In the darkness of the library, Luna and Quote Quill prepared a spell. After going through the books Luna had picked out and finding others to read through, they began attempting the magic involved. After the candle had burnt down to a small nub of wax, the only light was the blue and red of their magic glowing for brief intermittent moments before flickering back into the dark.
Too soon, however, more light began to filter in. Luna stood up, stretching her neck and back. She automatically lit her horn to lower the moon, then hesitated.
Why should I?
They stood in the library for a long moment before Quote Quill pressed her hoof to Luna’s shoulder. “Your Majesty, your plan…”
Luna took a long breath. “Yes. You’re right.” She ignored her conflicted emotions and began to rotate the sky, dim the stars, and move the moon away from her sister’s heavenly body, so much bigger and brighter than hers.
Quote Quill began to clean up the traces of their all-night studying session, teleporting Luna’s books safely into her chambers. She pushed up her glasses with one hoof and yawned. “Excuse me,” she said automatically.
“You must be tired, Quote,” Luna murmured, wrapping one leathery wing around her aide, who’s pale grey face colored. “You should rest. We have much to do when the sun sets tonight.” Her voice darkened at that ominous statement, and she folded her wings back, striding from the library.
Quote Quill nodded, following behind her princess. “What will you do today, your Highness?”
“I think I’ll take a visit to my friend, Twilight Sparkle,” Luna replied grimly, aqua eyes narrow.
Quote nodded, teleporting to her quarters and leaving Luna to herself.
***
Walking into Ponyville, Luna was stricken with how commonly it was. Dirt roads got her crystalline shoes dusty and she lifted her tail to avoid the same fate. She knocked on the door of the Golden Oak Library - She calls herself a princess and yet lives in some tree - and waited for Twilight to answer.
The purple alicorn soon opened the door. “Luna!” she exclaimed happily.
Seeing Twilight lifted her spirits somewhat. Proper company. “Twilight Sparkle,” greeted Luna, stepping into the library. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“What’s the occasion?” Twilight trotted to her cabinets and levitated a few tea bags out of the cupboard. “And do you have a tea preference?”
“Something that keeps me awake,” Luna responded dryly. “I’ve been up all night working on a magic… problem. I was hoping you would have some insight.”
“Of course.” Twilight set the tea bags to soak and levitated over a chair for Luna. She sat opposite her once the tea was ready, and floated Luna’s mug to her. “What’s the matter?”
Luna twirled her cup in her levitation briefly. “I’m sure you’re aware of the dream dimension-”
“Oh, yes, I’ve done lots of reading on it,” Twilight interjected with a smile.
Luna suppressed a glare at the interruption and continued. “-And I want to add an enchantment to it. Or, if that can’t be done, to my dreams specifically. Do you think it possible?”
The two began to talk at length about the dream dimension’s strange magic and how enchantments interacted with the subconscious plane until their teacups were long dry.
***
Today, Quote Quill was not needed.
The unicorn smiled to herself. Her princess’s thoughts amused her. Quote Quill was always needed, whether Luna knew it or not.
She trotted into the royal alicorn’s dark tower and stood in the center of the room, lighting her horn and beginning to clean it. Reddish-pink magic carefully made the bed, tidied Luna’s horseshoes, yoke, tiara, and other royal garments, stacked papers neatly on her desk and disposed of letters that the princess had already gone through so that when she returned, she would find everything in order.
Once the room was clean, she met her sister at the servant's entrance to the throne room. Raven Inkwell was holding a stack of scrolls in her magic. Every so often, a burst of golden light would teleport another into her magical grasp. Celestia and Raven, working together to deal with Equestria’s troubles and queries.
Quote Quill nuzzled her sister’s side sympathetically. She always had more to do, a never ending paper trail. “Work dutifully, my sister,” Quote began.
“-As you are needed yet,” recited Raven in a quiet tone, shuffling through a document. Another scroll teleported into Raven’s magic, and she gave Quote a glance.
Taking the hint, Quote left Raven to work and entered the throne room from the back, taking her place next to Luna’s currently empty throne. Celestia’s warm gaze washed over her briefly. “Luna’s not back yet,” the princess of the sun murmured, half of her attention on the letter she was scanning.
“Did she leave anything for me to do in her absence?”
“No,” smiled Celestia, looking away from her papers for a moment. “Be grateful you have some time to yourself, Quote,” she added teasingly.
Quote Quill returned Celestia’s smile, bowed, and began trotting towards the library where Luna needed her to be.
Her princess’s plan required steps to be taken, things for Quote to prepare. She could sense it in Luna’s mind, a ping in her mind that told her when she was needed. She opened the library door and teleported the spellbooks that they hadn’t read through the previous night to a private corner behind a wall of bookshelves. She browsed the covers briefly, then stacked them.
Still, the nag in her mind didn’t leave. The princess’s needs were getting more detailed and extravagant by the day. Quote didn’t mind accommodating, but Luna was disturbed by herself.
The unicorn paced the library, extending her magic to a storage room near the servant’s quarters. She grasped a few items and teleported them to herself, spreading a blanket over the floor and placing an unlit candle into its holder. The itch in the corner of her mind subsided, and Quote nodded to herself, satisfied with her work.
Today, Quote Quill was not needed.
Her princess was growing fickle and dark. Something was changing, and her princess did not like it. Quote didn’t understand - Luna was Luna, and Quote would never object - but no matter what Luna needed from her, she would comply. If Luna required dark spells and long hours of the night studying magic that had long since been locked away, Quote Quill would do it. And so, to prepare, she lay down on the blanket and picked up the first book on the stack.
The lexicon was old, and the spells were convoluted and complex, but she tried her best to read through it, to find anything that would be useful, that she deemed her princess would need.
Today, Quote Quill was not needed, but tonight she would be, and she would be ready.
***
Luna closed her batlike wings to her side as she landed on one of Canterlot Castle’s walkways. The sun was low in the sky, and Celestia had painted a beautiful splash of blazing orange and pink on the horizon. The sunset light reflected off the ivory towers of the castle. Twilight Sparkle joined her, ruffling her feathery wings. She nosed Luna’s side curiously. “Do your wings work the same way dragons’ do?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m not a dragon,” Luna deadpanned, although she spread one wing for Twilight to inspect. “It’s been so long since I’ve had pegasus wings that I couldn’t say I recall a difference.”
“That’s fascinating. I’ve had an interest in non-pegasi wings since Fluttershy got them when she turned into Flutterbat.”
Luna allowed Twilight to talk as they walked together down the corridors. Vaguely, she noted her aide’s absence. Just as the thought crossed her mind, a crimson flash of light appeared in front of them. Quote’s eyes widened and she bowed to the unexpected visit from the princess of friendship. “Your majesties,” she uttered, taking her place at Luna’s other side.
“You must be Luna’s assistant?” Twilight asked.
“Yes, this is Quote Quill,” Luna introduced. “She has impeccable timing - always right when I need you,” she said to Quote.
“At your service, Highness. Will Princess Sparkle join us in the library?”
“Library?” Twilight’s ears perked forwards and both ponies expectantly looked towards Luna.
The Lunar princess hesitated. Something in her prickled, not wanting to be stopped and fearful that Twilight would meddle. No, the fewer ponies who knew she was dabbling in dark magic, the better. “Not tonight, unfortunately. However, her knowledge and our tests were instrumental in this spell.”
“Out of curiosity, what exactly are you trying to do?”
Luna’s mind raced, blanking on an excuse good enough to fool the magical expert. “A failsafe spell to control the dreams of ponies,” she half-lied. It would indeed control a pony’s dreams - hers.
“Huh,” the element of magic said. For a moment, Luna feared that her flimsy excuse wouldn’t cut it, but Twilight soon added “Well, good luck!” and headed for the main hall, no doubt to go talk with her mentor.
Both Luna and Quote Quill visibly relaxed. “Let us go to the library,” she declared with a sense of finality, flapping her wings once as if to punctuate her sentence.
Quote nodded sharply, falling into step just behind her princess.
As they reached the library doors and red magic surrounded the handles to open for the princess of the night, she lit her horn and raised the moon into the sky, taking it from Celestia and casting the castle into darkness. It took on an eerie glow as the magical torches lining the hallways lit one after the other.
Luna trotted into the library with purpose and slowed at the center of it, in front of the giant hourglass suspended in a wire sphere. Quote Quill took the lead, walking to the corner of the library she had set up that day.
“You have done well,” Luna uttered as she scanned the books and blankets. “But there is something that you could not have managed.” The princess turned and began to trot down the aisles of bookshelves once again, and Quote broke into a gallop to keep up with Luna’s long strides.
They reached the right wall of the library, and Luna lit her horn and rotated a bookshelf containing mundane nonfiction scrolls, revealing a metal door behind it. The door was imposing and old, with a circular lock mechanism that Quote recognised immediately - a unicorn’s horn was inserted and then lit, and only the correct magical signature would unlock it. Luna backed up slightly and slid her horn into the keyhole, then let out a somewhat aggressive burst of turquoise magic. The ancient, prison-esque door let out a series of frightening grinding and ticking sounds before swinging heavily open to reveal a secret, hidden section of the library.
“Welcome to the restricted section,” Luna said dryly, stepping in casually. Quote Quill, with wide crimson eyes, followed.
It was dusty. Everything was coated in a fine layer of it - even the air, it seemed. Quote coughed on it, Luna’s hooves left imprints in the floor, and Quote absently took off her glasses and brushed them against her fur to clean them.
The bookshelves weren’t shelves as much as they were cases. Some were behind glass, others behind bars. Most of the contents were scrolls and tomes, ancient, thick-looking things. Some of them even had chains over them, and a few were specially displayed in their own cases. A few of them let out magical glows from inside the pages or from gems inset in the covers. It all felt off. As Quote passed one of the shelves, she swore one of the books whispered to her, and she pressed closer to her princess.
Luna spared a glance to her servant and opened one wing to lay over Quote’s back in comfort, though she said nothing and continued to scan the dusty room.
It didn’t seem like a place one should talk in.
For the first time, facing these ominous tomes and scrolls, Quote felt shreds of doubt, but her throat was dry. And dusty.
Slowly, Luna prowled the aisles until she found the book she wanted. Carefully, gingerly, she unlocked and slid open the case, and levitated a book bound by a magical spell. Her horn flashed brighter to remove the coils of green magic, one at a time, until the book was barren. The cover looked empty save for the small symbol of a brain right in the middle.
Once Luna had put the case back, the two mares practically galloped back to the door, only to find it closed. Quote huddled closer to Luna. Had she closed it? I didn’t notice her closing it.
Somewhat shaken, Luna hastily placed her horn into the lock and opened it, then slammed the door closed behind them.
It was Luna who was the first to crack a smile. “How silly,” the princess said, pressing a lightly dusted hoof to her mouth.
“That was positively sinister,” Quote remarked, shaking herself lightly. Dust particles flew everywhere, and she sneezed.
“I am an all-powerful alicorn, and that dusty old room gave me the creeps. Ridiculous! I’d like to see anything take the two of us on,” Luna laughed, throwing a hoof over Quote’s neck.
“Yes, your Highness,” Quote agreed.
“Oh, you’re so serious, Quote, like you weren’t scared stiff!”
“Don’t tease me, princess, I’m just an ordinary unicorn!” Quote made a jokingly pouting face. “Not like you. You could vanquish any of those evils in that room - nay, all at once, even.”
Something powerful and greedy flashed in Luna’s eyes, but she still had a lighthearted grin on her face. “Yes!” she cheered, exaggeratedly flexing one of her forelegs. “Now, let’s go read this old thing and finally complete the spell.”
As they were walking back to their blanket, Luna paused. She had been too caught up in her own brags to acknowledge it at first, she realized. “You’re not just an ordinary unicorn,” she said, nosing Quote’s mane with a smile.
Quote’s face reddened, but she smiled up at Luna just the same. “You flatter me, princess.”
Luna looked up again, her smile fading as she became lost in thought. She had become arrogant. The sooner this was done, the better.
Right?
That sudden burst of confidence, the laughter… Not just with Quote. Luna felt more assured, stronger in herself. Maybe it could be good. Maybe she could be good. Her hoofsteps slowed.
The mental image of Nightmare Moon flashed in her head, but instead of a nightmare, it was a daydream. The tall, midnight-black being, graceful as the night sky whirled about her head, adorned in glistening armor as the moon reflected in it, crowds of ponies in awe, shaking not with fear but with respect and adoration. Everything she wanted and more.
Maybe she could be good.
“Princess Luna?” came a quiet voice, bringing her out of her thoughts.
Immediately, a spike of rage seared through her. Rude, lowly pony, interrupting me, how DARE they–
A hoof was placed on her shoulder. “Are you alright?”
Quote. It was Quote. Luna took a deep breath, somewhat rattled. She opened her mouth to say yes.
“Did you mean it? When you said you would follow me?” Hot tears came to her aqua eyes, and she blinked them away. Why was this happening? She was loved, like her sister, so why did she feel so lonesome?
“Yes,” came the quiet, steady response.
Luna craned her neck slightly, and their horns bumped together, a gesture of comfort for unicorns. “I want to be good.”
Quote Quill lifted Luna’s head, forcing her to look up, into one of the windows and into her reflection. “Your Majesty, you are great.”
Luna’s chest swelled with emotion, and she teleported her books and blanket to that spot by the window, able to gaze out into her beautiful night. Quote lit a candle and set it between them, and they began once more to read, to check things over one last time.
***
First, it would need to persist. A constant reminder as Luna slept, to keep her humble. To not forget. Replicating Sombra’s brain worm was the difficult part. Combining different spells together, trying each combination, Luna and Quote Quill each held multiple spellbooks in their magic, reading incantations aloud, casting them with their horns, trying and failing again and again to get the perfect mix of magics to create something that could live in the mind and in Luna’s dream realm.
But even if they could create such a thing, then it would need something to feed off. What makes a nightmare? Dream magic, dashed with fear and anxieties.
After hours of poring over old tomes and trying and retrying spells, Luna at last reached the end of her already-thinned patience, and hurled one of the books across the library with a distorted yell. “This is a fruitless pursuit!”
Quote Quill had diligently been working just as hard as her princess, and took the opportunity to give her magic a rest. “I’m sure if we just take a breather and come back to it later–”
“Oh, be quiet!” the alicorn snapped, irritable. Her mane flowed and ebbed like an angry tide. “I don’t even want to waste hours in this dusty library trying to make a permanent guilt trip! This is foolish, so foolish.” She began to pace, muzzle curled back in a snarl.
Quote paled slightly, ears pressed back. “Majesty, if you wish to retire, I can do the rest myself, for you…” she offered, trying to placate her princess.
“Silence, knave!” Luna stomped one hoof against the library floor, cracking the tiles. “I shouldn’t need to torture myself just to be a decent mare!”
“I–I–” the unicorn stammered, clueless as to how to respond. Her mind was buzzing, but she couldn’t figure out what Luna wanted from her.
The alicorn’s mane was flowing wildly and her eyes flashed dangerously as she began to pace back and forth, growling to herself.
Why should I?
Why should I be good, why am I so wicked, why can’t I be better, why, why, why?
“You want to,” Quote’s quavering voice answered.
“What?”
“You want to be good,” she repeated. “You’re not an evil pony, Princess Luna.” But her eyes were filled with fear, and her ears were pressed back.
Luna stilled. Her mane flowed back into place and rippled like gentle water. “But I am not a good one, either.”
“But you want to be, and you’re trying to be.” Quote nudged Luna back towards the blanket, the candle, the books. “You can beat Nightmare Moon.”
Luna sat down, tucking her hooves under herself. “How is it you can see more good in me than I can?”
Quote gazed at her princess for a long moment before picking up a spellbook again. “No reason.”
They sat quietly, continuing their long list of spell combinations until something worked. A mix of a memory spell, fear magic, and a connection from Luna produced a squirming, amorphous black vapor that swirled within the confines of Luna’s magic. She staggered away from it, and Quote Quill looked nauseated. The evil energy radiating from the spell was physically palpable.
“Do something to it!”
“Like what?” Luna tightened her levitation to prevent the thing from wriggling free. “I shouldn’t have taken that book from the restricted section, it was bad news.”
“You used a spell from THAT book?”
“Nothing else was working!”
Luna’s bright aqua magic flickered dimmer, the creature’s malice staining the magic around it, and she hissed in disgust.
“Do something!” Quote repeated frantically.
“I don’t–” Luna stammered, flapping her wings. “I– Oh, fine.” Trying to think on her hooves, Luna pulsed a healing spell into the vapor, then a purification spell Celestia had taught her. Both seemed to have no effect on the spawn of the restricted spellbook.
Quote Quill fired a few beams of red magic into the circle of magic enclosing it as well, flipping through a few of her books. “Disenchant, curse removal, purify,” she chanted in tandem with the spells she cast. “Nothing’s working on it!”
“This WAS stupid,” Luna cried, exasperated with herself and her problems. She was even exasperated with her continuously thinning patience. Suddenly, her magic was corrupted again and the magic of the squirming vapor reached her horn. Her wings flared open and she let out a cry of alarm, rearing onto her hind legs, which turned a familiar black hue.
“Nightmare Moon,” Quote Quill gasped.
“Ugh, not again,” groaned Luna, struggling to contain the two different evil magics in her grasp. In an effort to keep everything from going wrong, she lit her horn and poured her own frustration into the black smog she held in her magical grasp. Nightmare Moon’s pelt seemed to be sucked up by the spell, like smoke flying off of Luna’s body. All of the greed and jealousy and temper was vacuumed into the wiggling wisp she held.
The excess magic seemed to thicken it, and the frantic movements of the curse became sluggish. It turned a deep purple laced with flecks of brightness, like stars. Luna exhaled roughly, weakening her grip on the Nightmare Moon sludge she held in her magic, which had returned to its normal bright blue.
Quote Quill approached gingerly. “Is the spell stable now?”
“I think so.” Luna cast another purification spell on it for good measure. It had all but stopped moving at this point.
“What does it do?”
“The original spell was a combination of sombra’s fear magic, my dream magic, and dark mind spells. It should do what we planned. But it has…” Luna struggled for words. “Nightmare Moon essence in it now.”
Quote Quill surrounded it with her magical aura as well, reading a purifying spell from one of her books and casting it on the blob. “Should we let it go and see what it does?”
“Put a magic barrier around it before I drop it.”
Quote’s crimson magic surrounded an area of the library in a half-sphere that closed around where Luna was holding the nightmare sludge. Once the shield was secure, Luna allowed the magic around her horn to dissipate, and it fell to the ground, where it lay, unmoving, for a long moment.
Quote Quill continued her shield spell and both mares stepped closer, curious.
“Maybe the disenchantment spells wo–”
Before Quote could finish her sentence, the purple blob stretched upwards as if rearing, growing as though it was swelling from the inside. Slowly, it formed into a vague shape - four legs, an indistinct head and body - that it slowly refined until a wavering silhouette of an alicorn stood before them inside the sphere of magic.
It looked like Luna - no, it looked like Nightmare Moon’s silhouette, with a mane of sparkling stars that trailed behind it.
“Drop– drop the shield,” Luna said, not taking her eyes off of the featureless form the spell had taken.
Quote obeyed, the red energy sliding downwards as the spell stepped over it, towards Luna.
“Your Highness...?” Quote asked lowly, worry evident on her face.
“It’s alright.” Luna and the spell circled each other, each fascinated with the other. “The spell worked, it did what I wanted it to.”
“Shall I record the spell, Princess?”
“Yes, please.” Luna paused in her pacing around the dark purple silhouette to stare at it. Its outlines shimmered brighter and continuously flowed, like Luna’s mane. Quote began to write down the different spells that were used to create this new being, each book and page jotted on a scroll.
“What shall I call the spell, your Highness?”
Luna considered for a long moment, staring into the empty void in the spell’s ‘head’. “I think I shall call it… Tantabus.”