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// My Fortress 
// Story: Left Behind: Sunny Disposition 
// by The Psychopath 
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Moon ran the scenario of her meeting with the other tribes through her head, doing her best to try and remember every minute detail and uniqueness of each thestral group. While they were all still physically identical, only the one the alicorn knew directly was mostly aloof to the goings on with the world. They were also the more passive of them all, but they weren't disrespected, as she had expected. In remembrance of her, they kept close ties with each other and shared what knowledge they had either discovered or rediscovered. Only the one Moon knew directly had developed their culinary skills, but the detoxification through food came from another. Her fat chef simply experimented with the concept. 

The alicorn was briefly torn from her thoughts when Sunny yawned loudly. He had become too comfortable riding with Nightmare Moon carrying him, but it made the trips easier since he wasn't fighting her through fear, not that he did beforehoof. The mare grit her teeth. There were only five that had presented themselves, but there were at least twenty-six different tribes. Some felt threatened by neighbors and preferred to stand guard, implying that there were some militaristic thestrals still around. She'd have to see if they were modernized, per her understanding of her current guards.

Moon had trouble containing the excitement every time she saw her budding castle. When everything was finished, she would be able to use it as a foundation to make a truly glorious castle over the practical design it currently had. Something caught her attention, however. There seemed to be a small cohort of griffin soldiers standing on the drawbridge, unable to pass the gatehouse leading to the larger yard Nightmare Moon extended with magic. She snickered to herself at the sight. A small town could be built in there now, although it required the reconstruction of the walls facing away from the city. Material wasn't in short supply nearby at the very least.

But...that feeling couldn't get rid of the bitterness she felt with the thestrals. She expected loud cheering and another of their strange celebrations for being invited under her wing as the first ponies to be part of her soon-to-be queendom. That they were so apprehensive ripped the air out of her lungs, so to speak.

Approaching the walls, the alicorn noticed that one of the griffins was wearing an ornate robe and standing in front of what she could now only assume to be an escort. His robe was a mixture of red, white, and gold trimmings. Said trimmings line the edges of the cloth and created no real pattern. The designer just wanted to make a bunch of criss-crossing lines and curves. The red and white were divided into top and bottom respectively, but what Nightmare Moon couldn't figure out was how the colors were meshing together. Starting from the back and stopping at the middle were divided waves that grew increasingly tall until it looked like the 'string' separating the colors snapped and just mixed together wildly into a mess of paint dropped into water. The golden trims followed suite and gradually 'dissolved' the closer it got to the griffin's torso. 

Moon landed onto the walls with a thud, startling the guards focused on the soldiers at the gate. Sunny landed with a loud thump and grumbled at himself for still being unable to handle that kind of landing yet. Moon ignored the guards and leaned over the walls. The battlements had not yet been fully implemented, and while the alicorn would normally curse at such a defensive position being forgotten, she found herself being thankful this time, but only this time.

The eccentric griffin wore a silver crown with three horns curving and wrapping over their red and white head feathers. It seemed that the feathers they bore matched their outfit superficially.  The alicorn could already hear the murmurs of the soldiers upon seeing her and felt pride well up within her. The enemy feared her. Good. 

Nightmare Moon stood tall, letting the magic swirling around her swell in size to almost engulf everything around her. Only her eyes and fangs were fully visible through the miasma. "Who are you who would stand so brazenly at the gates of my fortress?" she declared.

"I am Prince Melcluf Rorkfeather, seventh of the Rorkfeather lineage. Who is it I am speaking to?" he asked loudly.

"A prince?" the alicorn scoffed quietly to herself. "I am Nightmare Moon, alicorn of the Eternal Night," she declared once more. "Did your father send a prince here expecting some sort of 'arranged marriage' with what he thinks is some princess having a temper tantrum?"

"Wh-what?! No!"

Moon smirked. "Why have you come here with a contingent of troops, then?"

Melcluf took a moment to recompose himself before resuming talks. He looked behind and shrugged his wings. "I came because, a few months ago, there was word that an 'army' of ponies attacked one of our cities." The griffin huffed. "From my own agents, I learned that it was just two, and one was a giant pony, and you're the only one who fit that description."

"So?"

"To be honest, I thought that the tales of an 'alicorn' were just that. Consider my surprise when I learned that the stories my subjects shared of one wandering about in Snowfege during one of its festivals turned out to not be a costume!"

The miasma receded all at once when Moon dragged a hoof across her face and groaned. "And what do I have to do with this story?" she asked.

Melcluf seemed stunned. "Wh-Reparations! Do you know how much damage you caused to my people's city?! And you come here brazenly, to a former nest of my people, and take it for yourself?"

Moon had tuned out the prince and his screeching. One of the guards noticed the visible anguish she was feeling and decided to step up.

"I can tell him off, if you so choose, your highness," he proposed.

"Hm? Really? And why would you do that?"

"Because I'm bored and I already hate that colorful chicken."

Moon slowly rolled her eyes to the side and shrugged. "Fine. I need some distractions for not getting the outcome I wanted with the thestrals."

Sunny couldn't form proper words and kept sputtering when he tried to stop them. "Are you crazy?" he finally managed to get out. "That could start a war!"

Moon waved him off. "Oh, a good war wouldn't hurt anypony, and besides." She leaned forward. "They aren't in any position to conduct another full war yet."

The guard cleared his throat and leaned over the wall. "Stop your whinging!" he shouted. "What do you want?!"

"Wh-e-ghgdd-Who is this?!" the prince bellowed.

"He's my..." Moon turned around briefly. "Diplomatic Associate. He is very fair and fluent in his words," the alicorn stated with a straight face.

Sunny noticed the guards around stifling their laughter as best they could. Many dropped the visors of their helmets.

"I'm not interested in talking to a peasant!" the prince bellowed.

"You probably need to if you wear clothing like that! I thought a foal dropped their water colors all over some kind of giant chicken!"

"Wh-Giant chicken?!"

"You can't fly over the walls so I'd say it fits!" the guard continued.

"We didn't fly over them as a courtesy! It's a case of diplomatic nicet--"

The guard lied down back first on the wall and let his forelegs and head dangle over the edge. "Dem's too many wurdz fer us simple peasant-folk, yer fowlness." He noticed the prince starting to turn red through his feathers. "Oh hey, he's turning red. Camouflage, perhaps?" he whispered to Moon. He made sure it was just loud enough for the prince to hear. "Hey! Don't turn red! You won't blend into the environment any better that way!"

"That's it!" Melcluf gestured to the soldiers. "We're flying over the walls!"

"Try it," Moon said calmly.

The griffin gulped at the sight of the alicorn's glowing eyes looking down at him from what felt like a mountain peak. He gestured at the others behind him with a claw and took to the skies. However, as soon as they reached the same height as the wall peaks, every griffin suddenly found themselves swatted back down onto the ground.

"What...is this magic?" Prince Melcluf stood back up and looked at Moon, shocked. "Our armor is supposed to be antimagic!"

"Aaaah, we already tried that!" the mocking guard said. "Doesn't work with her." He trotted up to the alicorn and patted her left shoulder, causing the other guards around to go pale. "Too much magic. It's like trying to soak up the ocean with a single sponge." He smiled. "So, yeaaaah, sorryyyyyy, but noooooo. Yeaaaaah. Nooooo. Doesn't work like thaaaaaaaaaat."

At this point, Moon decided to completely ignore the griffin yelling at her while his soldiers recovered from their sudden cranial trauma and made it as visible as possible that she wasn't paying any attention to him.

"Hey!" Melcluf shouted. His voice was starting to pitch higher the more frustrated he got. "I'm talking to you!"

At least he was able to notice quite quickly when he was being ignored.

"I am Prince Melcluf of the griffins and I will be heard!"

"You are being heard," Moon corrected. "Just not listened to." The alicorn watched the prince start to puff up. "You come to my castle, in my territory, and expect me to listen to you when you come to my door with soldiers and no appointment? You didn't even try to contact anypony here. That is incredibly disrespectful to my authority," the mare growled. "If you want to have a proper meeting and discussion, then submit your request to the mayor of Snowfege who will transfer it to me." She waved a hoof. "Now leave."

"You...You can't do this! My father will hear about this! You have insulted my people not once, but twice!" Melcluf bellowed.

Nightmare Moon caught him off. "And what, I'll rue this day? I'll regret my actions?" She pursed her lips and looked up, thinking hard on the outcomes. "Something something destroy everything I hold dear, yadda yadda?"

"You'll be less antagonizing when war comes to your city, duchess," the griffin said stiffly.

He and the other griffins left quietly, letting their feathers chase away the freezing mountain air surrounding them. Sunny stared at Nightmare Moon, a look of pure and utter shock taking over his features.

"You have a talent in taunting others," Moon told the guard while following the griffins with her eyes.

Said guard snorted and started smiling with too much pride. He leaned against the queen, his grin still present. "Yeah, well, when you grow up where I did, you don't have the luxury of politeness, you know?"

"Hmmm."

The guard Moon was praising let out a blood-curdling scream that continued unabated while the alicorn of the night loomed over him. She was twisting and bending his limbs in unnatural directions. "I let you put a hoof on me during your little show because it was amusing to see the reactions of the griffins and would have ruined the illusion, but that time is over. Your play has ended. Never touch me so casually in the future, understood?!" she bellowed.

"Y-yes! I! I won't again! Your highness!" the guard forced out between screams of pain.

"Good." Moon pointed to a horrified guard. "You. Get a doctor to treat this pony. Now. I won't have a corpse rotting away the new walls of my fortress."

"Medic!" the appointed guard managed to get out. 

Nightmare Moon huffed and sat down while staring at the increasingly smaller forms of the griffins in the distance. "Sunny, do you know if there are other villages like this where those new pony tribes are located?" The unicorn shook his head. He couldn't help but gulp and look at the ponies putting the agonizing guard onto a stretcher. "Focus, Sunny," Moon said.

"I-No. I just knew where the thestrals lived, but I didn't know where their villages were." He rubbed the back of his neck, brushing his mane back and forth with a hoof. "We would need to find ponies of those tribes and ask them to see if any know."

Moon nodded. "Then I suppose we'll have to go back to Snowden and look around."

The alicorn would have her army and her Equestria. She didn't care who got in her way. Even the griffins were just an inconvenience to her. At least she felt some amusement today, and still managed to contact and unofficially vassalize the thestrals. It was a start, and she would have to continue slowly building herself up. Being trapped for ten thousand years let her think and experiment in her own mind, after all. She could easily conquer what was left of her homeland, but what would be left afterwards? One cannot be a sovereign of dust and ash.

Nightmare Moon looked towards the sun and squinted. Everything was progressing, at the very least, so why did it feel like she was forgetting something important? Or, rather, why did it feel like she hadn't finished a battle?