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

Celestia rushed outside as soon as she heard sounds. A few of the ponies there might have wanted to stop her, but none actually did. For that moment, if she'd been considering it, she would have been glad ponies still treated her as if she was on the throne. She was far too worried to even think about something like that though. And once she got outside, she found to her dismay she had good reason to be worried.
Her entire world seemed to shrink to that one moment, that one bit of space that Luna's spell had occupied. Nightmare Moon and Twilight left that space, and to her it was like they didn't exist anymore. Her entire attention was focused on one thing and one thing alone, as she ran towards Luna's body without even feeling her limbs moving.
Celestia kneeled down in front of her sister. The world around them was darkness and silence, the lonely spotlight over them the only thing in all of creation. She reached down with shaking hooves towards Luna, wanting and yet not wanting to see the wounds she'd suffered. She didn't acknowledge the pool of blood spreading below them and staining her coat, maybe she refused to, maybe she really couldn't.
Her eyes settled on the gaping hole that had been Luna's chest. Everything turned to blurred shapes and colours as she looked at her sister's neck limp over her hooves as she held her. Tears started falling down her face as wordless cries escaped her throat and sobs wracked her frame. She whispered Luna's name among her whimpering, barely able to still say it.
She hugged Luna's body, unsure of why she was even doing it, refusing to acknowledge her blood pouring over her coat. Even if she'd had her magic, there was nothing magic could do with that wound. She would have tried regardless, and it hurt to know she was powerless to even attempt anything, but she couldn't fault Twilight for her course of action. Luna had sacrificed herself for a reason, and it was right of Twilight to continue down that path.
But Celestia did not, could not accept things being that way. The same way all ponies, and almost all creatures, refuse to accept the death of someone held dear in the face of it. She'd believed herself more accustomed to the nature of mortality, but that wasn't right. It wasn't fair. After everything she'd done and lived through and everything still to do, it wasn't fair for her sister to go, it wasn't right.
And so Celestia did what all ponies do when wracked by grief and desperation. She tried to hold on to something, she looked for anything that could give her hope, even irrational, even futile. The way she would have tried to heal Luna's wounds with her magic, even knowing fully well that she would have failed. She did not have magic, not then, but she did have something.
Something she'd chosen to ignore, to keep buried inside her out of fear. She didn't care anymore. Whatever it was, whatever it would be, it was at least something, and her mind could not take the nothing that was her alternative right then. She did not know what would come of it, but she did not care. She only cared about doing anything she could. Without hesitation, Celestia reached inwards, to the power she'd felt stirring within her and had refused to ever indulge. And she hoped with all herself that by some miracle it could still save her sister.