//------------------------------// // Incidents // Story: Left Behind // by The Psychopath //------------------------------// "Hello. I em Nightmare Moon." "No. I am Nightmare," Sunny corrected. The alicorn was already attempting to speak the new language, although it felt strange to try and speak one that descended from her own. She felt that the intricacies of the sounds were more complicated than those of her actual tongue. There was a curve to them that hurt her tongue, but then, that meant that the other ponies suffered this on a daily basis or grew used to this. She cackled at the thought. That said, Nightmare Moon was tired. She had only been studying this new language incessantly, and with her powers, she didn't need any sleep. With the moon and sun moving on their own, she didn't have anything else to do. The mare needed to test run her new powers away from her new home and from prying eyes. "Going to go for a walk and exercise my magic," she said abruptly. "O-okay," Sunny stuttered. The ponies had already brought in many tons of black stone and laid them about the courtyard and outside the walls. Several small, black bricks were placed in multiple stacks as tall as Nightmare Moon. How they managed such a feat in only a few days stunned the alicorn. With her magic she could create them faster, but there was also a touch of uniqueness when everything was done meticulously by hoof. That, and she was a soon-to-be queen that shouldn't have to perform such menial labor. Wouldn't be a good way to exercise her horn. Sunny was quick to follow her. After all, he was meant to keep a close watch on her while the festival was being prepared and her castle prepared for the coming of the royal family. "Where are you going to?" he asked. His words were slow and had some distance between each other, but he was getting better at speaking the old language. "Somewhere where even you can't watch me," Moon said. She noticed the stallion starting to stress out and rolled her eyes. "I'm not going far," she reassured him. The mare pointed to the mountain range. "I'm going over that rocky hill there." "B-but, I need to keep watch--" "I am an alicorn, fool. I don't need anypony's protection." Nightmare Moon stood tall, her face painted with displeasure. "I can handle myself very easily." The stallion backed away and watched her walk under a wooden crane built onto scaffolding taking a large stone over to a group of ponies to the second floor of the keep. Unfortunately, as Nightmare Moon went under it, the ropes holding the stone to the crane snapped and the alicorn's imminent death fell towards her. Sunny saw it and galloped towards her while the ponies could only shout 'watch out'. He slammed into her hind legs, expecting her to fly forward. Instead, it was Dimples that flew backwards. The stone shattered when it landed on the alicorn who continued her merry way, oblivious to what had just occurred. "What," one of the stallions above blurted. "Are you okay?" Sunny asked Nightmare Moon. "You're starting to annoy me," she growled. "B-but, a big stone just fell on you!" The mare's eyes widened. She stopped and looked at her back, noticing the dust and debris left behind by the stone that now lay in pieces on the ground. Nightmare Moon blew the dust away and carried on, leaving everyone dumbfounded. She decided to look around her new home instead of immediately flying off to see her new home's repairs. It was going well enough. large chunks of the damaged walls had to be cut out and replaced by the new bricks. However, the incidents had yet to stop. Sunny watched as one of the walls that was left unattended collapsed onto the alicorn, but again, she was unharmed. The bricks crashed against an invisible sphere surrounding the mare, again stunning the onlookers. Moon looked down and prodded the stones with a hoof. "Hmmph. Half-reared work." She pointed at Sunny. "Tell them to work better or I'll have them tortured for their incompetence. I can tolerate mistakes, but not to this extent." Later on, as she surveilled the landscape atop a short wall, the floor collapsed under her, but her magic kept her aloft. The events continued until she noticed and started to grow increasingly annoyed. After a while, she erupted in rage when a tower almost collapsed atop her. Using her magic, she fixed its foundations and fractured entrails. The alicorn flew into the air, her body wreathed in a dark storm. The blue of the sky seemed to part like clouds, revealing the stars in the night, but something was off...Several more moons were present, each of varying colors and size. In fact, the sky looked like it had been pulled apart to reveal a copy of the alicorn's mane. Again, she felt a strangeness when gazing upon the moons, like a presence was near her. "I have had enough of these games! There is clearly more at hoof here than simple incompetence!" she bellowed in her royal canterlot voice. The whole of the castle site was engulfed in a veil of nearly pure darkness. The ponies could still see the outlines of each other but not the environment. They were quickly blinded by a pony giving off the brightest white light they could imagine. The effects on the environment dissipated near-instantaneously when Nightmare Moon slammed into the ground, grasping a pony in her magic. It was the angry one from the arrival of the airships. "So, it's you who has been causing so much damage to my home, hm?" She leaned in closer, letting the light of her eyes burn through the stallion's soul. "Trying to destroy my rightful claim? A delaying tactic? For whom do you work?" she demanded. "I-I think he not trying to destroy home," Sunny said sheepishly. Moon's head jolted towards him, causing the stallion to bounce in fear. "What do you mean?" "I think he trying to kill you," the stallion added. Nightmare Moon looked between the two then started to laugh uncontrollably. Her laughter wasn't as menacing as the many times Sunny Dimples had heard it before. "Him? Trying kill me? Oh, that's hilarious! I haven't had such a fulfilling laugh in millennia!" she said. "Throw him in the dungeons," she chortled. "What's going on here?" the bald architect shouted. A few of the engineers were following behind her. "There's been a lot of accidents happening lately!" one of them stated angrily. He was fuming. "That one has been trying to kill her!" Sunny accused. The angry stallion was dropped to the ground by the alicorn. His body was a near-black, but it was betrayed by the purple sheen being created by the sun in the sky. His eyes were also a deep blue, and his mane and tail were properly black. He was backhoofed by the giant architect. "What do you have to say for yourself? You could've killed everypony here with your stupidity!" She slapped the stallion again. "Why is this one so important that you would go to such lengths to be rid of them?!" The stallion was still hyperventilating from the event that just occurred. Despite his face swelling, he hadn't registered the hits yet. He was too focused on what Nightmare Moon had done. "I don't know what kind of theatrics she performed to be able to do that with the sky and...and the rest, but she's a twisted mockery of the alicorn my family is related to!" The architect slow-blinked at him. "You're related to the nobles? And you tried to kill somepony for something so stupid?" The anger in her voice couldn't come out because of the fury consuming her. One of the engineers stepped forward, readjusting their tool-saddle. "I hired him," she said. "His family said he had been acting up and needed to learn how the..." She cleared her throat. "How the peasants work," she spat. "So you tried to kill somepony for that appearance rather than ask them to dissolve the spell?" The architect looked around. "Was that you that did that whole night sky and black sight thing?" "No, that was her," Sunny corrected. The architect heaved a sigh and passed a foreleg across the top of her head. "Give him to the soldiers. I'll take care of that later and send a message to the royal family about this. They wanted to ruin the king's surprise? Then they'll pay for it." "You can't do this! You'll cast shame upon my family!" the angry stallion pleaded. "We're proud descendants of the alicorn of the black sea." He turned and pointed accusingly at Nightmare Moon. "She insults all of us by taking on the appearance of one so closely tied to our ancestor's elements!" "What is he saying?" Moon asked her servant. He repeated the words, and a dark, sinister grin grew across her face. The edges of her mouth stretched ear-to-ear, growing as the ponies before her shrunk, but her gaze was on one character and one character only. "So, you think you're related to me?" she asked. She crushed the stallion's head into the ground. "I have never bore children. That you have the gall to claim to be directly related to my blood is the gravest insult that I can imagine." Her voice was quieted, but she made sure every word cut through the stallion's body despite him not understanding any of it. "You're going to the dungeons below, and if there aren't any, then I'll make some!" The ground below everyone opened up like a hungry maw. There was indeed a dungeon below, but it was dilapidated and flooded. The stallion was dropped down into it, landing hard with a splash and groaning in pain afterward. He started to curse at the alicorn, but she ignored it and sealed the ground back up. "I will be leaving now," she told Sunny. She spread her wings out, scaring the ponies, then took flight, casting down a powerful draft of wind. Nightmare Moon disappeared beyond the peaks, leaving everyone dumbfounded. They were quick to swarm Sunny and demand what exactly had happened. He understood, of course. Even the most talented actor and showstallion could only do so much, and she had far exceeded what a performer was capable of. He wanted to go to bed and sleep. Finally, some peace. She was free to stretch her limbs and take a breath of fresh air. She shook herself, chasing the snow off of her body. Moon still wasn't adapted to the strong winds of the mountain. She would have to get used to that at some point since this was to be the castle from where she would rule. The wide space she was presented with was flatter than the area the castle was on at the very least, but she was still annoyed that she didn't have a properly flat terrain to experiment on. "What exactly are these new powers of mine capable of?" she wondered aloud. "How about something simplistic, like a beam of magic?" The alicorn barely had to focus any magic through the currents engraved on her horn that a beam of magic burst out of it, startling the alicorn and throwing her onto her back. "Woah!" she shouted. The land had been melted and the clouds cut in half. "Amazing!" She stared at the burns in the mountainside, her eyes sparkling with delight. "What else can I do?" She created crescent blades that sliced through several stones in a row. Just for the showponyship, Moon would stand on her hind legs and cast her forelegs downwards in a cross shape. She draped herself in thick armor of night-blue with no specific appearance. In essence, the alicorn looked like she was wearing spiked cardboard boxes. The pieces of mountain poking out from the sides stood no chance as an armored ram burst through them easily. Nightmare Moon was having a field day with her new magic powers, but there was something else she had to look into. Ignoring the world and its broken form for the time being, the mare relaxed and focused. "There must be something interwoven with my magic to grant me such strength." Several images passed through her mind. A purple moon, a blue moon, a gigantic moon the size of their world. Several tiny gray ones as well. All of them and several more had linked themselves with the princess, but they were drifting through the void or connected with another celestial body. She had no way of seeing them as they were, so she broke her conscious links with them and let them be for now. She would investigate them in the future and give them names. But, so much power, she thought. With this, she would be easily able to topple any challengers to her rule and topple her mighty sister! Why, even the Elements of Harmony were no match for-Oh. That's right. If Celestia was gone, then all the power was for nothing. The alicorn sat down, staring blankly at her work in the distance, watching as the wind traveled across the broken surface, carrying trails of snow with it. And the elements. What happened to them? Of all the things she could forget, the Elements of Harmony were the last thing on her mind since they didn't do anything on their own. They needed her sister to work, a sister that was no longer there. Nightmare Moon shivered. She was cold.