//------------------------------//
// Wake 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

"Do you really think you can hold me here?" Nightmare Moon's body, alongside the mountain behind her, was sliced in half by a beam of silver light. Unlike the mountain behind her, she merely reattached her two halves. "Quit hiding."
Luna's response came in the form of a rain of spears, which shattered uselessly against the barely visible shield Nightmare Moon had formed against herself. Then the alicorn melted herself into a pool of darkness, slithering forward through the hail of metal before seeping into the ground.
The terrain itself, already scarred and distorted, began to grow a dark blue colour. Horns violently protruded out of it in places, in others black blood began to ooze out. The mountains and forest twisted and shifted, and rose into a contorted monstrosity too complex to fully take in. Nightmare Moon's voice boomed out, loud as a landslide, "Just give up, little pony. I will make sure your end is swift."
Luna shot off from her hiding spot, a patch of trees down on the ground, as black tentacles born out of the earth chased after her. She flew up into the air, face to face with the gaping maw of the colossal abomination Nightmare Moon had taken control of. But before those impossibly wide jaws could clamp down on her, Luna's horn shone a deep blue.
The trees, the forest, the mountains simply disappeared, broken apart like cinders and ashes taken by the wind from a burning page. Luna was left alone, flying over a vast black lake, beneath a starless moonlit sky.
But the waves rose up around her, unnatural towers of water reaching towards the sky, and another giant monster was born out of the lake, one made of water but still bearing Nightmare Moon's eyes. It lunged towards her, but Luna's magic was quicker. The water froze before it could reach her, then shattered into nothingness under a blast of her magic.
But the shadow within it remained, still impossibly big, stretching and twisting to blot out the Moon. Luna fired at it again, but her magic merely disappeared into the darkness. Then, the shadows came down on her, and Luna fell into them.
She fell, sinking deeper and deeper, cuts against her skin as the darkness grew jagged and thicker. Opening her eyes grew difficult, and every attempt to latch on to something was futile. The shadows around her no more than mist as she tried to attack then or hold on to them, but like blades of obsidian as they lunged at her and hurt her.
One stabbed into her side. Blood poured out, crimson against the blackness surrounding her. Luna grit her teeth. She righted herself, turning towards where she knew, she felt upwards to be. The darkness attacked her again, but she ignored it. Her wings beat. Once, twice, harder each time. She was sinking still, but slower. By the tenth push she was moving up, if only by a few centimetres. Her horn lit up in silver, and though the shadows swallowed all light she did not turn it off. She climbed higher, building up speed.
Claws dug into her back, trying to drag her down. She did not stop to see if she was bleeding again. She pushed on. Her horn fired.