go beyond the barbican to see that the ships were specially designed to have multiple functional levels. The ones in front of them were four levels tall and the deck was covered in a plethora of wooden boxes of varying size, but all were bigger than a pony. When Nightmare Moon showed up the crew of the landed ships stopped their activity and stared at her. Her sheer magical potential thrummed in the air, causing the crew to have cold sweats.
"W-wait, what is that?" a stallion asked. Nightmare Moon could tell by his blue uniform over a faded green and orange coat that he was the captain. He wore an eyepatch over his left eye and had a prosthetic left foreleg. "It's looking at us."
Nightmare Moon grabbed the captain of the ship with her magic and dragged the screaming stallion towards her. She detached the leg and started to analyze it.
"This is fascinating," she said. "The joints are magic stones, but what kind I can't say." She opened the metal compartment and peered at the surface of the glowing green stone. "It's been hoof-crafted fantastically. I've never seen such skilled craftsponyship on these." She reattached it to the stallion and tossed him aside. The soldiers dove to catch him. "If I could get my hooves on somepony with this kind of sculpting talent for something as difficult and volatile to use as the magic stones, then I might be able to enhance my home further." Her eyes gleamed. "Portals to every part of the world under my control!"
Everypony leaned away from her.
"This is part of the surprise," a soldier was quick to point out. "Don't bother her and she won't even notice you," the soldier said. "She's training to play the part before the royal family, so don't spoil the surprise. Confidential!" she added.
"So...it's not the real deal?" the captain asked. He checked his leg to make sure it was still working and whined. "The magic power she holds is...I could've sworn--"
Sunny Dimples chuckled nervously to interrupt the captain. "Don't worry about it. She got too engrossed in her role."
The stallion eyed them both up and down and shook his head. "Fine, but if she does something like that again I'm reporting it! The king personally hired us to help supply the rebuilding of this castle and I won't be embarrassed or threatened like that again."
The two ponies heaved a sigh of relief.
"Where is the mayor?" the soldier asked Sunny through clenched teeth. "He was supposed to be supervising the literal moon goddess in your town!"
"I don't know! I'm not tied to the mayor, he just volunteered me against my will into this whole thing. Why not ask for his two assistants?"
"They're not the mayor, and they would be in the same position as us since they don't have the authority here that he does." The mare groaned and flapped her wings. "Fine. I'll go and find the officers and see what they have to say. One of them should be nearby." The pegasus was about to fly away when she suddenly remembered something and pointed to the stallion. "And make sure that she stays out of trouble. You know why."
And off she went. Sunny nodded to himself. "Because if they learn that a literal alicorn is here and that spreads to the rest of Equestria..." His body seized. "And what if the other nations learn about it?"
He could imagine the horror now. Everyone had their own legends and mythical figures, but-
"What's wrong, servant?" Nightmare Moon asked. "Who are all of these ponies?"
"Here to fix...the castle," he struggled. "Many ponies to do it. Others to...um..." He tapped his forehead. "Build differently."
"Architects to rebuild the whole thing, then?" The alicorn looked at the two ships that had 'landed' and noticed that the ponies were starting to slide the giant boxes off a few ramps on the side of the castle itself. "Then I have many things to tell them." She hadn't yet decided on how to redesign the castle, and even with the servant there to translate, his understanding was pithy, at best. She would have to wait to be able to speak at least half decently and use him as her orator for words she either didn't know or wouldn't be able to figure out on the spot. That said. "What ails you, servant?" She leaned forward, scaring the stallion again. "Are you dissatisfied with my abilities?"
"N-no no! Not at all!" Sunny sputtered. His heart would give out any day now, and the last thing he'd see would be her terrifying eyes. "I-it just...Just thinked of something."
"Thought," Moon corrected aggressively.
"Th-thought...Others have legends like you. Stories from long past ago. Why do we not have any?"
Moon raised a brow. "We don't have legends? Didn't these ponies consider me to be one?" she asked as she gestured to everypony around.
"Y-yes, but...Our legends not very old. Stories from far past...rare. Most legends only few hundreds old."
Nightmare Moon kept a box from falling on one of the workers and levitated it towards the end of the ramp where it dropped hard. She ignored the reactions. "Did a fire burn the records? Did somepony destroy everything or was there a disaster?" The stallion shrugged. "How is our..." She paused a moment, remembering to dumb down her speech. "Are our neighbors friends? How friendly? How...mean." The mare felt herself heaving.
"Minotaurs to the south, friendly. Hippogriffs to the east, not so friendly. Not mean but not very friendly."
"Neutral, then."
This sounded familiar to the alicorn. Something she herself did to try and conceal herself and her followers from her sister while they mustered up their strength. Somepony had been purposefully erasing or concealing Equestria's past from its present and its future, but what was the point of that? It wasn't an immortal, however. That much she was sure of. They would have their own legends and likely be well known while she was still around, or was it a case of ignorance through her position?
Ruling out the immortal, which would have lessened the surprise as to her presence, there was potentially a group existing in Equestria that actively erased Equestria's past, but they were clearly unsuccessful as there were still small amounts of history that still existed from her era and afterwards. The proof was in this pony knowing her language, even if it was fractured and incomplete...and foal-like.
A loud and angry yell pulled Nightmare Moon out of her contemplations. It was a pony on one of the ships hanging over the protective elevation on the side of the ship. He was glaring straight at the alicorn and yelling something while the others did their best to pull him back.
"Probably a relative of the pony I grabbed by the neck a week ago," she thought to herself.
"We should continue study. You know only a few letter. We must work harder," Sunny told her.
Nightmare Moon nodded, and for the first time ever, Sunny thought that she looked like an elegant ruler, as a physical deity should. It was ruined almost instantly when her eyes reopened. The studying continued through the day while the ponies continued to transport everything from the ships. It was difficult to concentrate with all the noise, and the alicorn felt the need to destroy them all, but she did her best to practice some self-control.
The transportation continued for a few days while the architects came in. The mayor was there to greet them this time.
"Greetings!" he shouted. "Welcome to an old, dilapidated castle!"
"Yes, yes," a bulky white mare with no mane and tail responded dismissively. "I was told that we didn't need to transport any stone here." She jabbed the mayor in the chest with her hoof. "You better not have lied to the king, because that will really mess up my day."
The stallion looked insulted. "I would never!" he shouted indignantly. "You'll find that the stones needed are close by anyways. This castle was made here a long time ago, so the stones had to be taken from the surrounding location. Too dangerous and difficult to import them." He noticed that she wasn't wearing any additional clothing to keep her warm. He and the others had adapted to the cold, but outsiders were always freezing cold. "Do you need warm clothing? I can get some if--"
He was met with a head shake. "No need. Cold temperatures build up immunity and help improve stamina," she said with a wide grin. The architect moved to the walls and dragged her hoof along the dirty, weathered surface of black stone and hummed pensively. "Fascinating. These stones are something else." They raised a brow and smiled while looking at the mountain. "If you made an official quarry here and exported the stones, you'd become a very wealthy stallion, and your city would benefit immensely."
The mayor cursed again. Still no beard. "Really now?" he grunted. He overheard one of the workers grumbling something under their breath as they helped carry several slabs of metal into the courtyard to be used for safe stone reshaping. "What's his deal?"
The architect shrugged. "I read in the reports that one of the workers became agitated and has only been growing worse after they saw your..." She looked left and right then leaned in next to the mayor's ears. "Surprise for the king," she whispered.
The mayor's ear twitched from the change in temperature. He caught a glimpse of the pony glaring at the keep, their eyes bloodshot. He had seen hatred like that before. Hatred unfettered and unending. He would have to keep a close eye on him.