Nightmare Moon sat alone, in silence, within her sister's former room or at least what remained of it. A permanent scowl seemed to have manifested upon her face. After what she thought to be an hour of silent contemplation, the alicorn decided to retrace her steps and leave the castle, ignorant of a moon-shaped bauble that had survived the ceiling's collapse lying next to shattered jewelry.
A few griffins had set up a gambling box next to the entrance of the buried castle. They were playing with blocks and pyramids and shouting in jubilation or disappointment.
"When do we send the next group down there?" one of the griffins asked.
One of them twirled pyramids between her claws then threw them into the box. "I doubt the boss'd want to send anygriffin in there since that pony hasn't been seen for about a week now."
The first leaned forward. "And then? What about the one still here?"
"Been teaching our idiots to read." The griffin cursed under her breath when she got a bad throw, prompting the other griffins around to laugh.
"W-w-She's back?!" one of the laughers shouted in shock. "I thought she died!"
Nightmare Moon pulled herself out from the hole she found herself in and stomped forward, grabbing one of the griffins by the throat. "Where is your boss?" she 'asked' him.
The griffin pointed frantically to the side with his claws. "She's that way. In the big, rotted house. They have the other pony there t-Oof!"
Moon had chucked the griffin into a dirt wall, embedding him in there. The alicorn continued through the tunnels, throwing aside anyone that got in her way, be it intentional or not. She used her magic to blow down the door leading to the supposed home of Calostell. She and Bombastic were eating several meals of...insects...fried and laid on a plate. Using what little magic had returned to her, the alicorn locked the two by their throats and raised them high.
"You said griffins went in. There was no trace of them," Moon stated.
The alicorn noticed that the bird's clawing at the collar she was given was sparking. There were traces of obscene amounts of color in the tiny attacks. Chaos magic.
"How should I know about that? I sent them in, they didn't come out. I don't know anything about what has been happening in there," the bird struggled. "Why are you even strangling me? You could've just asked with a menacing glare."
Moon snorted. "I find the hooves-on technique works marvels compared to just using words." She dropped the two who fell on their rears. "Well?"
Bombastic pointed to the room to Nightmare Moon's right. She tore down the wall, revealing Sunny teaching some of the adult griffins how to write. The alicorn's eye twitched. In the brief moment that Sunny had taken his eyes off of the desk of his newfound student, Moon saw her sister's face. The face she always made when talking to the young foals at a school when she attempted to teach them something. Her blood started to boil.
"We're leaving," she declared.
"A-already?" He looked around nervously at the griffins. "But I haven't taught them adjectives and connectors y--"
He was grabbed violently by the mare's magic and pulled out of the house, but Calostell grabbed onto the door frame and called out to Moon with some difficulty.
"What about our deal? And how are you going to get out of here?"
The alicorn refused to turn around. "For the deal, you'll know when it takes effect. For getting out of here, I don't care. I'll go back through the hole we came in from."
The bird shook her head. "You three, direct my business partner out through one of the backways. It'll be faster for all of us."
Moon acquiesced after some trouble and followed the three through yet more cramped tunnels with Sunny behind her. With her magic as diminished as it was, there was no point in going through a fight. She had already had trouble beforehand, although she was still suffering from the poison. Celestia's enraged face kept popping up in the mare's mind. If that was just an echo, how did it form? The magic felt very similar to Celestia's and it claimed that Canterlot wasn't its home, but 'Solar Flare's' magic wouldn't have been able to coalesce into that sealed-off location on its own.
A chill grasped at Moon's heart, coursing through her veins to freeze her whole body from the inside-out. Her sister had always been the creative sort but limited herself because she wasn't interested in harming others. At worse, she would just prank them or make a little joke. If she didn't think to limit herself, or if she was in such a blinding rage that she was destroying everything around her just by existing, what would she have done? No. 'What could she do' was a better question. All that Nightmare Moon had left of her former sibling was the book she was hiding under her wing.
"Here you go," one of the griffins announced. The group had come out of what was essentially a giant rat hole on the city outskirts. The griffin pointed a claw at the alicorn and gave her a stern look. "You better uphold your end of the bargain."
"Don't threaten her, you idiot!" Sunny begged in whisper.
"You're alright though, pony. Thank you for teaching us, even if it was short. I hope to be able to use it in the future for a real profession."
The griffin patted the unicorn on his back, leaving him dumbfounded that his warning was completely ignored.
"Did you see that? They completely ignored me!" He stomped towards Nightmare Moon who was staring blankly straight ahead. "Y-your majesty? Are you okay?" Moon levitated the journal out from underneath her wings and stared at the dirty cover. "What's that?"
"We're going back to the castle," Moon stated weakly.
Sunny could feel that something was wrong and kept silent. He was terrified of this being and what she could do if he tried to pry deeper, so he waited. The trip back to Snowfege was a silent and uneventful one, much to the unicorn's worry. Moon's magic power gradually returned as her body recovered from burning away all the poison remaining in her and her last-ditch effort to eliminate the echo of her former sister-gone-mad. Finally, after days of half-hearted flight, the city came into view.
Creak
The city had become boring since the festival. Again. Just like before.
Creak.
The mayor tried to stroke his beard but only found his hoof poking a short goatee. It was starting to come back finally. Slowly but surely. He heaved a sigh. He was too impatient for it to come back.
Creak.
The twins were sitting in front of him, exchanging worried glances and holding clipboards against their laps. The room was entirely silent. An eye was slowly cast to the side of the twins. Next to the entrance -or exit in this case- of the office was one of the heavy guardsponies. King Gallant had deemed it necessary to give the mayor a personal bodyguard, but the mayor was no fool. He might've been a bit immature, something he refused to deny to himself, but he was no naive idiot. Every movement he did was watched by the guard and reported back. The mayor grinned and jerked in his chair. He saw the armor twitch in response and sat back in his chair with a satisfied smirk. The twins grumbled together.
They wanted to talk with him, but they were uncomfortable with the guard in the room. It wasn't enough that the king had stationed guards everywhere on top of the local military, but now they couldn't even really say anything without it being monitored. It was obvious that the king and queen wanted to root out anypony who was sympathetic to the alicorn's potential rule. If she had no pony siding with her then her war would be over before it started. Somepony like Nightmare Moon wouldn't be interested in burning away everything and having nothing to lord over.
Creak.
The mayor rotated his chair towards the window. It wasn't something that had gone unnoticed by the twins. Every day the mayor would frequently turn around, even when he was taking care of the paperwork, to check if something unique like Nightmare Moon's arrival would happen again. They worried, because the stallion's health seemed to be declining since the alicorn had left. He wasn't eating as frequently as he used to, and his sleep became erratic. It was like he had reverted to a foal awaiting the return of his parents every day. Bags had started forming under his eyes and his coat had started to become unkempt and dry. It seemed like that arrival had been what he was looking for in life. A long-awaited purpose, but now that it had come and gone, there was nothing left. At least, not while the alicorn was gone, and now it seemed like she wouldn't come back. Did something happen to her? It was torture.
"What is that?" Candy Cane asked as he narrowed his eyes.
The guard looked at them silently and gasped. His body trembling. He was quick to rush out of the office, leaving the three to look at the bright and cloudy sky outside. The mayor's eyes lit up.
Moon dropped Sunny off in the courtyard of the castle and returned, on her own, to her 'room' above the throne room. A garden had been prepared in the courtyard, ready to have vegetables planted within it. The guards still patrolled around as if nothing happened, but now the armored ponies of the royal family were here as well. Three of them rushed out of the mostly-rebuilt main body of the castle in a panic. They were screaming about Moon's return, but the other soldiers didn't react. If anything, they seemed bored. The unicorn picked up on the behavior and raised a brow. Were they actually that used to Nightmare Moon that they considered her presence to be a normal occurrence?
Fatigue crept over Moon as she sat in her silent, empty room. She looked at the windows letting in dim light from outside. How was it that such huge windows let in so little light? They reached the ceiling! It was...not important.
Energy drained from the mare despite her magic returning to her. It felt limitless, like she only had a hole in her that magic funneled into and disappeared from the world. Moon yawned and sat down while placing the journal on the floor. Her first real possession in this new world and it was her sister's. Well, her first furnishing, really. What to do now? Was there anything left to do? How long had she been waiting up here? She looked briefly over her shoulder to see Sunny being dropped off by a pegasus who saluted him and flew to the side, out of view.
"Your majesty? Did something happen in the week you were in that castle?"
Moon's pupils shrunk. "I was in there for a week?"
"Y-yes." The stallion made several attempts to look Moon directly in her eyes. "Well, almost ten days, actually. We had been hearing lots of loud noises coming from the hole, and the trash city shook a couple of times though."
Moon stared at the ground, her eyes darting back and forth between bits of information that only she could see. She fought against the echo for that long? It wasn't possible. Surely there was some kind of temporal anomaly there. Nopony could fight that long. Even an alicorn's magic would deplete in an hour or less if they were really serious. She looked to her hooves and took a deep breath to calm herself. Just what had she and her sister become?
"Can I--"
"I just need some time alone," Moon reassured her servant.
Sunny was taken aback. That was the calmest he had ever heard her. "Okay. If you're sure."
He was about to turn around when Moon stopped him. She looked at his coat and mane and heaved a sigh. "I must speak to you about something important regarding your ancestry."
The unicorn felt he was going to regret staying but did so. "Okay?"
"Do you know why I kept you around when I could have just as well disposed of you and chosen another pony?" she asked him.
The stallion shrugged. "Because you felt that I was important and that you didn't want other ponies to be terrified of you and also because I could speak old ponyish well enough that I was able to learn from you?" Sunny gasped then gave the alicorn a sheepish smile.
Moon raised a brow and shook her head. "No. I thought you looked vaguely like my sister and thought it would be a good warm-up to when I was able to face her finally." She stood up and turned to face her servant. "Yet, as time went on, I started noticing more similarities between you two. Your behavior, your preferences,-" She pointed to the side. "And more recently that expression you made when you were teaching the griffins!" she declared. The mare dropped down to her haunches as if her legs were too weak to carry her. "I had my suspicions, but now I know."
Sunny was carrying a worried expression. "Know what?" the pony asked.
"You're a descendant of my sister: Princess Celestia."
Sunny's whole world came crashing down around him. His blood had frozen in its veins, his heart stopped, his lungs refused to pump more oxygen, and he felt something contracting around his brain, yet he remained alive somehow.
"I don't know h..." Moon caught herself. "I don't know when she bore children, but I am at least aware that it happened before she went mad and became consumed by this all-devouring rage. With all documents of those times being gone, I have no way of tracing the points between you and her, but your mane and tail are dead giveaways that you're related. No pony else has ever acquired such a pattern nor colors in their lives nor of any generation but her." She paused a moment then shoo'd the stallion away. He didn't budge. It seemed he had turned into a statue as well.
Nightmare Moon shook her head and called for the guards to take him away. They mused on his stiffness and left quickly, leaving Moon to look once more at the contents of the journal and peer at the final pages. The words scribbled deeply and angrily against what Nightmare Moon could only surmise was paper. They hadn't changed.
Give her back!
GIVE HER BACK!
GIVE HER BACK!